Wheat Ridge Station to Arvada Ridge Station: The G Line

G stands for "gold".

RTD's G Line runs near the place where Colorado's first gold strike happened.

I'll get there but first there are two legs of the journey to accomplish. I visited the Wheat Ridge-Ward Station, the western end of the G Line back in July 1, 2919 (http://adventuringbcc.blogspot.com/2019/07/terminus-wheat-ridge-im-not-going-to.htmlhttp://adventuringbcc.blogspot.com/2019/07/terminus-wheat-ridge-im-not-going-to.html). Then, it was just to look around the station. Now, I begin a new series of station-to-station hikes from Wheat Ridge through Arvada to Union Station in Denver. There are six stations.

My point of departure for each of these hikes will be Union Station in downtown Denver. The G Line is one of the northbound rails that board in the train pavilion at the South side of Union Station (the southern rails use the light rail station to the north).

Union Station Train Pavilion

Still electric cable cars, these trains are larger than the light rail trains that run south of Denver. These look like trains, and the passenger areas are cushy and roomy.

These trains are also commuter trains first. Many of the people who work in Denver live in these northern suburbs. Situated on the plains, there isn't a lot out here other than residential areas and industries. The stations are further apart and there are fewer attractions.

Geologically, it's still the Dawson-Denver-Arapahoe formations, the same that make up the land in Centennial, where I live...dirt from the debris washed out of the Rockies and the Ancestral Rockies and volcanic dust blown from the west during the Colorado uplift. It's a lot of dirt and mud, but good for plants. Arvada is the area's main agricultural region.

The main highlight for me at Wheat Ridge is the view of North Table mountain and it's basalt cap.

And the other mountains around Golden.

The Station is the end of the line for the G Line. A little to the west is Ward Road that has a few amenities, like a convenience store.

The art at Wheat Ridge-Ward Station is a piece by Michael Clapper called "Anchored by Place".

For rockhounds, the G Line offers dirt, mud, and landscaping boulders and gravel. I'm not dismissing gravel, such as railroad ballast. I've found some nice materials in gravel, like these feldspars.

But don't mistake them for indigenous minerals. There's no telling where they came from. You can try panning gold from nearby Ralston or Clear Creeks but good luck and remember that these are now urban Creeks and are likely polluted.

The views along this route are urban prairie and consist mostly of residential and industrial areas. On the train out, I noticed a lot of industrial sprawl and kept wondering, "how am I going to get around all this." Well, part of the draw is the puzzle of navigating these urban landscapes. My smartphone map utilities will be my friend.

To adventure!

By the way, do you know how to use the map utilities in your smartphone browsers? For wilderness navigation, understanding the lay of the land and celestial navigation is your best bet, but for urban navigation, minding the streets and city maps will get you where you want to go 

Most smartphones will use GPS to locate your current position and put you on a map. If you need more help finding your way around, the Directions function in the Maps section of your browser should do the trick. Learn how to use them. 

Geology notes: Valley dynamics and volcanoes

My home study range, Walnut Hills, Centennial, Colorado is situated around two valleys, Little Dry Creek and Willow Creek. They merge a little to the west and finally join the South Platte River in Englewood. Little Dry Creek begins less than a mile to the East at a spring from the Dawson aquifer discussed here:

http://adventuringbcc.blogspot.com/2022/02/expedition-dry-run.html

Like many high desert aquifers, this one isn't very productive and most of the water in these streams are from runoff.

The shape of the valleys is typical, a shallow "V" with a sharp bank at the streams. Particularly, they're typical of streams that cut through relatively soft group. When streams cut through hard rock, they tend to form canyons with high, steep sides.

A small nameless but persistent stream arises from underground (I think this is the first sunlight that touches it) to join Little Dry Creek. If you read the discussion about confluences in the last blog, this arrangement will be familiar. The smaller stream joins downstream at an angle with a delta between.

This is a relatively energetic stream, being on the slope of the much larger and steeper South Platte River Valley. Since people live along the stream, erosion is a concern, so these weir dams are placed along the stream bed to expend some of the energy built up by the water pulled down by gravity.

Energy is the capacity to do work, in the case of the creek, to wear away the ground under it, so it can be thought of as the force it exerts over a period of time, and force is the mass of the moving material (water) times it's acceleration (which increases as it moves downward in response to gravity.) The weir dam just slows the water down momentarily.

