Good morning, friends!
The next few weeks are among my favorites in winter, when Denver eases up on the hipster vibe a bit and embraces its cowtown heritage during the National Western Stock Show. There’s plenty of fun to be had: The rodeos! The boot shopping! The petting zoo! The cowboy bars! The corndog stands! But it’s also a period of time when the power of Colorado’s agricultural economy becomes a little less abstract as the finest livestock is shown off and sometimes sold for astronomical prices. The Stock Show somehow eases the tension between the city and the parts of the state where the work is hard, the hours are long and people come home with calloused hands.
That tension is front and center in this week’s cover story, Tracy Ross’ examination of high conflict between Routt County ranchers and the cyclists who grind the gravel roads near their fields during one weekend in August.
Senior Editor
The Cover Story
Riders vs. ranchers for the future of a unique race
Any attentive ninth grader knows, under the free market concept of supply and demand, supply is king because it dictates the cost of the demand. But the construct gets muddy when you’re talking about Colorado and one of its top economic drivers. That’s because what the buying public wants is recreation. We have plenty of ways to recreate and lots of places to do it, mostly on public lands. But sometimes events spill into the neighborhoods and lives of locals. And that comes at a price.
That’s the case with my cover story this week, which details a group of ranchers in the Yampa Valley protesting SBT GRVL, a gravel cycling race, now 5 years old and drawing 3,000 riders over a single weekend in August. The problem, the ranchers say, is those days coincide with the county fair and their busiest agricultural season. What’s more, they add, racers and their supporters infiltrate their lives, clog their roads, treat them with disrespect and create one safety issue after another. Some are demanding that the race be canceled through a new permitting process implemented by the Routt County commissioners. There’s a lot at stake in Steamboat Springs and depending on how it goes, the result could have far-reaching implications.
Gravel riding and related events are expanding across Colorado. One of the beauties of gravel riding is that it takes place on just that — gravel roads, which often lie in agricultural landscapes. That’s all well and good — no, better than good — for the state’s offices of tourism and outdoor recreation, because as the sport explodes it brings more dollars into our economy. But as this story shows, as important as the mighty dollar is to so many things in Colorado, when human lives, heritage and history intersect with recreation, we might need to make room for a new model.
Section by Tracy Ross | Reporter
The Colorado Lens
In case you missed it, we’ve curated our own visual feed of reporting to catch you up. Here are a few of our favorite snippets of everyday places, people and moments from every corner of Colorado in the new year.
Section by Olivia Sun | Staff Photographer
Flavor of the Week
Copper Mountain’s mid-mountain Aerie lodge wraps a five-year, $100 million investment campaign
Copper Mountain owner Powdr capped a five-year, $100 million investment at its Summit County ski area with the November opening of its midmountain Aerie lodge. Skiers have poled past the project since 2018-19, when construction on the two-floor, 25,000-square-foot lodge began. Pandemic pinches on supply chains and labor stalled construction for a couple seasons.
The timber, stone, steel and glass fortress designed by resort architecture firm Bull Stockwell Allen offers floor-to-ceiling views of the Gore and Tenmile ranges. The American Eagle gondola unloads on the top floor. A five-station food hall offers wood-fired pizza, brats, burgers, a ramen bar and deli. There are plenty of bars, a coffee shop with Wi-Fi workspaces, a heated outdoor patio and a private event room that should make the Aerie a hot spot for weddings.
The Aerie’s sit-down restaurant — Forage & Feast — offers organic and locally sourced high-end dishes like venison-leg steak with pumpernickel bread pudding and a chicken torte with Oaxacan cheese.
The five-year push to finish the Aerie wraps a $100 million overhaul at Copper, with new gondolas and bubble-chairs on its American Eagle and American Flyer lifts, a fleet of electric buses, new groomers and the new Three Bears Lift accessing expert terrain on Tucker Mountain.
Section by Jason Blevins | Outdoors/Business Reporter
SunLit: Sneak Peek
“She Who Rides Horses” explores a young woman’s dreamlike search for a wild filly
EXCERPT: Who was the first person to ride a horse? Author Sarah V. Barnes’ work of historical fiction, “She Who Rides Horses,” takes us back 6,000 years to tell the story of a daughter of a clan chief who dares to dream of experiencing such a union of animal and human. The book also has the distinction of being judged a finalist by the Colorado Authors League in two categories — historical fiction, yes, but also young adult literature.
THE SUNLIT INTERVIEW: Every novel has a backstory, and Barnes’ inspiration was a combination of being in the right place — the Arizona desert — at the right time, which happened to be a writing workshop. She relates the anecdote about her experience and how it led to the confluence of twin passions that produced her novel.
SunLit: Tell us about creating this book. What influences and/or experiences informed the project before you sat down to write?
Barnes: My first passion in life, from the time I was a little girl, was horses. My second passion, once I learned to read, was historical fiction. I spent many years as an academic historian, but somehow, over the years as a college professor, drifted away from the stories that had drawn me to history in the first place.
I did, however, find my way back to horses and began teaching riding as a meditative art, as well as working with horses as an equine-facilitated personal development coach. Eventually, I also found my way back to the stories. “She Who Rides Horses: A Saga of the Ancient Steppe” represents a braiding together of my childhood passions.
READ THE INTERVIEW WITH SARAH V. BARNES
Section by Kevin Simpson | Writer
Sunday Reading List
A curated list of what you may have missed from The Colorado Sun this week.
🌞 It’s official: All three of Colorado’s Republican U.S. Representatives have left their seats, adding a measure of chaos to the statewide political landscape. Rep. Doug Lamborn was the last to go, announcing he will not seek a 10th term representing the 5th Congressional District centered on Colorado Springs. The 4th Congressional District GOP primary got a new layer of competition when House Minority Leader Mike Lynch announced his candidacy in a field that now officially includes U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, who defected from the 3rd Congressional District to run in a district that somehow seemed safer.
🌞 It seemed obvious this would happen, but the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday agreed to take up an appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling that Donald Trump is not eligible to become president again under the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment. This means Trump will, in fact, appear on Colorado’s GOP presidential primary ballot.
🌞 Denver now has received more Venezuelan immigrants per capita than any other city in the U.S. Mayor Mike Johnston says the city’s resources are tapped, but people still are being helped. On Wednesday, Jennifer Brown and Jesús Sánchez Meleán were present when the city removed an encampment of 277 people whose time in a hotel in the Lower Highland neighborhood had run out. Hours later, another 443 migrants arrived by bus.
🌞 Who is Becky Mitchell and why did so many people want to talk to her during the big Colorado River confab in Las Vegas last month? Shannon Mullane explains why the state’s top Colorado River negotiator matters so much.
🌞 Pueblo’s Parkview Health System was swallowed up by UCHealth in a transaction that’s supposed to be good news for the wellness of the people of southern Colorado. But John Ingold reports the deal was also about the health of the giant UCHealth system.
🌞 Still aren’t convinced of the link between injury and depression? Dan England reports on the trainers at the University of Northern Colorado who are as concerned about the mental health of their athletes as they are about their physical well-being.
Section by Dana Coffield | Senior Editor
Thanks for hanging out with us on this fine Colorado Sunday. If the forecasts made good and the unreasonable chill that defines Stock Show weather has settled in, we hope there’s a blanket to duck under and a dog sitting on your feet, and that you are warmed a bit by knowing how much we appreciate the time you spend with us, no matter what the season.
— Dana & the whole staff of The Sun
Corrections & Clarifications
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