Letter: Old Snowmass residents clean up neighborhood roads

On Sunday, the sunny, morning temperatures were perfect for a gathering of friends and neighbors from the Snowmass-Capitol Creek Caucus to launch on an ambitious outing to collect the trash from roadsides in our area. A hardy group of 30 or so ranging in age from 8 to 70 donned vests and work gloves to bag a rich collection of trash that accumulated in ditches and bushes along Snowmass Creek and Capitol Creek roads. By 9 a.m., the search was on for Best of Trash, Most Useful Trash, Most Toxic Trash and Most Traveled Trash.

Surely the most traveled was the head of a Ducky Derby duck that made it all the way down the Roaring Fork and then up a bit of Snowmass Creek. The most useful might have been a collection of trailer lights or a patio table. As for toxic — let’s not go there.

Certainly one of the biggest surprises was a veritable dump of discarded beer bottles strewn down steep, rose-covered (think stickers) banks along Snowmass Creek Road. But this was no match for Luke and Jonah Tonare, who slid and scrambled up and down all morning to help haul hundreds of bottles to their final resting place in recycling.

On behalf of the Snowmass-Capitol Creek Caucus, we salute Luke and Jonah, several friends from the Aspen Camp of the Deaf and our other great neighbors who worked together Sunday! And for any of you beer drinkers out there, we hope you get familiar with the local recycling programs!

Chelsea Brundige

Old Snowmass