The ongoing tariff war is riling the outdoor industry, with gear makers and brands deploying a variety of strategies to handle the Trump administration’s plan to raise tariffs on more than $200 billion worth of Chinese-made products to 25% from 10%. The additional tariffs on things like backpacks, sports bags, ski gloves, kayaks, bikes, camp […]
Jason Blevins
The Colorado Sun — jason@coloradosun.com
Email: jason@coloradosun.com Twitter: @jasonblevins
Posted inCrime and Courts, Health, News, Politics and Government
With Denver’s vote on magic mushrooms, will Colorado anchor a psychedelic medicine revolution?
Denver is treading trippy new ground with this psilocybin vote. With voters requiring police to slacken enforcement of laws around psilocybin mushrooms, Colorado and the Mile High City are poised to anchor an emerging psychedelic renaissance, where once maligned psychoactive drugs are being championed as therapeutic remedies for illnesses like anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and […]
Posted inCrime and Courts, Health, News, Politics and Government
Denver authorities might be instructed to look the other way on magic mushrooms, but they remain illegal
The Denver vote directing police to de-prioritize arresting people for psilocybin mushrooms forges new legal ground because getting caught with even a small amount of psychedelic mushrooms can lead to felony charges. Possession of marijuana was a petty offense — the lowest of all crimes — when Mile High voters decriminalized weed in 2005. And […]
Posted inBusiness, News, Outdoors, Outsider
Colorado is gearing up for its “biggest river surfing season ever”
Surf’s up Colorado. With new river parks, big flows and a swelling roster of whitewater surfers itching to carve after last summer’s meager trickles, the river surfing wave is about to flood Colorado. “The biggest river surfing season ever is on tap,” says Mike Harvey, the river park engineer and co-founder of Salida’s Badfish SUP. […]
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, Growth, News
The man who developed Colorado’s mountains sees a bright future ahead for places that are “a retreat from the crazy changing world”
Harry Frampton has enjoyed a front-row seat to the sweeping evolution of Colorado’s ski resort and real estate industries. His 1,250-employee East West Partners forged the Beaver Creek real estate market in the late 1980s and 1990s before moving on to a lonely patch of land along Denver’s South Platte River in 2000. Since then, […]
Posted inBusiness, News, Outdoors, Politics and Government
Nathan Fey, director of Colorado’s outdoor recreation office, ferries river conservation and rural economic development skills into his new job
Nathan Fey is the new director of the Colorado Office of Outdoor Recreation Industry. Fey, who has served as acting director for the past month, is a sixth-generation Coloradan who spent 12 years as Colorado’s regional director for American Whitewater. He grew the national organization’s network of regional paddling groups to more than 20 from […]
Posted inBusiness, News, Outdoors
Hunger for uphill ski land has resorts, Forest Service looking at acres unused inside existing ski permits
As demand for uphill travel soars at ski areas across Colorado, business models like Bluebird Backcountry could find traction accessing the thousands of undeveloped acres inside Colorado ski area special-use permits issued by the Forest Service. It is way too early for resorts to begin talking about possibly allowing backcountry skiers to access trail-free terrain […]
Posted inBusiness, News, Outdoors
“We want to create that Billie Jean King moment”: Colorado Classic bringing women cyclists’ stories into the light
GOLDEN — The bold move to ditch the men and focus on women for August’s Colorado Classic bike race is the first step toward a long journey that could ferry female cyclists into the realm of their sisters in soccer and tennis. It isn’t just about a bigger prize purse, which more than triples last […]
Posted inNews, Outdoors, Transportation
Heavy snow led to a top-five Colorado ski season and a whole lot of cars through the I-70 tunnels
Ski resorts across the U.S. counted more than 59 million skier visits in 2018-19, which makes the season the fourth busiest since annual visitation counts began in 1978-79. That’s according to the National Ski Areas Association, which on Tuesday released its preliminary tally. While it doesn’t appear the season will surpass the record of 60.54 […]
Posted inColoradans, Environment, News, Outdoors, Outsider, Politics and Government
Colorado wildlife officials are reluctant to OK gray wolf reintroduction. So advocates want voters to do it.
After 40 years of battling to restore wolf populations in the Southwest, Northern Rockies and Great Lakes states, the legal, political and biological war for wolves is coming to Colorado. But this time it could be voters — not federal and state wildlife managers — pushing the only state in the Rocky Mountains without wolves […]