Valleys grow outward as well as downward, otherwise all valleys would have vertical walls. The photographs above show the Little Dry Creek Valley growing. It's called "gravity slump".

All the ground around a stream is on a slope and, therefore, gravity is pulling it down. The ground further away from the creek is moving so slowly that you can't see it but there's plenty of time is geology for it all to finally make it's way down to the water to be swept away. Cycles of freezing and thawing, and rain helps to loosen up the soil.

But slump is most evident at the creek bank. Here sheets of dirt sheer off and slide into the stream.

Keep in mind that the confluence of Little Dry Creek and Willow Creek is also moving upstream, eating away at the valley. And this part, where the slope increases...

That used to be further west. At one time the creek flowed over that ridge. There might have been a cascade, or even a waterfall, but it ate away at the ridge moving it back until the steep section is where it is today. 

Water moves faster and erodes more quickly on a steep slope so the slope moves upstream. Waterfalls and cascades move, and as they do, they eat away at the walls of their canyon or valley 

Before the Rockies were there to the west, what is now the Colorado highlands were lowlands. There was a while different set of mountains there before that. We call them the Ancestral Rocky Mountains. They were worn down by erosion and the present day 14,000 foot mountains will one day be worn down to plains as all their bulk is washed down to the ocean.

And, maybe, the continued grinding force of the Pacific plate against North America will push up another Colorado Plateau to be again sculpted into another Rock Mountain range 

There was a short stretch of the RTD light rail in downtown Denver that I had not hiked so my housemate, Fox, and I took a train down to the Denver Convention Center and walked back to the Auraria Station. Part of the trip was to visit a gallery in the Convention Center.

Here, artists Kirk Johnson and Jan Vriesen have created interpretations of how Colorado looked over the last 500 million years. The painting feature places that, today, have names. For instance, about 64 million years ago, a volcano erupted in what is today Golden, Colorado, belching out lava flows which, today, can be seen as North and South Table Mountains. Here's Mr. Vriesen's idea of what the event might have looked like.

Along with the ten paintings, there are interpretive plaques explaining them and one for the whole exhibition.

Not only is this a valuable and informative art exhibit but it's also a useful resource for people interested in exploring the geology of Colorado. All ten sites can be visited today.

When I visit an area, I like to sit somewhere and try to visualize what it has looked like in the recent and distant past. That requires some research beforehand. Many states have online encyclopedias. I know that Alabama has an extensive website that provides lots of information about the State, including history, culture, tourism, and geology. You might want to search for "(your state) encyclopedia " to see if your state does. If not, you can find plenty of information in the Wikipedia online encyclopedia.

The last leg: The W Line

The terminals tend to be the most interesting stations on a line.

The W Line began in the mountains at Golden and ends in downtown Denver at Union Station. Along the way, I've seen ancient lava flows, art, antique toys, and miniature houses, and heard people's stories. 

You won't see any snow in these photos. That's funny since snow is still on the ground a few miles down the track where I live. The Front Range urban corridor, the most populated areas in Colorado just east of the Rockies, varies drastically in weather as you move north or south. Warmer downslope winds called "chinooks" crash down off the higher mountains, often with hurricane force winds, while the mountain passes let colder air through as fronts move out onto the plains. So ten miles can make a huge difference in weather here.

My hike began where I left off the last time, at the modernist event center, the Ball Arena. Although it hosts cultural events like concerts and plays, the big theme here is sports and you can see art dedicated to sports and buy items celebrating many of the local teams.

Not much of a spectator, I look and pass by.

Denver should be a Mecca for people who like bridge architecture. There are bridges everywhere illustrating many styles. These truss bridges over Cherry Creek are foot bridges connecting the Auraria neighborhoods to Denver proper. They don't span much distance so the simple truss structure works well. It works like a board across a creek.

If you built bridges as a kid, you probably remember that your plank was, well...fun? As you walked across, it sagged in the middle and bobbed up and down.

All bridges are a road or trail bed supported by some kind of structure to carry the weight of the "plank" and lead the force of the weight down into the earth. Here, sturdy steel girders form a lattice work that lays across from one bank of Cherry Creek to the other. The road bed rests on a platform of girders like the slats under your mattress. The trapezoids on either side keep it from sagging and bobbing. The trapezoids are reinforced by diagonal girders that form triangles. In a triangle, any joint is braced by the opposite side. A triangle is the most stable plane shape.

