The Mysteries of Blanca Peak, Part I
UFOs and Aliens and Spaceports, oh my!…
It’s time to return to one of the weirdest places in the Western United States—of course, I’m talking about the mysterious San Luis Valley, or “SLV” for short.
In an earlier article we explored the Phantom Horses of the Great Sand Dunes, which represent one of the more ancient and enduring mysteries of this high alpine valley…but they’re hardly the only one. Truth is, there’s a lot to say about the SLV, which is the original ground zero for the whole cattle mutilation phenomenon, among other things, but today I’ll limit myself to talking about one small but very significant part of the valley: Blanca Peak, the loftiest mountain in the SLV.
The truth is, at 14,345 feet, Blanca Peak is one of the loftiest mountains in all of Colorado—and that’s saying something. The Peak itself is merely the highest of a cluster of four summits in a giant mountain rampart known as the Blanca Massif; the other three peaks are Little Bear, Ellingwood Point, and Mt. Lindsey, all of which are over fourteen thousand feet high.
The Blanca Massif is part of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, which snake their way from the northern limit of the SLV all the way down through a serried array of sub-ranges and subsidiary ridges to just south of Santa Fe, New Mexico, where the mighty Rocky Mountains—of which the Sangres are a notable segment—finally peter out.
And there’s certainly something majestic and awe inspiring about Blanca Peak, which looms over the SLV like a grim, rocky sentinel, keeping an eye on the weirdness in the valley below and in the skies above, and just generally brooding until the breaking of the world.
To the Diné, or Navajo, Blanca Peak is Sisnaajiní—“Dawn” or “White Shell Mountain,” the Sacred Mountain of the East, one of the four hallowed peaks that delimit the Dinetah, the world of the Navajo (the others, in case you were wondering, are Mt. Hesperus in the San Juans of Colorado, Mt. Taylor in New Mexico, and Mt. Humphrey in the San Francisco Peaks of Arizona).
More recently, however, the mountain has gained another and perhaps no less important reputation—as a notorious UFO hotspot. Now, it is true that the SLV is an important UFO hotspot in its own right, but Blanca Peak acts more or less like a kind of UFO “sub-hotspot” within the greater valley, which isn’t all that surprising when you consider its impressive prominence and aloof grandeur.
As always when it comes to the otherworldly in the SLV, we can do no better than turn to Christopher O’Brien, the famed UFO researcher and paranormalist who’s made the valley an especial object of study. In his book The Mysterious Valley, O’Brien records several sightings of what in modern jargon would be called a “UAP” (“Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon”) in the area around or above the Blanca Massif. One such sighting occurred on February 24, 1993, at around 10:30 in the morning:
“A thirty-seven-year-old baker, Judy DeBon, and her artist mother were driving south toward Alamosa on this cold February morning to do some shopping. As they approached Mosca, they noted a flash above them and to the east. A silent bell-shaped object, the color of brushed aluminum, flew over their car, headed toward the Blanca Massif. It was clear and still that day and they ‘got a real good look at it.’
‘My mother wouldn’t let me stop to watch it,’ Judy told me later that afternoon. ‘My mother was pretty scared and thought it wasn’t a good idea to stop. I’m sure the people in the car behind us saw it because they did stop. It flew over us about one hundred feet above the road. Since I was driving, I couldn’t watch where it went but it was heading toward Blanca.’”1
Something similar was witnessed near Blanca Peak nearly two years later, on October 26, 1994, at about one in the afternoon:
“A Blanca resident observed what she described as a ‘large silver oval’ hanging for about five minutes in the cloudless sky above Mount Lindsey, just east of Blanca Peak. She claims she has seen the object before in the same location and a third time in 1987 over the sand dunes. It ‘was completely silent’ when it flew out of sight and left no vapor trail.”2
It gets even better. In UFO Mysteries, Curt Sutherly recounts what can only be described as a Close Encounter of the Second Kind in the foothills of Blanca Peak:
“In April 1973, in the mountains of Colorado, several individuals were camping in a cabin at the foot of Mt. Blanca, the tallest peak in the Sangre de Christo [sic] mountain range. The group included a deputy sheriff from Colorado, two men from Texas, and Floyd Murray, a fortean researcher from Folsom, Pennsylvania.
[…]
“According to Murray, the campers—who were there specifically to investigate ongoing UFO and fortean phenomena—were awakened late one night by a horrible screeching, as if someone or something incredibly strong was shredding metal. The noise eventually ceased only to be replaced by a heavy crashing, like the sound of a large animal pounding through the brush.
