When they looked into their bicycles’ rear view mirrors, the road rolling out behind seemed empty. They saw clearly the green of sub-alpine trees and the snow dappled peaks of Colorado mountains. What they couldn’t see was that, only a few turns of the road behind, the Grim Reaper had their scent and was coming up fast.
It was the end of July, 1976, and two teenage brothers from Missouri were riding their bikes out of Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. Mitch had been exploring the high country for two weeks. Rod had just arrived, dropped off by his girlfriend’s family, and he really wanted to stay and play. Unfortunately, funds were very limited, and they agreed that it was time to head home.
The lads woke up late the day they left and reluctantly packed their simple gear, homemade tent, and peanut butter sandwich fixins, all the while savoring the crisp mountain air and brilliant morning light. Rod, it must be admitted, dragged his heels, but eventually they pointed their cycles in the direction of home. It was a beautiful cool morning under a blue cloudless sky. A mild up-canyon breeze fluttered the aspen leaves, a million little green hands waving ‘farewell’, ‘so long’, ‘goodbye’, while the bikes gained speed. Gravity, greased ball bearings, and firm rubber tires worked together, as planned, to convey them at outrageous velocity down the mountainside toward the flat-lands somewhere far below.
The first part of the descent on the narrow park road was fast and hair-raising; “share the road” was a slogan not yet in the national-park-driving public’s consciousness. Once past the tourist haven of Estes Park, however, the road through the winding canyon below became a sinuous delight. Nice and wide, well marked and smooth, it invited them to shift into their highest gear and just fly. They banked their dime-store bikes into the corners, thrilling to the rush of wind through helmetless hair. They were totally unsophisticated bicycle adventurers. They were young, knowing nothing of age or infirmity, and mortality was just a questionable concept. Life stretched out infinitely ahead. They certainly had no inkling that their playground of pavement was about to be ripped bodily from the face of the earth.
The miles zoomed by under the urging of gravity. Not anxious to leave this little piece of paradise, however, they paused at several prime spots along the canyon’s descent. There were deep pools of clear, cold water that became more enticing as the day and our riders warmed up. Spotted sandpipers on the sand bars flicked their tail feathers incessantly as they gathered food for the animated little balls of fluff that were their chicks. Trout held position in the eddies. Chunky gray water ouzels bobbed on rocks midstream, walking down into and under the water where they picked caddis fly larvae off submerged rocks. A glossy black mink slithered through streamside willows, a frog in its mouth. Summer cabins nestled in the cottonwood trees next to the stream, and occasionally voices could be heard calling to unseen companions. It is doubtful that any of these riverine inhabitants could possibly have imagined that their homes were about to be obliterated in a most horrible and final way.
Where the canyon finally opened up, forming a window out onto the high plains of Colorado, the boys stopped. They really did not want to leave the mountains. A final campsite in the canyon beckoned, and they dismounted. It would be nice, one proposed, to start tomorrow with a run down the giant alluvial fan spread out before them all the way to the town of Loveland. As they debated in the afternoon light, assessing their schedule and regarding the clouds rapidly building up-canyon to the west, the Grim Reaper rounded the final sweeping corner of the Big Thompson canyon, fixed them in his sights and prepared to reel them in.
On the evening of July 31st, 1976, the eastern part of Rocky Mountain National Park that is the Big Thompson watershed received over a foot of precipitation, a entire year’s worth of rain, in less than four hours. Unheard-of amounts of rainwater fell in torrents across the entire broad catchment area. Witnesses later described difficulty breathing as the rain drove straight down, creating a heavy splashing spray all around and displacing breathable air with water. Water quickly pooled in the marshes and meadows of the high country, overrunning beaver ponds and culverts, rushing down and concentrating into tributary drainages around mid-elevation Estes Park, and inexorably gathering into the final funnel of the narrow Big Thompson canyon, which lead down to the plains. Millions upon millions of gallons of water gathered speed, washed over the steep rocky hillsides and flushed through the flatter meadows, all of it heading for the bottom of the V-shaped canyon.
The Grim Reaper got busy.
By 9 p.m., water pouring into the Big Thompson River had taken it from an average depth of 18 inches to over 20 feet, in a violent surge of water that swept away everything in its path. If they had enough warning, some of the younger, stronger people in the canyon managed to save their lives by climbing up the canyon walls. Some tried to speed ahead of the flood in their cars; almost none succeeded. Most were caught totally unaware. The roar of churning debris–boulders, trees, houses, cars, bridges, animals and people–was punctuated by unceasing thunder and illuminated by the terrifying strobe of rapid-fire lightning strikes. The peaceful green canyon had suddenly become the setting for the worst natural disaster in Colorado history.
In the town of Loveland, several miles out on the flat and looking up the drainage, the destruction in the canyon could not be seen, and little rain fell. What could be seen was a giant dark cumulonimbus cloud over the mountains, illuminated from within by raging lightning. The towering cloud did not move along to the east like a normal summer storm would, but instead remained in place, building higher and higher. As the storm peaked, a severe downdraft of displaced cold air rushed toward Loveland and across the town, knocking down signs, tearing off screen doors, and blowing away anything not tied down. In a campground on the far side of town, Mitch and Rod held on to their tent as its poles bent to the breaking point, and as board fences, cottonwood branches and RV awnings crashed down around them.
The Big Thompson flood that evening took 150 lives and destroyed 450 homes and businesses. Carbon dating of the river bank later revealed that it had been perhaps 10,000 years since a flood of that magnitude. No one saw it coming.
In the morning light the boys looked around and marveled at the destruction the wind had wrought. They had no idea why the wind event had happened. There didn’t seem to be much they could do, so they saddled up and moved out, and were on down the road before anyone could tell them of the night’s other events. They were now far from the river, and saw no destruction from the flood. There were no cell phones back then, so no one would be calling them. There were no smart phones on which to follow the news, and the two brothers watched no TV and read no newspapers the week that they were on the road. Back then, people didn’t quite know what to make of these windblown, sunburned young men on bikes, and few engaged them in conversation or guessed where they were coming from, so Mitch and Rod remained oblivious to the catastrophe.
The two brothers rode their bikes east for a good number of long summer days. They camped in Nebraska fields, were pushed along by Kansas winds, ate watermelon and peanut butter sandwiches, and fully participated in life. Mitch and Rod had never caught sight of the Grim Reaper in their rear view mirrors that fateful day, and they didn’t know just how close he had come to catching them. But they beat Death down that winding canyon road, and lived to tell this tale.