Cherry Creek and the South Platte River define major regions of Denver. West Denver is west of the river. The original settlement of Auraria where settlers of European heritage joined Chief Little Raven's tribe of Arapahoe was nestled between the two streams, and Denver proper developed across Cherry Creek. The streams have never been navigable to large river traffic but was the original draw to the area as gold was panned from them and their tributaries. Then they served as open sewers. Although they have been cleaned up considerably, they still carry an invisible load of diverse toxic metals from mining operations upstream and enteric bacteria like Escherichia coli from ongoing sewage contamination. Swim at your own risk.

Nevertheless, water fowl find the streams inviting, and I occasionally see fish there. Denver used to be on the migration routes for many birds but as the climate has warmed, more and more are staying put year round. Also, further south they get shot.

Confluence Park

The South Platte River and Cherry Creek merge in downtown Denver at Confluence Park. This area has been extensively landscaped not only for aesthetic reasons but also to manage erosion. A lot of energy is expended here and the valley shape can change quickly (over geologic time) if allowed.

Confluences are often a good place to look for heavy metals like gold. Industrial placers are troughs fitted with slats or ridges in the beds. Water is sent down under pressure (often by gravity flow). Light particles of dirt, sand, or crushed rock wash on by while the heavier partials are caught behind the slats. In a confluence, the trough is the natural stream bed and the slats are rocks and boulders that slow the flow of the water. The Sand that collects there is enriched with heavy materials and can be panned to find heavy particles.

Confluence Park is a popular place for kayaking and tubing because the water gets a big boost there. There's actual white water around the boulders that have been washed down from upstream (but keep an eye on the pollution reports if you're interested!) It's no surprised that this was the first place prospectors decided to look for gold in the area. 

Why is Denver where it is?

That's why.

Geology not only changes geography. It changes us.

But they didn't find gold at the Confluence of the South Platte and Cherry Creek. Bragging rights for the first gold panned in the area goes to the confluence of Clear and Ralston Creeks further to the west. Then they found placer gold three miles south at the confluence of the South Platte and Little Dry Creek, and the rush was on.

The pedestrian bridge at Confluence Park

Many of the bridges in the Denver area are arch suspension bridges. The road bed is suspended by cables from an arch. Of course, arches were used extensively by the Romans for their strength and stability. In the case of the pedestrian bridge at Confluence Park, each cable holds only a section of the weight of the road bed. The downward pull of the cables threaten to push the ends of the arch outward but, if you look at them, they're braced so that the force of the weight is conducted up the cables into the arch and down into the Earth.

This is a typical confluence. Two streams rarely, if ever, join at right angles. There is a stagnation zone in a larger stream just before a smaller tributary joins it. That allows particles to precipitate out of the water to form a delta pushing the junction of the two stream further downstream.

The confluence of Cherry Creek with the South Platte River from the pedestrian bridge at Confluence Park.

Near Confluence Park are three suspension bridges of innovative design. They're featured prominently in the January 13, 2019 blog, Terminus: Union Station (http://adventuringbcc.blogspot.com/2019/01/terminus-union-station-gold-drew-people.html). Here, the road bed is supported by cables attached to one or more masts. These two masts are curved outward to counteract the tendency of the weight they're carrying to pull them together. They're also springy (remember the old saying, a flexible tree doesn't break in the wind"), so you might have a little more bounce in your step as you cross the South Platte River pedestrian bridge.

Millennium Bridge from the South Platte River bridge.

Highlands pedestrian bridge from the South Platte River bridge.

All three bridges are in line and visible from each other.

This striking building, at the edge of downtown Denver, is a condominium called "the Riverfront Tower". It was built in 2002 and if you want to live there, be ready to shell out the $$$, because it's right in the middle of everything. At this writing, space goes for over $700 per square foot per month. You can sit in Commons Park and gaze at it for free. (I also like to watch humans and dogs play catch there.)

This hike (and the W Line) ended at Union Station light rail pavilion. The Millennium Bridge is just to the west (trains pass under it as they pull into the station). The big concrete barrels shown in the photograph above are works of art but, primarily, they are the ventilation shafts for Union Station's underground bus terminal. 

