Slide-rock Bolter

The greatest hazard of the Colorado mountains is not avalanches or bears, but rather the Slide-rock Bolter. This is a colossal creature the size of a whale. Its enormous mouth, something like that of a sculpin, goes behind its small eyes and ears, and drools copious amounts of thin grease from the corners. The flipper-tail is separated into grappling hooks, which allow the slide-rock bolter to cling to the top of a ridge or mountain.

Slide-rock bolters live where the slopes are steeper than 45°. They can wait for days until prey comes within reach – typically a clueless animal such as a tourist. When a slide-rock bolter spots a tourist, it releases its hook-tail and slides down the slope, lubricated by its grease secretion. It slides like a nightmarish toboggan, bulldozing trees and obstacles, snapping up the tourist, and, carried by momentum, traveling back up to the top of another slope. There it sinks its hooks in and goes back to waiting.

Guides have become increasingly reticent about leading treks through bolter country, as entire groups of tourists can be lost to the behemoths. Slide-rock bolters can be lured away with appropriate tourist decoys – scarecrows with Norfolk jackets, knee breeches, and Colorado guidebooks. One ranger near Ophir Peaks rigged such a tourist decoy with powder and blasting caps, luring in the bolter at Lizzard Head. The detonation scattered enough bolter flesh to feed local vultures for the rest of the season.