2020: Emergency Exit

by Hayes, Ever N

  We drove back to the others and loaded up our gear. There were several more areas between Drake and Estes Park under water, but most of them had a place we could drive around or were shallow and calm enough for us to drive through. Lake Estes was well over its banks, and the entire entry to town was flooded. It took a few times getting stuck in some mud, and other off-roading obstructions, before we finally found a small road that led us up onto a former driveway and around the back of the lake. We were fortunate they’d rebuilt these roads within the past decade because when they’d done so they’d not only fortified them, but also raised them. No way we’d have made it otherwise.

  The area was a mess and was only going to get worse as the rainfall continued. The dam in Lake Estes was built to hold a lot of pressure, but without anyone monitoring it and adjusting the water levels, there was no way it would hold through the night. When the dam gave out, the water would completely wash out both eastern entries into Estes Park. There was still one southern road into Estes Park from Denver, by the Twin Sisters peaks, but we planned to eliminate that option tomorrow. Given Isaac’s injuries and inability to travel, we had mutually agreed to set up camp here for the winter. As soon as the first significant snow came, the other two roads over the mountains would be closed until April. The only other way in would be through the air, and the wintry conditions would make even that a gamble. We were grateful we’d at least made it here, somewhere we knew quite well, and we were all well aware of how close we’d come to not making it at all. Now we just needed a place to stay.

  Between my Dad, Danny, Cameron, and me we had nearly three decades of experience hiking the mountains and trails around here. We knew every lake, every waterfall, every peak, and every large cave in the area. For tonight, we were going to try to find an abandoned cabin, heat it somehow, cook dinner, eat, talk about the week’s events, sleep, and take care of Sam, Isaac, and Hayley.

  We found an intact home in the hills above the old YMCA camp, and everyone cleaned up, dried off, and ate. Danny and Cameron gave us all the details on their encounter with Eddie and his men. It wasn’t lost on anyone that Danny’s questionable decision in Wyoming seemed to have a remarkably positive effect on the captain. Even if he was still planning to kill us later. For now, he’d saved Hayley, and it was hard for me not to appreciate him at least a little for that.

  Danny didn’t say so, but I could tell he was relieved. He’d saved a lot of people today. The rest of us had been kind of hard on him yesterday, and now we weren’t about to let him forget the redeeming value of his decisions. Emily spent several hours “taking care” of Hayley—an amusing reversal—and I learned a great deal about Tara in a lengthy casual chat. Passionate “New Kids on the Block” fan. She didn’t bring Sophie up, and I wasn’t asked to spill my life story. It was great. We sat close to each other, laughed, teased each other, and even touched from time to time. We were beginning our relationship as friends. If that progressed, as we both seemed to think it could, the time for deeper conversations would come.

  Before we all wrapped up the night with what we needed most—sleep—we spent some personal time with Sam and Isaac and held a brief open-forum, prayer memorial for Wes and Nathan. Everyone had a lot to say about a lot of different things, but in the end we wrapped our arms around each other and looked to Sam as he read the words to one of his dad’s favorite songs, “Be Still” by The Fray. I bowed my head and closed my eyes. Sam’s voice broke before he could finish, but Isaac whispered the rest for him. There was a long pause when they finished, as the words sank in, and then I heard myself say “Amen,” and a half dozen other voices echoed it. Dad closed in prayer and together we bid thank you and goodbye to a wonderful father and lost friend.

  PART II

  PHOTO: HORSESHOE PARK

  Horseshoe Park (Near Estes Park, CO) – Setting for Part II

  Courtesy of William Horton Photography

  Copyright © William Horton

  THIRTY-NINE: (Ryan) “Day Before Thanksgiving”

  Wednesday, November 25, 2020.

  Estes Park, Colorado.

  We’d been in Estes Park for a month. A lot had changed. A lot hadn’t.

  There were still thirteen of us, thanks to Jenna’s excellent care of Mom and Isaac. The conditions hadn’t exactly been ideal, but we woke up every day with the mantra, “It could be worse.”