Union Station sits directly on the 105th meridian west. It is one of 24 meridians on which time zones are based. Running north and south, the meridians are imaginary lines of longitude used to describe positions and time zones on the globe. This one is seven hours west of the prime meridian. That means that, when it's noon at Union Station, it's 7:00 pm in Greenwich, England.

How does the topography of your area alter your weather. If it's hilly or mountainous, it might impede winds and air masses as they move across. If you live on the plains, they may crash through with impunity.

If you pay attention, the more you walk in an area, the more you become aware of migration patterns of animals. Have you noticed that habits of animals in your area have shifted? Are new species appearing or old ones disappearing?

Are there any places near you where two streams join? Is there a delta there? If so, what does it look like? Is the water in the streams different colors? Do they mix immediately or can you see the different colored waters further downstream as though there are two streams flowing down the same stream bed?

Bridges are cool! There's likely one near you. Visit it and see if you can tell how the road bed is supported. How does the force from that  weight flow from the road bed to the ground. Most energy, to be useful, has to flow from a source to a sink. For instance, in an electrical circuit, electrical force is produced by a battery or generator, some of the force is lost to heat in a load, and the rest travels into a ground. In a microscope, light is reflected from a small object, magnified by lenses, and collected by your eyes' retinas. If most of the force of a road's weight was not directed through a bridge's structure into the ground, it would strain the bridge's structural members and eventually break them.

Stories of the falls

Nope. The Brad Pitt movie is "Legends of the Fall" not "Stories of the Falls.". This blog is a follow up to my last blog about falling down. I'll be recounting a few of my more spectacular crashes and talk about what I did wrong and what I did right.

And I'll start with the one I illustrated last time.

This one was strange in that I had no sensation of falling. In other words, I was stepping up onto pavement and then I was face down on concrete with no feeling of anything between. That's why I'm pretty sure my feet got tangled up. I had recently bought a pair of walking shoes and, although they were very comfortable, the heels flared widely and tended to catch on things, including each other.

                      The very place

I was about to step up onto the concrete island when I suddenly found myself face down on it. My face had that sting that signals deep damage. My first thought was, "I've broken my cheek bone." After a couple of loooong seconds, the sting subsided and I decided that my face was not, in fact, broken. I lay there and went over the checklist.

Am I dizzy? No.

Has my vision changed? Yes, but it's because my glasses have been gouged.

My spine...any loss of feeling or movement? Nope.

Fingers, arms, toes, legs. All wiggle like they're supposed to, but it feels like I scraped my right knee. Hmmm, feels like my palms are scuffed, too. I must have tried to catch myself.

My torso...ugh, I might have broke a rib...or at least dislocated it. It's the same one I injured about 27 years ago. That's going to give me trouble.

It seemed okay to move...carefully, so I rolled slowly to my left side and, then, sat up cross legged on the concrete island...then stopped. 

By that time, two men had pulled over and were out of their vehicles. They made all the standard warnings, "Don't move. Take your time. Are you okay?"

I was bleeding from my face so one of the guys produced a towel and some medicated wipes. I assured them that there was no serious damage, thanked them profusely for stopping and helping (I want to encourage neighborly behavior whenever I can,) and told them that I was going to sit there for another minute and recuperate. 

The whole thing might have taken ten minutes. Then I got up, brushed myself off, and walked to the shops I was headed for in the first place.

This was a strange fall since I had no sensation of falling. It taught me that my new, comfortable walking shoes had a dark and dangerous side. I didn't throw them away, but I did change my gait slightly and haven't had any problems with them since then. One more incident and they would have gone into the trash. Your shoes definitely shouldn't be a walking hazard!

Since I didn't realize that I was falling until I was already down, I couldn't choose my "method of decent" so my part in the drama started with my checklist. There were no obvious hazards around. I was on the sidewalk, not in the street, so I had some time to evaluate my situation. I lay on my face until I was fairly sure I wouldn't do more damage by moving.

That rib worried me so I moved slowly, paying attention to it and my joints as I sat up. Then I stopped again. I checked myself again and rested. There were two good Samaritans there so I accepted their help and complimented their citizenship.

By the time I stood up, yes, I was hurting some, but I knew I could get on with my life without doing anything more extreme (calling an ambulance, yelling for help, fighting off a cougar.)

