Springtime in the Rockies happens over the course of several months because of the huge elevation differences between Denver at 5000 ft, and the peaks themselves from 12,000 to 14,000 ft. Denver starts warming up in early April but it takes several more months to melt most of the snow in the mountains. Spring was definitely in the air in Denver because it was already late May. Warm weather had finally reached the mountain valleys, turning everything green again from winter’s white and gray. Even the higher peaks were showing signs of spring.
The urge to go camping was strong. I took off work a little early one Friday so I could drive downtown to purchase a few more essential items. This was decades before either the internet or Amazon existed so you actually had to go to a store to buy something or do mail order from a catalog and wait two weeks. I was excited because I finally had just about everything I needed to go camping, a good tent, a warm synthetic sleeping bag, a foam pad, a nice cook set, and I had just picked up this new Coleman gas stove. I was especially pleased with myself because I thought I had finally acquired a decent lightweight stove for backpacking.
This new small Coleman stove I bought was a little one burner model that seemed to be a miniature version of the big and heavy, but reliable green two burner Coleman camp stoves we had used as kids. I had read the instructions that came with the stove and fired it up once in the parking lot behind our apartments but hadn’t used it camping yet.
When I was in middle school, my best friend Leland and I would pore over the latest REI catalog at lunchtime, marveling at the big puffy jackets, the ice axes, and drool over the tiny little stoves for mountaineering. I found later that those old stoves from the 60’s were poor performers.
I got back home late after completing all my shopping and while having a couple beers with some friends, I told them about my plans to go camping for the weekend. My friend Doug Glas said he would like to come along but he had to work half a day on Saturday. He offered to help pay for gas so I decided to wait for him and as a result we didn’t get out of town till late afternoon.
Mt. Blue Sky and the gate at Summit Lake
The Mt. Evans (recently renamed to Mt. Blue Sky) Road has the distinction of being the highest paved automobile road in the U.S., coming within 150 ft of the summit, at 14,265 ft. The road turns off from the highway at Echo Lake, elev. 10,300 ft and twists and turns up the side of a mountain for 14 miles total, going above timberline after just a few turns, 9 miles to Summit Lake at 12,600 ft, and then another 5 miles up to the top. The road had just been recently plowed to Summit Lake so we knew we couldn’t drive all the way to the top. Summit Lake itself was still frozen solid and the parking lot had not been plowed out yet so we just parked alongside the road. It didn’t matter much because we were the only ones there.
The road to the summit of Mt. Blue Sky
My plan was to just hike up the road maybe a mile or so, past the gate and the ‘Road Closed’ sign and set up camp just around the first corner so we wouldn’t be seen from Summit Lake and also somewhere with an eastern view so we could watch the sunrise in the morning. Most of the snow on the east facing slope had already melted and we just needed to find a reasonably level spot for the tent before it got too dark. The wind was blowing pretty hard downslope, maybe 25 mph, because there might have been some weather blowing in. Normally, cooler air sinks to the valleys in the evening too, so we set the back of the tent to the wind and the tent door was facing the valley to the east. Perfect! We were probably 1000 ft above timberline so we had plenty of rocks to anchor the corners of the tent to.
Good thing we anchored the tent down well. The wind blew all night but sometime overnight the wind changed direction, so by the next morning at daybreak the wind was blowing upslope now, even harder than the night before, probably about 35 mph. The air temperature was maybe 35 deg F but with the windchill, it probably felt like 10 deg F and it was definitely too windy to try getting the stove to work outside.
The wind was buffeting the tent mercilessly. We had the tent door unzipped part way and we were sitting in the front of the tent watching the sunrise for a little while through this round cooking vent near the top edge of the vestibule. My friend says, “If that’s a cooking vent we’re looking through, that must mean it’s ok to use the stove in here. That seemed logical, it was cold outside and we both wanted coffee so I agreed with him and I pumped up the stove to get it started.
Camping in the snow above treeline, Grays and Torreys Peak in the background
The stove might have been partially clogged or something because we were only getting these little tiny flames. I fiddled with the red lever on the side of the stove, not really knowing what I was doing. I decided the most likely cause was the stove wasn’t pumped up enough and I really pumped the hell out of it and re-lit it.
Big mistake. I’m sitting there in this cramped little 2 man tent vestibule with the stove between my knees and the water just starting to get hot when I noticed that while the stove was burning, there was liquid, unburnt fuel running down the side of the stove onto the ground. I realized instantly that something was dreadfully wrong and quickly turned off the stove.
Too late!
The Coleman fuel on the ground around the stove ignited with a poof and the yellow flames kissed the nylon fabric of the vestibule in front of me and it just disappeared. In that instant I realized that the stove had also somehow sprayed gas on my right leg and now my pant leg was on fire too. I dove forward in a somersault, over the stove and cooking pot, going out where the vestibule had been only one second ago.
“Stop, Drop, and Roll!” The drill you learn in grade school really does work if your clothes are on fire.
Time seemed to go into slow motion in those few seconds of excitement. By the time I rolled over once, stood up and looked back uphill at the tent, I was amazed to see that the entire tent was gone! The aluminum pole A-frame of the tent was still there but there was no tent to be seen. There were just a few small flames licking around the edges of where the tent had stood. I will never forget the image of Doug still sitting there in the front of the tent, legs crossed, with a dazed, confused look on his face. I reached inside through where a tent wall had stood a second ago, grabbed my sleeping bag and threw it to the side and helped Doug collect his stuff.
That little manufacturer’s tag on your tent that says the coated nylon fabric is flammable and will burn is absolutely true but I don’t think anyone would have guessed just how quickly it could happen.
I had placed a reflective tarp inside the tent before putting our foam pads and sleeping bags down and after the fire the tarp was melted around the edges but it only had a few burn holes, so after packing up our sleeping bags and anything else we could salvage, I rolled up the remaining floor of the tent with my foam pad, some clothing items and all the burnt nylon remnants of the tent into this big, silver turd, secured it with some paracord guy lines and hoisted it onto the top of my pack so that we left absolutely no trace of our misadventure behind. There was still no one else at Summit Lake or on the road coming up so nobody else witnessed what had happened. We drove back down the mountain and all the way back into Denver in total silence, hardly believing what had just happened.
Doug and I were both wearing stocking caps that morning or the results might have been much more severe. Doug lost about half of his moustache and the flash fire singed his eyelashes and burned away some hair at the side of his face that wasn’t covered by his beanie. I had a slight first degree burn on my right hand and the right side of my face and singed eyelashes as well but my hair was shorter and tucked under my hat better.
A couple weeks later Doug told me that he heard me say, “Shit!” and saw me dive forward in a somersault without understanding why. He said he blinked and as he did that and before his brain could process what was actually happening, the tent went up in flames and was gone, like in the time it takes to snap your fingers.
I bought another tent just like the one that burnt with my next paycheck but I haven’t cooked in a tent since that fateful morning. I also bought a better stove the very next week and sold the old one to a guy at work. I warned him about the leaking fuel issue but he didn’t seem concerned about it.
My buddy Tim Stone and my replacement tent a couple years later, cooking outside
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