The Colorado man who has famously spent his life selling souvenirs keeps a few of his own.
“This is one. Look at this thing!” Bill Carle remarks, holding up a thing that is difficult to discern, until several blackened, silver charms become clear.
Tiny, collectible wagons, burros, bighorn sheep, pine cones and more were burnt and molded together in the 1979 fire that destroyed the Crest House atop Mount Blue Sky (then called Mount Evans). The gift shop and restaurant was among iconic tourist stops overseen by Carle’s family going back to the 1890s.
The mangled thing of charms is a rather sad keepsake of his. Something more joyful: the bust of a doughnut from another 14,000-foot mountain.
It is indeed joyous for Carle, 69, to reflect on all the memories and all the doughnuts his family made over a century atop Pikes Peak’s summit house, starting with his grandmother, Helen Stewart. But this bust is also sad: The doughnut, appearing varnished and preserved, is marked as the…