Over the next few days, I did my regular household chores but generally took it easy. In three days, I could resume my regular schedule, but I added the rib to my collection of "sports injuries".

As a kid, I was very active, so I kept scabs on my hands, elbows, and knees. That extended into the rest of my life. Working offshore on a lay barge as a welder helper, I found myself on one side of an empty pipe conveyor that I wanted to be on the other side of. They stored junk between the rollers and so, instead of taking the time to just walk around (we were down for an approaching storm), I decided to go across and started calculating my path...up on my side, over to that big piece of sheet metal, over to that box, up on the other side, voilá!

The sheet metal had grease on it.

Why is it the first reaction of people after a fall to look around to see if anyone noticed?

The Southeast Howl, oh, I guess spring of 2003, I walked the mile and a half to the showers with a couple of the other Howlers. It had been a rainy March and the wide trail they called a "service road" was all mud. We got to the ranger station pretty late at night without incident, showered, and started back.

At one place, the whole trail was a mud puddle with a thin shoulder of mud. My companions got across but half way, the shoulder gave out under me and I went over. Twisting to the side, I spread out so that I could get as much traction on the slope as possible and maybe I could catch on something with my outstretched arms.

But there was no slope. There was nothing under me and I ended up hanging off the side of the bank by my arms. It was so quick that, to my friends, it seemed that I had just disappeared. They heard me fall but there I wasn't. When they called to me, I didn't want them to try pulling me up and all of us going...somewhere, so I grunted, "I'm okay. I can climb up."

Of course, the fall sorta made my shower moot. 

I wasn't injured. I could have been...badly. The next day by light I looked over where I fell. The creek was swollen from the rains and was crashing through a lot of big boulders and, sure enough, it was a vertical drop to the creek.

My twist to the side and extending my arms is what saved me. I was already in form to catch myself.

I had integrated most of the tips from the last blog as motor memory. A couple of years before, I was hiking with a friend from Highlands, North Carolina to Franklin. It's a breathtaking hike. The first ten miles, the Cullasaja River crashes over one fall after another and then it blasts out over the 200 foot Cullasaja Falls, and the river settles into a beautiful, peaceful valley that looks just like a post card from the Swiss Alps.

Just before the river goes over that last ledge, it goes through a meat grinder. The broad stream flows into a narrow slot between two rock walls. I wanted a photo of that and there was a rock face on the mountain between the road and the stream that I had to traverse. I usually crabwalk down those. A crabwalk is a flipped crawl, moving on hands and feet facing up. That gives you four points of contact with the ground but you can see where you're going better.

About halfway down, I hit a slick spot and started sliding. I came down quickly on my back to get more friction, which stopped me from sliding about two feet from the edge.

No longer in danger, I scooted over to a better vantage point and took the picture.

Had I panicked, I probably wouldn't be here today. But had I been paying more attention, I would have seen the slick spot and I wouldn't have been in that predicament.

My last fall was embarrassingly funny. Well, I can laugh now.

I was rolling our garbage bin from the patio out to the curb. It was particularly heavy that night, and top heavy at that. It normally resides on our patio so I have to roll it down three steps into and through the garage, down the driveway to park it on the curb in front of the house.

This night, I rolled it down two of the steps,and when I let it down off the last step, that was a little too far...we all went down. Pulling back on the handle and putting my weight against the top of the garbage bin slowed our decent and saved me from some serious injury.

Unfortunately, pulling back on the handle also ensured that my fingers on both hands were between the handle and a step with my upper body weight on top. I was firmly pinned and pushing myself up just shifted my weight onto my fingers, which were already being crushed.

My strategy? Growl, snarl, make a lot of noise.

I couldn't lift myself straight up off my fingers but I decided that I could lay to the side between the garbage bin and the steps. That got most of the weight off my hands and, by the time the others in the house heard my racket and came to check, I had my fingers free and was crammed into the space on the steps.

They knew not to move anything before I finished my damage check. Afterwards, Coyote pulled the garbage bin off me and Fox got it on down to the street. I ended up with a minor cut on one knee and no broken fingers. There was some crushing of the soft tissues. I'll be feeling that for awhile.