  We ended up being wrong about the Lake Estes dam. It didn’t give out that night. It gave out the next afternoon. It washed down Highways 34 and 36 and caused more damage than could be repaired in any short amount of time, and the snow wasn’t too far behind. Danny and Cameron went down Highway 36 with explosives to “make the water damage worse.” Together with the water, they rendered it impossible for anyone to get to Estes Park by that avenue.

  There were now only three remaining ways into Estes Park, all to the west, and they all converged on Trail Ridge Road. Ute Trail went up from the south and peaked about halfway up Trail Ridge, but it could barely be considered an option as it was nothing more than a one-lane dirt path barely wide enough for a tricycle. And we weren’t too worried about these soldiers having tricycles.

  Old Fall River Road cut up the mountains from the northeast side, meeting Trail Ridge Road at its summit in the Alpine Visitor Center parking lot. Old Fall River Road always closed at first snow because it was bordered by “avalanche alley.” Anyone foolish enough to go up or down that road from November to March usually died, either by avalanche or getting stuck. Once the first snow came, we weren’t worried about that road.

  Our only remaining worry had been the main Trail Ridge Road. It typically was closed by December, but all the equipment to keep it open was kept at the top of the mountain, where helicopters would fly in with the road crews. It was also the ideal site for a military base. Similar to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest in Germany.

  We knew we were stuck here until spring, and even then, no matter which way we tried to go we’d have to pass the Alpine Visitor Center. If we were correct in our assumptions, and that was a base site, we had no idea how we’d pull off our exit, but that was at least five months from now. We had to survive winter first.

  Fortunately, we received about ten feet of snow over a three-day period the last few days of October. Both the Old Fall River and Trail Ridge roads were completely shut by the fifth of November. No one was getting here by land. Not until spring.

  The only way in now was by air and, as it turned out, the enemy forces used that method many times. It seemed every day we had a drone fly over and back, mostly in the afternoon, and helicopters descended into Estes Park regularly. Heckuva lot attention paid to one small town! Sam confirmed the drones were the same FOTROS ones they’d seen back in their bunker by Devil’s Lake.

  Danny knew they were Iranian, one of the few types of drones that could do both recon and bombing. The American military had similar drones that Special Ops used. Danny described them as “nasty suckers.” We took his word for it. They were likely being monitored from Denver or Colorado Springs.

  The helicopters, on the other hand, all seemed to come from the top of Trail Ridge Road. None of them ever headed the other direction. That confirmed our fears that there was a permanent patrol or two stationed up by the Alpine Visitor Center for the winter. The troops they flew in never seemed to search much beyond town. The first day they flew in was the last day we stayed in town. We couldn’t compete with their technology, dogs, and numbers for long.

  We hadn’t seen a lot of other Americans ourselves. Maybe a dozen, at most. It’s possible some of them saw us while we were collecting supplies, but we had yet to speak to any of them, and we were convinced their numbers would dwindle with each subsequent troop visit. We knew we needed to get out of town.

  Northwest of Estes Park, several trails ran near the Alluvial Fan at the base of Bighorn Mountain, one of the area’s longest chains of natural waterfalls. The aptly named Roaring River came down the fan out of the mountains and staircased into a low-lyi
ng basin, generally known as Horseshoe Park, which also contained the Sheep Lakes. The area was a popular feeding ground for elk and bighorn sheep and, as a result, mountain lions. The popular Lawn Lake Trail ascended the right side of the chain of falls. We knew that trail well.

  We knew the fan’s ever-flowing river and falls would provide constant fresh water and have plenty of wildlife nearby. The area also had several large, bighorn-inhabited caves. We were intent on negotiating a lease with them for a few months. For better or worse, the fan sat right at the foot of Old Fall River Road, almost exactly a ten-mile drive down from the Alpine Visitor Center.

