The Sleeping Giant

Sleeping Giant - May 2020

​If you look to the Northwest of Steamboat Springs you will see the graceful slopes of Elk Mountain, better known as Sleeping Giant.

I was introduced to Sleeping Giant during my first season here in 1993. Back then the skis were long and straight, most visitors stayed off the mountain on powder days, and we were riding the Silver Bullet Gondola up to mid-mountain. On one of those rides a fellow passenger pointed out that mountain to the west, slightly north as Sleeping Giant. I did not see the Giant. Like the famous Old Woman/Young Woman Perception Illustration (also known as “My Wife and My Mother-in-Law”), my brain was not able to perceive it. Then, as the various features were pointed out, I did see the Giant, and have seen nothing else ever since. I see the Giant lying on his side, knees pulled partly towards his chest, one arm flung out to the east, head turned to the west, his lingering gaze toward the setting sun. 

Seeing Sleeping Giant never fails to bring me a sense of peace. On my many evening Covid walks, I would climb the CMC (Colorado Mountain College) campus hill and view Sleeping Giant. The sunset symphony in the sky behind the Giant was some nights soft and quiet pinks, oranges and golds, other nights it was a turbulent throw-down of charcoal and fuschia, and my emotions at the time were equally varied. But the Sleeping Giant was a stable presence - solid and dependable. Hopeful. 

There are several tales (Steamboat Pilot & Today article: Legend Has It…) about how the Giant came to be. One is credited to Charlotte Perry, who, along with Portia Mansfield, founded Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School and Camp, the oldest continuously operating performing arts school in the United States. The story Perry told (read it here: Steamboat Chamber: The Legend of the Sleeping Giant) is about a giant who protected the Ute people who lived in the Yampa Valley. The giant could remain as long as he did no harm to any living creature. When an evil ogre came to the valley and the giant did away with him in order to protect the valley and its inhabitants, the giant was put to sleep and became the Sleeping Giant. 

Interestingly, rumor has it that the Ute people who were indigenous to the Yampa Valley, were worried as settlers moved into the area. The Utes gathered all the rattlesnakes from the valley and laid them around the base of Sleeping Giant to protect his sacred slumber.