There’s a school of thought not widely known concerning Highway 82. It has to do with driving and wildlife.

In the stretch of Highway 82 from El Jebel to Catherine Store, late at night, if your car’s brakes are gone it’s OK to drive as fast as you want. At high speeds — 60, 70, 80, 90 — it doesn’t make much difference. That’s because without brakes, at high speeds you’re probably going to plow into just about everything that crosses your path (deer, elk, mountain lions, coyotes, foxes) regardless of how fast you’re going because you can’t stop anyway. At 45 and slower without brakes, you might be able to swerve, miss the wildlife and not roll your car.

This theory comes after driving another winter on Highway 82 from midnight to 2 a.m., including the stretch from El Jebel to Carbondale. My co-worker Tracy Wolff said this section must be like driving through a “wildlife park.” Tracy’s astute observation came after listening to my stories of close encounters with wildlife on Highway 82 this winter.

The most spectacular encounter/near miss was with a bull elk in full antler regalia, who sauntered out of the dark and across the two downvalley lanes near Cerise Ranch last week. Did you ever notice that an elk in motion is nearly always sauntering, especially on the slick surface of a paved roadway? Elk never slink around like a cat. They don’t dart in front of you like a coyote. They don’t cautiously approach the highway like a deer. They just saunter out in front of your car with their chin up so high their antlers nearly scratch their back, like they are leading a slow-moving St. Patrick’s Day parade or something. No hurry. Looking neither to the left nor right. Paying no mind to the 2-ton masses of metal and plastic hurtling at them at a football field’s length every few seconds. That’s an elk for you. Also for you, hitting an elk is like running into a brick wall. Or a cow. Most people who have hit an elk describe it as “like hitting a cow.” As any cowboy can tell you, cows can be like immovable objects sometimes, which also puts them in the brick wall category.

This winter’s other notable near-miss wildlife event was with a mountain lion last week, also near Cerise Ranch. Could it have been a mountain lion/elk stalking incident? I don’t know. I’m not a cop.

This mountain lion literally bounded from my left to right, with its front paws striking the ground first, then its back, so on and so forth until he’d successfully made it across the highway. I’m pretty sure this animal was a mountain lion because it didn’t look like a coyote or a fox, didn’t run like a coyote or fox, and was not the world’s largest lynx nor a cat. It was a mountain lion, although probably less than full grown. He was in a bigger hurry than the elk to cross the highway, which might explain why it’s more common to see dead elk along the road than dead mountain lions (elk, please take note).

Anyway, there’s a legitimate point to be made here. First, almost everyone’s brakes work just fine, so your speed will in fact determine whether you are able to avoid a collision with wildlife. The reason I did not hit the elk and mountain lion, plus at least one mule deer, is because I was traveling at about 45 miles per hour and didn’t even have to brake that hard. Had I have been traveling at 60-80 mph like most other drivers, I’d have killed or injured that elk, mountain lion and deer, plus totaled three cars. (Actually, I’d have totaled only two cars, because by the third one I’d have been taking the bus.)

So, there you go. Everybody says they like wildlife. Well, if you do then slow down.

And if you’ve got bad brakes, go get them fixed.

Lynn Burton is night editor for the Aspen Daily News. He can be reached at lburton@aspendailynews.com [1].