The Forest Service had said no new roads could be built on such terrain, but the removal of lifts requires lots of equipment, rigging and torches. After scratching his head about the program, Keil Thompson, president of Thompson Lift Construction Company, decided horses were the only way to move gear to those old towers.
Larry Parker, a Steamboat Springs resident, uses Belgian draft horses to take tourists for rides around town on sleds and an old stage coach. Business was slow in July and two of his horses, Lucy and Patty, weren’t busy, so he hired them out for the job.
The horses were taken to the top of the mountain in a trailer, loaded with gear and then led down to the 56 lift tower sites over bumpy, steep and treacherous terrain every day for six days. Besides rigging, they carried heavy oxygen and acetylene tanks with fuel for cutting the towers into sections that could be lifted out by helicopter. Three small tabs were left to hold the towers in place until the helicopter arrived, when they would be cut off with torches.
All that seemed simple, but the next step could be tricky. The crew worried that the horses would balk or become jumpy when the noisy helicopters arrived. The workers still needed torches and fuel to cut the tabs and release the tower sections as rigging was being attached to the copter cable.
But Lucy and Patty were up to the job. “The noise and commotion didn’t bother them a bit,” said Keil Thompson. “In fact, they seemed bored by the whole thing.”
Thompson credits their patience and forbearance to the years that Lucy and Patty spent in the company of tourists. After all, they had learned to stay calm despite petting, giggling and traffic.
