Standing here at the very foot of the mountains that hid the enchanting netherland of “the Gunnison,” we were eager to hurry on to the Pacific slope of the State; but one little side trip remained to be made, and on the second morning we coupled our cars to the express bound for Villa Grove and Bonanza. The course lay up Poncho Pass, and in five minutes the noisy locomotives announced that the ascent had begun.
It was very pretty, as, indeed, we had suspected during our walk the day before up to the hot springs, which stand near its entrance. The track is dug out of the side-hill on the northern side of the gulch, and a bright stream comes tumbling down through willows, cottonwoods, oak shrubs, wild cherry thickets and bushes of service-berry whose crimson fruit tempts you to leap off the train and taste its tart and fragrant juices. The slopes on both sides are covered with evergreens and aspens
“That twinkle to the gusty breeze.”
Up through a rift in the trees we catch a glimpse of the little watering-place, and a few miles farther, pass the log-buildings of the old Toll Gate, occupying a pocket in the hills. Only now are the gray carpeted plains of the Arkansas, the village at the mouth of the cañon, and the rough high hills, away beyond the river lost to view. At the head of Poncho Pass is Mears’ Station. It occupies a narrow defile, the walls rising steeply to unseen heights, and the gorges dropping apparently to unfathomable depths. We could not trace the devious course we had come, nor understand how it was possible the railway should surmount the stupendous barrier lying to the westward. Yet we knew that a day or two later our cars would roll steadily to the summit and steadily descend on the other side, for this little nook, the head of Poncho, is only the foot of Marshall Pass, by which the oceanic divide is crossed on the transcontinental route. Nor was it easier to see how we were to get away down the precipitous defiles in which the southern slope of Poncho Pass seemed to lose itself. It was with strongly excited curiosity, then, that we detached from the express and caused our cars to be coupled to the freight train, which the bulletin averred knew how to go down to Villa Grove, and would one day carry the traveller through to Saguache and the South.
When all was ready to make good this promise,—and if that miserably memorable engineer had thrust his shock of hair and bullet-head a trifle further out of the cab-window the company might have dispensed with the headlight—took the back track for a few rods, trended away on a curved side-track to the right as far as the hillside would admit, crossed the main line on a bridge, and having by this time accomplished a half circle, headed eastward again and began to climb the southern side of the gulch in a line so parallel with the lower track that a mile later you could fling down a stone from one to the other though you were a couple of hundred feet above. Half a mile more and the summit is reached,—a green saddle between the foothills of Mount Ouray on one side and the far-braced buttresses of Hunt’s peak on the other. The going down is fairly straight and easy work, and it is not long before the gulches widen out, the diminished, grassy hills are left behind, and your speed increases as you strike the firmly bedded, regular track, pointing southward through a broad, treeless plain.
Perhaps I have said enough of the wonderful beauty of the Sangre de Cristo range, seen from this side; have too often told of their compact array and unbroken grandeur; of the scores of nameless peaks that vie with Hunt’s, Rito Alto, Electric, the gothic Crestones and the group of pinnacled, sun-gilded summits that crowd near far-away Blanca; but in the broad morning light of this day’s trip they stood up in freshened color and renewed majesty. All the cloud-curtains were rolled up, and heaven shed unhindered its clear, sharp sunbeams from end to end of the magnificent chain. The souvenirs of yesterday’s storm added decoration, for the summits were all dusted and powdered, with light snow, like noble heads of the old regime; and this unwonted covering descended far enough below timber-line to frost the upper lines of trees, so that there was a soft gradation from the deep verdancy of the lower slopes, through hoary greenish-gray to the unbroken white of the clear-cut gables lifted into the serene and absolute solitude of the cærulean dome.
BLACK CAÑON OF THE GUNNISON.