Click on photo to climb higher to the snowfields which feed the Grand Ditch.
The Grand Ditch is just high enough to intercept a great many streams and
carry water northward towards Thunder Mountain and over the Continental Divide
at La Poudre Pass. It then flows into Long Draw Reservoir and then augments Cache
la Poudre River as its cascades towards the Great Plains near Fort Collins, Colorado.
The Grand Ditch prevents 40,000 acre feet of water from entering the Colorado River
Valley below it. It descends just 125' from its beginning at the north face of Bowen
Mountain to La Poudre Pass 14 miles away. The last mile to its beginning is particularly
enjoyable. As the water silently flows towards you, the valley floor of Baker Gulch rises
to meet you, giving the impression that you are walking both downhill and upstream.
It's a delightful M.C. Escher antigravity experience with Grand Views in every direction!

I have heard that the ditch was hand dug by Chinese laborers, but Historian Ferrel Atkins
says the laborers were Japanese and Mexican. I think the photo above shows the remains
of one of their ovens for baking their bread. (I'll check this.) Portions of the Ditch were
dug as early as 1890. The difficult Mosquito Creek section shown in the previous photo
was completed in 1911. Power machinery was used to construct the final 6 miles of the
ditch in the 1930's in a rush to claim the water rights. If this strip could somehow have been
completed by hand, the large and unsightly gash across Baker Mountain could have been
minimized. When you look back from the vantage of our modern era of hydraulic machinery,
precision explosives and laser scopes, the aqueduct these "little men" built by hand looks
like the work of giants.* From their perilous ledge they must have experienced thousands
of storms crashing all around them. They knew nature's fury and glory. At times their blasting
and avalanching blended with the thundering sky and these "giants" were "little gods".

* The prehistoric notion of giants partly comes from anemic generations
forgetting their roots. If the Chinese didn't have their historic records,
who would believe that their famous wall was not built by giants. Similarly
for other wonders of the world ... The National Park Service has let the
structure above fall into disrepair. Together with the Never Summer Ranch,
it is one of the few historic structures remaining in the Grand County portion of
the Park. During the 1960's the Park's policy was to erase history. Today and
too late, their policy is changed. Today, with trail maintenance funds near zero,
it is hard to imagine how the Park's many trails were ever built ...

Over the hills and faraway, in a time of long past, there were giants!

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