So, what did I do wrong? I was very tired that night and I thought I could manage the weight of the heavy garbage bin down all three steps but the last one pulled our centers of gravity too far apart. We became a class 2 lever with no force pulling the arms together.

What did I do right? First, I knew that I was going down so I had time to prepare for the impact. I had also played around with levers enough to know how they work. Who says physics labs aren't useful?

I knew that the further the force pulling  arms of the lever together was from the pivot, the slower they would slide apart and the slower I would fall. I could only pull as hard as my strength allowed, so I shifted my weight from the handle of the bin up to the lid, as high on the bin as I could.

Every fall is a survival situation. It's unexpected and will cause some injury, if only a shock to the system. In more extreme cases, it can result in death. The goal of the person falling is to minimize injury.

The Teaching Company has a course presented by professor Nancy Zarse entitled Survival Mentality: The Psychology of Staying Alive. It won't give you what you need to survive critical events....that also requires practice, but it will tell you what you need.

There are 12 chapters and I can illustrate them with my falls.

Chapter 2 is about locus of control. A person with an external locus of control feels that the world happens to them. A person with an internal locus of control feels that they happen to the world. There will be a day when the world overwhelms me, but there will only be one and until then, I have plenty of control to get through any emergency I have to face. In a fall and after, I keep track of what's happening, what resources I have, and how to use them to my benefit.

Instincts: my body is equipped to deal with emergencies. My senses of balance and location of body parts (including my center of gravity) are powerful tools and I pay attention to them.

Intuitions are learned. I'm a lifelong learner and have a broad base of knowledge. I never know when an obscure fact might come in handy, for instance, how a class 2 lever works, so I enjoy learning as much as I can about as much as I can. And I train my body to move in emergencies and to sustain injuries. The endurance hikes I've written about push me to my limits so I can learn to manage myself at my limits. In an emergency, you have to think but you don't usually have time to deliberate. Most of what you do needs to be ingrained behavior, programmed through prior practice.

Surviving a critical event requires the ability to manage emotions under pressure. Emotions happen. You can't stop them but you can control them. When something catches you by surprise, your startle reflex causes you to pull in to yourself to present a smaller target. That is usually the exact opposite of how you should handle a fall. When I fell off the bank of Sauty Creek, my outstretched arms caught on the bank. Fear paralyzes. In an emergency, you need to monitor, evaluate, think constantly. You can only do that by compartmentalizing your emotions so that they don't interfere with your reasoning.

A lot of everyday experience prepares you for emergencies. If you pay attention to your body as you walk down the street, you will develop a sense of body position, what is termed "proprioception". If you focus on your smartphone, you won't...at least, you won't develop that conscious sense of how your body moves in different situations 

In a fall, you don't have to just manage your own body, you have to be aware of what's going on around you. Situational awareness is important in any critical event, but you have to develop the habit of taking stock of what's going on around you.

A fall happens quickly, but the follow-up might be long and grueling. A survival situation often requires perseverance under pressure. When I fell at Sauty Creek, I had to hang there a minute to figure out why there was nothing under me. I also had to understand the danger to two other persons. I determined that I could probably climb to safety without putting them in danger so I told them that I was okay (something I was not absolutely sure of!). 

When I fell with my garbage bin, I was trapped. I could have done a lot more damage to my hands but I calmed down and realized that I didn't have to pull my fingers straight out from under the handle that was pinning them. I could shift my weight to the side and then free them. 

Certain mental qualities act as protective factors to help you in the face of danger. Confidence is a big one. I'm currently 69 years old and I have gotten out of a lot of scrapes. Some could have cost me my life. But with each one, my feeling that I can survive any emergency increases.

Not only do we have to live through emergencies but we also have to heal and to heal well required physical health, perseverance, and, just as important, a positive outlook.

The last factor of survival discussed by Ms. Zarse is community. I might be able to drag myself out of the wilderness after horrific injury like Hugh Glass sustained and was left for dead as portrayed in the movie The Revenant but I don't know because every injury I've had, in town or out, someone has come to my aid. I didn't always need them, but I never let them know that. Community is important to prepare for emergencies, to survive emergencies, and to heal after emergencies.

If it's falls, car crashes, or any other emergencies, great or small, learn through them. They will happen sooner or later, and the more adventurous you are the more frequent they will be. If you have to put up with them anyway, collect all the benefit you can. Be aware, learn, and remember.