[…]
“The following morning the members of the expedition left the cabin and began a search of the vicinity. They discovered large tracks leading away through the snow: ‘Three-toed footprints,’ Murray said, ‘like the ones reported at other places where fortean events occur.’ The men followed the tracks for about half a mile through the snow and mud before the trail faded completely in wet ground. Murray said that although the tracks were three-toed, there was absolutely no doubt that they were bipedal—made by an animal walking on two legs. The tracks measured about ten and a half inches long and six inches wide.”3
Now, the cynical might suppose that these “fortean” researchers were merely primed to hear and see what they wanted to, and that the “alien footprints” were merely the tracks of cottontails in the snow—which do bear a striking resemblance to what one might imagine are the prints of three-toed alien bipeds. But the witness in this case insists that something similar had happened in the same area two years earlier, as attested by two of his co-expeditionaries:
“In May 1971, the two from Texas, along with a man from Arkansas, were camping in the same cabin at the base of Mt. Blanca [sic]. During the early morning of May 24 they were disturbed by ‘assorted unexplained noises,’ followed by the appearance of an odd shaft of light and a ‘shadowy figure’ on the patio outside the window. According to a detailed report on the incident, a copy of which was give to Floyd Murray: ‘Around 3:00 A.M. all hell broke loose behind the cabin…Thrashings and crashing were heard’ and something took hold of the back door ‘and shook it violently…as though trying to tear it off its hinges’…Outside, they discovered a series of ‘apparent footprints.’ Years later, Murray told [Curt Sutherly] that the tracks discovered in 1973 were identical to those reported by the 1971 expedition.”4
It’s important to emphasize, for what it’s worth, that the testimony in this case comes courtesy of two Texans.
Verdict: These cases are just a few of the many instances of UFOs, UAPs, and assorted other inexplicable aerial phenomena that have been witnessed in the vicinity of Blanca Peak.
Just what are we to make of this prevalence of such activity around the highest mountain in the SLV? Well, for one thing, the sacred nature of this mountain—as attested in the lore and legends of the Navajo—might explain a great deal.
Is it unreasonable to assume that whatever intelligence is behind these objects—assuming a non-terrestrial origin—might not also be drawn to sacred and spiritually significant mountains and other landmarks? And perhaps we shouldn’t be unwilling to suggest a supernatural explanation for these phenomena in the first place, holding—along with Father Seraphim Rose and even the Traditionalists—that much paranormal and UFO activity has really a spiritual dimension, and represents the manifestation of inferior or (less likely) superior subtle forces.
The connection with the sacred Blanca Peak makes this theory at least tenable, and as we’ll see in part two of this investigation, there are other phenomena in the vicinity of the mountain that can certainly best be described as supernatural and, indeed, mystical.
There is another theory, of course, and it’s a wild one. It involves Dr. Steven Greer, founder of the Center for the Study of Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (CSETI—not to be confused with SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). In February of 1998, both on his website and in a phone interview with Christopher O’Brien, Dr. Greer claimed that—while participating in a CSETI “training” event in the SLV—he remote-viewed a group of extraterrestrials (presumably the ubiquitous Greys) who operated a kind of “base” or “spaceport” beneath the Blanca Massif. In their matter-of-fact way, the aliens made it clear to him that they were under assault by a secret US military special forces team, whose objective was apparently to eject the ETs from their base.
Happily for the aliens, this objective was thwarted and the whole operation ended in disaster when an attempt by the special forces team to use “deadly Sarin-like nerve gas” against the aliens backfired and wound up overcoming them instead. If we’re to credit Dr. Greer’s rather incredible story, then the presence of UFOs around Blanca Peak has a very simple explanation—it’s an interstellar spaceport, that’s all, and the aliens are just going about their business.
Of course, neither O’Brien nor anyone else has been able to verify Dr. Greer’s fantastic claims, and the inception of this “space aliens under Blanca Mountain” claim is very probably to be found in O’Brien’s own book. After all, he mentions rumors of “[a]nywhere from one to four secret underground bases” located in the SLV, and even “a secret city and an interdimensional passage used by space travelers to bend space” underneath Blanca Peak.5
Who knows? Maybe there really is an alien spaceport beneath Blanca Peak. It would certainly explain the prevalence of inexplicable aerial phenomena in the wider area, including the Clayton UAP.
In the meantime, if you’re so inclined, you can pay a visit to the world-famous UFO Watchtower near Hooper, CO, where you can keep an eye on the skies of the SLV and look out for the newest arrivals and departures at the Blanca Peak Spaceport.
Next week: we continue with the second part of our look at the mysteries of Blanca Peak, this time examining some of its more cryptozoological and paranormal denizens…
Christopher O’Brien, The Mysterious Valley (New York: St. Martin’s Paperbacks, 1996), pp. 53-4.
Ibid., pp. 266-7.
Curt Sutherly, UFO Mysteries: A Reporter Seeks the Truth (St. Paul: Llewellyn Publications, 2001), pp. 70-1.
Ibid., pp. 71-2.
The Mysterious Valley, pp. 11, 149.