MINI TOUR: Four Diamonds in the rough

By Tom Hess

One of Colorado’s worst fires ever, the 2002 Hayman inferno, torched timber and more than a hundred homes across 138,000 acres in four counties, but left 400 acres untouched in the middle of Pike National Forest. Today, that acreage thrives with a cowboy way of life that takes guests on horseback across green meadows and into a thicket of charcoal-grey matchsticks, some still standing, others fallen, and the isolated aspen groves that will one day replace them.

I’m touring the land around Lost Valley, which seems hours away from Denver and Colorado Springs but is a relatively short drive from either city. The ranch is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, but despite living near the resort since its seventh year, I just heard of it for the first time.

Lost Valley Ranch’s website lists a Sedalia address, where there's a post office, but the AAA TourBook offers a paragraph about the ranch under Deckers, which is closer. Lost Valley is a Four Diamond AAA-rated property, displaying that unique distinction at the top of its website, at the gateway arch, and in the lobby.

On our way to the ranch from Colorado Springs, traveling U.S. 24 through Manitou Springs, we’re in the vicinity of AAA-rated dining—the Three Diamond rated Historic Onaledge, the Four Diamond Cliff House, and the Three Diamond Briarhurst Manor. From the Denver direction, there’s the Three Diamond Gabriel’s in Sedalia. At Lost Valley, our fine dining will be served with views of a very different landscape.

From a distance, the seemingly lifeless rock and ruin that surrounds the ranch is both grim and majestic. The washboard Forest Service road leading to the ranch forces me to slow down, allowing time to see small pines that, for future generations, will grow into a mighty forest.

After checking into our cabin named “Diamond Lil,” my wife and I head to the corral and join our rides, me aboard a luminescent appaloosa named Remington, and Sues on a “flea-bitten gray” named Kiddo. Guided by self-described “bossy Brit” Jackie James, we help guide a small herd of fattened yearling beef into a meadow, yelping Lost Valley's signature call, “OOOO-aaah” to get them moving. Then we take Nature Trail, a 1.1-mile ride through an aspen grove, bright yellow on this autumn day, and climb into the burn zone above the ranch. For the first time, we notice that the fire stopped at the ranch’s property line, marked by a wire fence along the trail.

Sues and Tom Hess at the summit of Table Rock.

Jackie is close friends with ranch owners Karen and Bob Foster, and is caring for their six dogs, all of them rescued, and five on medications. Bob is a graduate of Wheaton College, the Chicagoland alma mater of Billy Graham. It's Bob's contacts with “Wheaties” (Wheaton grads) that draw people like Don Westra, an obstetrician from Morganton, N.C., who's done medical missionary work in Zimbabwe, Venezuela and Peru.

We had a good night’s sleep in Diamond Lil, the bedroom outfitted with cowboy boot-themed drapes and bedspread, and toiletries arranged in a cowboy hat. After a made-to-order breakfast (scrambled eggs, sausage, hash browns, and a pumpkin scone), we ride Remy and Kiddo once again, with Jackie leading us atop Table Rock. At the summit, Jackie wants to be certain that we see “The Angel of Lost Valley,” a rock that closely resembles a winged cherub overlooking the ranch from 8,000 feet. For Jackie and many others on the Lost Valley staff, the rock is symbolic of divine intervention during the Hayman fire.

The fire destroyed 133 homes, but none of the ranch’s many structures—the guest cabins, the Goose Creek Trading Post, various barns and the dining hall. The dining hall is where families who’ve visited during the summer season leave their mark—a brand they design that’s burned into the hall’s wood paneling.

Westra pointed to his brand, two horseshoes joined to form a W, and the 10 branded check marks next to it, each one representing the summers he and his oldest boys have spent at Lost Valley. An Indiana family has 41 checks next to its brand, and there’s at least one celebrity on the wall—a WD brand for Walt Disney, who visited once in the 1960s.

Westra visited the ranch this fall, along with sons Scott, 27, and Jordan, 22, for a “bachelor party.” He’s returned time and again because of the staff—“wholesome,” he says—and because a horse ride in any direction takes him and his boys into “Uncle Sam’s backyard.” Scott and Jordan grew up in Lost Valley, learning how to handle a horse. They vividly remember playing “capture the flag.” Scott later worked at the ranch, cooking Wrangler eggs (a mixture of eggs, breakfast meats and hash browns), and later exporting the recipe to a restaurant in Chicago.

On their first visit to Lost Valley after the fire, Jordan said he felt “complete disillusionment.” But since then, he’s grown to appreciate what the fire revealed, and what it refined. “Now that the Ponderosa pine is gone, you can see the rock formations, and more wildlife,” Jordan said. “The wildflowers and grasses attract wildlife onto the ranch.”

The ranch operates during two seasons¬¬—summer, when it draws a full house of 90+ guests, mostly families—and spring/fall, when couples tend to visit. The ranch closes after Thanksgiving and reopens in March. Summer reservations are limited to no less than one week, Sunday to Sunday. If guests get a little too sore riding horses, there’s a volleyball court, tennis courts, a heated pool, a shooting range and fishing.

Westra says he’ll be back, which is just what Lost Valley Ranch wants to hear. The staff never says goodbye, expecting to see its guests “cross the cattle guard” time and again. “We transform guests into friends, and friends into family,” said Jennifer, a cheerful front-desk clerk from North Carolina.

Now that I know where to find Lost Valley, and having seen it on the back of a horse, I feel a part of the family. And when I left, I didn’t say goodbye. I plan to cross the cattle guard again.

Tom Hess is the editor of EnCompass magazine.