THE SLIDE-ROCK BOLTER

High in the Colorado mountains, where summer tourists crowd the trails, locals whisper about a menace known as the slide-rock bolter. This monstrous beast is found only in the steepest country, where slopes tilt more than forty-five degrees. Its head is immense, with tiny glaring eyes and a wide, sculpin-like mouth stretching far back past its ears. At the other end is a powerful fluke-shaped tail, ending in massive grappling hooks. With these hooks it anchors itself over a mountain crest, hanging motionless for days as it waits and watches the gulches below.

When an unsuspecting tourist wanders into view, the creature hoists its hooked tail free and lets gravity do the work. Drool—called skid grease by the locals—streams from the corners of its mouth, slicking the rocks and speeding its descent. With eyes locked on its prey, the bolter plunges downhill like a living avalanche, scooping up trees, animals, and entire parties of tourists in its gaping maw. Its momentum is so great that it often shoots partway up the next slope, where it fastens its hooks once more and lies in wait. Valleys scarred by flattened spruce and uprooted timber mark the paths of its terrible slides.

One forest ranger in the rough country between Ophir Peaks and Lizard Head once tried to end the menace. He built a decoy tourist dressed in a plaid Norfolk jacket, knee breeches, and carrying a guidebook to Colorado. The dummy was packed with giant powder and fulminate caps, then placed in a likely gulch. Sure enough, a bolter that had been hanging for days on Lizard Head spotted the bait and came thundering down. The explosion that followed was so great it flattened half the buildings in Rico, which were never rebuilt. The hills were left littered with buzzards fattening themselves for the rest of the summer.