COLLBRAN – From the rickety, old picnic table in Melvin “Slug” Hawkins’ front yard, the May 25 mudslide that roared onto his family’s ranch and buried his son and two other men a month ago looks like a giant scab on the nearby lush green hills.
The Hawkinses’ stewardship goes back to the 1860s, when ancestors settled in the Plateau Valley near a ranch that now covers 960 acres. Half of the 2.8-mile-long slide is on their land. The other half is on U.S. Forest Service ground where the family has long run cattle, hunted and recreated, particularly on a high shale shelf that was a landmark for their ranch before the slide scoured it away.
Their hunting camp was there. It was where they posed for family portraits. It was a place for scattering the ashes of family members.
He was feeding his horses early that morning when he heard a loud “Ssshhhwooosssshhh,” which he thought was a release from a nearby gas well. He couldn’t see up the mountain because of the rain and clouds.
He went to irrigate, and when he came back about four hours later, he could see through a break in the clouds that something didn’t look right. Two neighbors came to his place about that time to say their irrigation water had stopped, so the three went on four-wheelers to the bottom of the Forest Service boundary and walked up from the end of the trail.
Through the trees, they could see a slide moving their way very slowly. They couldn’t see how large it was. They thought it was one of many slides that tumble from the steep sides of the Grand Mesa.
When he got back home, Hawkins called his son Wes, who was in charge of the irrigation system for the area. Wes Hawkins called a friend, Clancey Nichols, who worked for the Mesa County Road and Bridge Department and knew that area as well as the Hawkinses. Clancey’s 22-year-old son, Danny, a newly minted geologist, opted to come along.
Slug Hawkins said those three left on a four-wheeler and in a pickup truck about 3:30 p.m., headed for a ridge where they would be able to see what was sliding below that ridge. Hawkins stayed home, peering up through the clouds every now and then to see whether he could spot them.
He was in the house watching TV when the massive slide let loose. He didn’t hear it. He saw it through a parting in the clouds.
He could see where it had slopped over the ridge where his son and the other two men had been. He took off and hiked the three-quarters of a mile up to the ridge.
“I got up there, and it was like looking at the moon,” he said. “I knew it was over for them, but I couldn’t admit it.”
Search-and-rescue crews swarmed the area. No sign of the men or their vehicles has been found even though Hawkins has continued to walk the fringes of the slide where he knows the men are buried.
He will continue to sit at his picnic table and discuss and ponder a slide that is now both a matter of scientific wonder and a grave site.
“Wes played up there as a kid. I never worried about him,” he said. “I know he is at home there.”
