On 23 September 2000 about 400 off-road enthusiasts trespassed on the Caribou Park land owned by Calais Mining Colorado that we have used for our field geophysics class in 1998 and 2000 (with permission). They plowed around in the meadow that was mined for peat decades ago. The first two photos below are from 1998; the area that was mainly used in the mudfest is not in the center of either photo, but on the left edge of photo 1 you can see an edge of the muddy area left from the peat mining, and on the left edge of photo 2 (left of the old peat mining equipment) you can see the area that is in the foreground of photo 3 taken on 9/26/00. Approximate locations and directions of the photos shown on the map below.

News stories:

• Daily Camera on 12 Oct., 30 Sept (Talbot column), 29 Sept, 28 Sept, and editorial, 27 Sept. habitat and radio station, 26 Sept.
  
• Channel 7 news 9/26 (presumably had video from the helicopter we saw that day)
• 9News video archive has a few reports (need Windows Media Player and some luck)
• Rocky Mountain News 9/25, 9/26, 9/27, 9/28 , 9/29
• Westword, 10/5
• Denver Post, 10/8, 10/6 , 10/4
• High Country News, 10/23

Other links:

• Calais Resources (corporate owner) website, photos and maps of mining operation
• A brief description (in a late 1998 mining software magazine) of the current mine operation
• Colorado Sports 4WD page on "Caribou Flats" (which technically is not this area) that apparently was the page linked to by the KBPI radio website (judging from news reports).

Photo 1; Resistivity in 1998. Looking west, the south edge of the main 2000 mudfest area is to the left of the road.(Click on photo for larger version)

Photo 2 from 1998 to the north-northeast. Main mudfest area is to the left of the road and old peat mining equipment rusting by the road. (Click on photo for larger version)

The view in 2000. You can make out the road that photo 1 was taken on just over the mired pickup truck; the area in the foregraound here is the area left of the road in photo 2 above. (Click on photo for larger version)

Here is Channel 7 news 3 days after the mudfest covering it with all the equipment you can drive or fly to Caribou. And to think they could have covered a gravity survey....

GEOL4714/5715 home | C. H. Jones | CIRES | Dept. of Geological Sciences | Univ. of Colorado at Boulder

Last modified at Tuesday, October 24, 2000 2:09 PM

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