  We found our cave on the right side of the falls, surrounded by thick woods and carved right into Bighorn Mountain. The sheep were reluctant to leave, but we arguably needed it more than they did. We worked it out. With two relatively obscure entrances, it was the perfect place to hide out for a few months.

  The main entrance opened to the west, facing the Alluvial Fan and the summit of Old Fall River Road. We knew we’d have to conceal that entry more. It was pretty exposed to the passing trail. The “back” entry emerged onto a wraparound porch-like ledge, which could only be accessed by the Spiderman-like sheep or mountain lions. That ledge provided a nearly 180-degree view of Horseshoe Park, but it was only about five feet wide with a steep twenty-foot drop to the rocks below. It would be treacherous in winter, but it was a design feature hundreds of my Pinterest architecture “friends” would have enjoyed a few years ago.

  We spent several nights over several weeks moving mattresses, carpet, blankets, car batteries, battery-powered space heaters, wood, water barrels, beams to reinforce the cave, and other supplies from various stores and homes in Estes Park. My architectural skillset finally made me of some value and, paired with Sam’s experience building the Dakota bunker with his dad, we resourcefully built our own “Man Cave.”

  The supplies were easy to find in an abandoned town. It was getting in and out around the troop visits, and the nearly half-mile climb carrying supplies from the base of the Alluvial Fan, that was the challenge. But we brought anything we thought could be of use. We explored the stores, packed what we could, moved it out, and dragged it up to our cave.

  Fully stocked, we then turned to hiding two of the trucks a few miles up the road. We went as far as we could in the snow that had already fallen and parked them under an old picnic shelter, deliberately collapsing it to cover the vehicles. No one would pass or look there in mid-winter, but we continued to take every precaution.

  We pulled the best four-by-four we had, the new Ford, up into the woods about a half-mile from our cave. We attached a snowplow extension onto the front and spray-painted every inch of the truck white: exterior, hubcaps, wheels and all. We covered it with white tarps and put it in a position where it could be started and driven in a straight line down to Old Fall River Road, and used in an emergency to clear a path. With our gear in place we began the extensive process of covering every trace of our existence.

  The cave turned out awesome! Inside we braced the ceiling with constructive supports and mining posts. We spent two weeks digging out every ounce of dirt and loose rock, nearly doubling the original size of the cave, and then cemented the ceiling and walls. We made the front entrance much smaller and built in ten-inch tall screened air ducts across the entry floor.

  We had picked up a variety of stone-shaped outdoor speakers from a gardening store in Estes Park, removed their electronic cores, and cemented those outside the channel vents to aid with the airflow. We surrounded those converted speakers with large rocks and then covered them with more rocks. Small fans were connected to each of the speaker vents across the “front door” to disperse the escaping heat more sporadically so it wouldn’t be noticeable from drones passing above. We made sure we left the back entrance mostly open with a makeshift screen door to always allow a little fresh air to pass through the cave.

  Dad and Sam even built a wooden door for the front entrance, and plastered it with rocks to make it appear as if there was no entrance at all. We insulated the walls with mattresses, thick glass panels, and multiple layers of commercial foam. Danny told us thick glass tended to reflect thermal scans, so we made the extra effort to get it up to the cave. That crap was heavy! We even put carpet on the floors, thick carpet. Layers and layers of it. I’m not kidding when I said we brought everything up here we thought we could use. Since it made sense for everyone to sleep on the floors, in the two smaller rooms the carpet was almost a foot thick. Emily loved it. Kids.

  In the end we had a twenty-five-by-forty-foot main area with about an eight foot ceiling, two small rooms about 150 square feet each with six foot ceilings, and a small ascending tunnel that was only about five feet tall but nearly forty yards long with a back entrance to our best vantage point of the area. It was about 150 yards west to the Roaring River from our front door, most of it under the cover of trees except for the last thirty yards or so, where we had to cross the main path to get to water. That was our point of greatest concern.

