Custom Search     Rito Alto Lake     Ben going to Rito Alto since 69. About 45 min up the trail there is an old part of a cabin. It is Pete's cabin, and old sheepherder from the early 1900's. About an hour or more is a tree that says ''BEAR TRAP.'' Go back 30 feet, look down and you see a log structure. A bear was getting Pete's sheep, my grandfather and others, and Pete build the trap to get the bear, and they did. The trap is still there in good shape. Up above the lake is a grave, but the bones     were stolen probably by a med student in 1984. 'It was the bones of Vance, a hermit who lived in Denny gulch one little to the enough. He had won $200 in a poker game, put money in his boot, took his two horses and two dogs to cross from Westcliff to the west side, was ambushed about a mile or less above Rito Alto and buried, or covered with stones There is a marker on a flat rock by his grave. For years his rifle was there with him, one of his dogs laid down with him and dies with him, his horse came out of the canyon in the spring so slim the saddle was hanging under his belly. Check it out. Says James R. Taylor            Map Detailed Map Weather Local weather forecast