Ranger issues warning to hikers who "bushwack" at Camp Hale National Monument after discovery of practice anti-tank land mine
Earlier this year President Joe Biden visited Camp Hale in Colorado's high country to help introduce it as a national monument with a wonderful outdoor recreation center rich with history surrounding native lands to Indigenous peoples and a U.S. Army 10th Mountain Division training facility. It turns out part of that history is why hiking around the area comes with a warning.
At the end of July, a hiker at the Camp Hale-Continental Divide National Monument area found a box partially buried while milling about. That box was later confirmed to house a M12 practice anti-tank mine.
"We still to this day, decades later, have leftover munitions and unexploded ordinances dispersed throughout the forest. We don't know where all of them ended up," said Leanne Veldhuis, District Ranger for Eagle-Holy Cross Ranger District and White River National Forest.
The hiker did the right thing by following the "3 Rs":
- Recognize (the danger)
- Retreat (without touching anything)
- Report
The hiker called 911 to let the Eagle County Sheriff's Office know and they got in touch with Fort Carson out of Colorado Springs. From there, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers deployed a bomb retrieval unit to safely get it packed up and taken care of.
While there are no records of actual land mines being used at Camp Hale (since it's merely a training facility and teams were not trying to cause real damage to their own troops) a practice version of the anti-tank land mine would have been far less dangerous. But Veldhuis said there is still an explosive charge in there, and it needs to be treated with respect.
"Even though they are designed to not be as dangerous as the real thing would be, you just never know, especially decades later," Veldhuis said, explaining the mine would likely make a noise or puff of smoke to indicate it had "gone off" when something rolled over it so training troops would know.
It's not the first time munitions or unexploded ordinances have been found at Camp Hale. CBS Colorado has put in a request to learn more about which items have been found over the years but just off the top of her head, Veldhuis said she knows this wasn't the first time.
"Sweeps have occurred, I think it was 2003," she said. "Engineers did a kind of 'stand shoulder to shoulder' and walk the site and see if you found anything metal to clean up and they certainly found stuff."
"Certainly not every acre has been covered perfectly."
Still this article is not intended to scare away anyone thinking of spending time out at the scenic mountain landscape. The Forest Service has said the main valley floor has been cleared of dangers like explosives (granted they're still issuing caution from asbestos, even after working to clear it from the ground) and referenced that any actual dangers would exist off trails and roads, away from the main buildings where training would not have occurred.
"If you are going to go off trail and bushwack a little more, there could be stuff out there," Veldhuis said.
RELATED: 10th Mountain Division veterans share history of Camp Hale
