The trophy made its last trip over the Rockies after the 1958 game; Utah won the final three contests of the series. It wouldn't travel again until someone hauled it up to camp, where it has resided ever since, ringing out the glad tidings — not that Utah has defeated Denver, but rather, that dinner is served.

The first time I went looking for the bell, two weeks ago, I stopped at Wolf Mountain and asked a couple of maintenance people if they had ever heard a bell chiming through the hills. They hadn't. But they suggested I check out a youth camp nearby. I drove to the gate, then walked up through the camp and squinted down Wandering Wolf and Barney's Way ski runs. Nothing. After 30 fruitless minutes, I drove home and looked up the phone number of the guy who originally sent me on the search. He said I had been on course, but had stopped one or two switchbacks too soon.

So last week, I tried again, hiking until I ran smack into the bell. It sits near a house where Richard and Karen Thompson are serving an LDS mission, tending the property. They said about 2,000 youth visit the camp each year. That explains why the bell is so beat up. If there's one thing camp kids like, it's something to kick, scratch, hammer or dent. Then there's the damage done by hunters, hikers and snowboarders.

Before the Thompsons arrived, Ken and Connie Chambers — father and stepmother of former Ute and NBA basketball player Tom Chambers — served at the camp. Ken said he got looking at the bell three years ago and could read "University of Utah" faintly, so he cleaned it up. Soon, he said, he could make out six or seven scores. I could only see three by the time I arrived.

Yet neither the Chambers, the Thompsons, nor even Rulon Cummings — who was involved in the camp development from its earliest years — could tell me exactly how the bell got there.

I called Ned Alger, who was an assistant football coach when Utah and Denver were playing. He remembered the bell and the rivalry, but none of the details. He suspected someone donated it when the U. moved its athletic offices from the Einar Nielsen Fieldhouse to what is now the Huntsman Center in 1969.

Forty years after the move, I rang the bell a couple of times, and it pealed out loud and clear. But it didn't tell me who took it to its present location. Or who donated the bell. Or whether it was actually donated, or just hauled off with the junk.

I left feeling a little wistful that the teams aren't still playing. But considering the directions the programs have gone — Denver's kaput, Utah's to the national rankings — I concluded it's not a rivalry that should be resumed.

Remembering is one thing, resurrecting is another.

e-mail: rock@desnews.com