High Points: Dusty days

I came out of the Whole Foods market in Willits the other day and found a message on my car. Not a note on the windshield stuck under the wiper but rather an actual message from a friend written in the dust on the rear window. “CALL ME!” it read and included a full 10-digit phone number, which I recognized, and that’s how I knew who it was from.

I chuckled at the irony that in these days where we have so many ways of connecting with people digitally that my friend thought a dirty message created with an equally dirty finger was the best way to reach me. She surely did get my attention.

I guess the point is not so much about communication devices but is more about just how filthy my car was. I had just gotten it washed at the Basalt Store off Highway 82, as is my habit on Sunday mornings. And now, three days later, it was dusty enough that people could write books on the back if they were so inclined.

Then it hit me: Watson Divide. I had gone into Aspen that morning from my home in Old Snowmass and had taken the shortcut over the “Divide,” as locals call the dirt road that runs between Snowmass Creek Road and Highway 82. I remember looking in my rearview mirror at the plume of dust that trailed my Jeep as I crested the hill and headed towards the main drag. I was glad there was no one behind me to eat the dust I was kicking up, and I was glad-er still that there was no one in front of me to feed me their dust.

We had a meagre mud season in these parts this year, but we are making up for it in the dust season that has come part and parcel with the dry weather. Even roads that have been coated with magnesium chloride are spitting dust this year.

Which brings me back to the Divide. Each year the road is closed for a week or so while Pitkin County Bridge and Road comes in to fill the potholes, smooth out washboards and apply a dust deterrent, usually mag chloride, to the dirt road. But this year they did something a little different.

According to an article in this here paper by River Stingray that ran in April, shortly before this year’s road closure, the folks at Road and Bridge opted out of using the traditional magnesium chloride and turned to a “new non-toxic and non-corrosive product” called Dustpods.

Stingray wrote, “Dustpods is a polymer-based product that calls itself ‘the future of road stabilization.’ According to the product’s website, Dustpods creates a tight bond between aggregate and soil particles and makes the surface more durable and resistant to environmental changes.”

Well, lemme tell you, “the future of road stabilization” is in trouble if the experience of Watson Divide is to be trusted. Within days of the end of the week-long closure, the washboards were back with a vengeance, and the dust was flying like never before. It doesn’t help that Watson Divide is a rural road designed to accommodate maybe 100 car trips per day and that in reality gets triple that on a busy day.

I’m not doggin’ Road and Bridge, I love those guys and the work that they do. But I am saying this Dustpods stuff did not work on Watson Divide.

If you agree with me, please leave a message on my rear window.