  Our path came out next to a large pool, a small waterfall, and another smaller pool above a giant waterfall. The smaller pool had two large rocks hanging over it, with a small natural shelter carved underneath. Danny sank four nylon fish cages to the bottom of the pool beneath that rock, well hidden, and we used those cages for ‘refrigeration.’ We cleaned whatever food needed to be cleaned there as well. It was a natural ‘kitchen.’ Beyond the kitchen and the couple holes we’d dug as restrooms in the woods, the rest of our Horseshoe Park existence was confined to the cave.

  We were a ways from the center of town, about a seven-mile walk, but we couldn’t risk staying any closer. From where we were we could see every helicopter come in and every drone pass overhead. It would be difficult for anyone to sneak up on us from below and impossible to come in from above. Our “backyard” was nothing more than steep, rugged rock. It was called Bighorn Mountain for the terrain. Sheep loved it. People not so much.

  Given the circumstances, life in Horseshoe Park was near perfect until the last week of November, when two helicopters landed at the base of the waterfall and deposited forty men a little more than a mile west, between us and the Alpine Visitor Center. They set up a camp where the pavement and dirt roads converged, at what we knew as the Endovalley campsite and picnic area. The helicopters made several more runs, depositing loads and loads of supplies, and then they were gone.

  It seemed the soldiers below and west of us were going to be there for the long haul. They set up small tent-like shelters around the existing main building and started chopping down trees for firewood. Chasm Falls right next to them provided a water supply, and with all the elk in the valley they had plenty of food. They wouldn’t need to come our way. At least that much was a relief.

  They seemed to have been placed there for no other reason than to guard one of the last routes out. At some point, we figured we’d have to deal with someone wandering around our space, either for curiosity’s sake or because we had drawn their attention. In any case, we knew if we hadn’t arrived here when we had and made all our supply runs, we’d be locked in a cold cave with little chance of survival. Timing and preparation were indeed everything. Okay…and luck.

  In one day we’d gone from unfortunate but acceptable circumstances to being stuck in a bad spot with bad neighbors. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for the soldiers to have a direct impact on us. The very first night they arrived we had a visitor.

  FORTY: “The Visitor”

  It was a squirrel. But it scared the crap out of us. It turned out we had destroyed his nut cache, and he was trying to rebuild it. He found out quickly he wasn’t welcome, but the rodent served as a clear sign our defenses weren’t impenetrable, putting our nerves on high alert. Before the soldiers arrived, we would have found it funny. Not now. Squirrels. Dang animals. However, we were relieved the critter didn’t even know we were in the cave when he entered. It seemed we’d done a satisfactory job of limiting our v
isible existence.

  It was nice we didn’t have to build a fire to stay warm. At this point there would have been no way to conceal it. We only ran the space heaters in the two sleeping rooms to keep the heat sources as far from the doors as possible. We had collected about sixty new car batteries and figured each battery could power our four space heaters and two lamps for a week or two, running nonstop. At worst we had twenty weeks of heat, at best double to triple that. It should be more than enough. It would have to be.

  We had tons of pasta, rice, crackers, chips, dressings, sauces, M&M’s, and soup. We were well stocked on the essentials. You could barely call what we were doing “roughing it.” The concern was the cooking smell. We used the propane grill just for boiling, fearful any cooked meat scent could be carried down to the base of the mountain and towards the enemy camp. We weren’t going to be cooking any meat. That left us with summer sausage and beef jerky.

  For most of us, this would be the first Thanksgiving in decades without actual turkey—not sure there’s any in turkey jerky—the first time we wouldn’t have to fight a tryptophan-induced nap while pretending to care about another Lions loss.

  This week had always been the nation’s biggest shopping week, with Marigold Monday, Technicolor Tuesday, Whiteout Wednesday, and Black Friday. Retail lost respect for Thanksgiving and family time nearly a decade ago. The entire week had since morphed into one long drawn-out Black Friday. This was the week people who didn’t need anything went out in droves, at all hours, to buy it. I certainly didn’t miss the chaos. Quite frankly, it was a valid reason why the rest of the world wouldn’t miss America. Sometimes we acted like idiots!