OK, I will be the first to admit that this is a kind of boring shot of Cascade Peak. But I wanted to post it because if you look closely, you can see two audio-animatronic Bighorn Sheep towards the top! I have many slides of Cascade Peak, but so far this is the only one with the sheep. This one's for you, Tangaroa!
So if they were audio-animatronic, what did they do? Or were they really just static dummies? And why were they removed? I have to admit that they seem a bit out of scale to me (kind of like when you see crows sitting on the higher slopes of the Matterhorn...kind of destroys the forced perspective). Still, it's a fun detail, I'll have to dig to see if any of my other slides of the Peak give a better look at the sheep.
Hey Thank you! That is great!
ReplyDeleteI believe most of them were static - but of course there is that legendary animatronic Bighorn that supposedly scraed the mules into the river... See my map in the "E" Ticket, and the adjoining article for more... I'm late for a meeting - looks like I may finally be publishing my Knott's history book!
This is a wonderful photo! I recall climbing Cascade Peak before park opening one morning (1989), and standing in these waste high holes that obviously held audio-animatronics. I remember asking some guys who used to work Mine Train about it and they said, they held Big Horn Sheep. Yours is the first photo I have ever seen of them, so thank you very much!
ReplyDeleteAs to your question, Tangaroa, would know for sure, but I can recall that I saw no evidence of holes to allow pneumatic lines to enter that location (but how big a hole would one need for head right/head left?).
I believe that some of the sheep on Cascade Peak were static, some (the closer ones to the guests) had limited movements (head up down, etc.). The big one is that Bighorn Sheep that would supposedly "bound" out of the brush on the Pack Mule side of Cascade Peak. I did find the concrete pit for him in the exact location the ast time I poked around back there in the 1990s, and have a photo of said pit - but in all my years of research, I've never found a photo of that one...
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to make out in this low rez image - but you can see some of those sheep in this map I did for The "E" Ticket back in the 90s:
http://www.christophermerritt.com/images/MapsETicketNatWondPopUp_1.jpg