Weekly Reflection #2

 Jackson Lalla 

Kelly Griffin-Brown

Senior Project

23 May, 2022

Weekly Reflection #2

This week of our project delved more into the research side of the goals that we set out to complete at the beginning of this journey. We traveled an hour or so to the town of Leadville Colorado and did some exploring with my good friend, Mike Brown. Mike, who has lived in Vail his whole life knows every nook and cranny as well as everything there is to know about the area. He took us to many mining sites which once were thriving during the fallback of the gold rush (when everyone backfilled from California and pioneered the area. Much of this particular area was built around mines, some of these mining towns still thrive while some have been reduced to ghost towns. It was very interesting to walk around these mines (some still functional and some very much abandoned and sunken into the earth) and to learn about the history of colorado. On this same trip, Mike took us to Camp Hale which was just outside of Leadville. Camp Hale was the only training site for the tenth mountain division at the time of its creation in 1942. This site was in a valley surrounded by giant mountains and unbelievable scenery. The U.S army selected this spot for a training site during WWII due to its resemblance to Hitler’s hideout in Obersalzberg (in the Bavarian Alps) during the end of the war. It was extremely interesting to learn from Mike how the army utilized this area to train U.S soldiers to ski, and be outdoorsmen during combat. Days later, we visited the colorado ski museum where they had an entire large room dedicated to the tenth mountain division and how they pioneered many of the American ski towns. In this exhibit there was an informational movie which Brody and I watched from start to finish. Overall, this has has been a very transformative experience and I feel that I’ve learned copious amounts about the 10th and their significance to today’s world.