On a Saturday morning at The Monkey House, Carbondale’s new rock climbing gym, four people scale ladders with drills in their hands, creating the routes that people pay $100 per month to climb. The setters place footholds and adjust the angles of handholds, making sure each movement is fun and engaging. Along with the new […]
Joe Purtell
Special to The Colorado Sun
Twitter: @joseph_purtell
Posted inHealth
For farmers in a mental health crisis, it’s often tough to seek help. A Colorado program aims to begin conversations.
Maggie Hanna grew up a typical rural kid: in school on weekdays; helping with the cattle on her family’s ranch southeast of Colorado Springs on weekends. Except Hanna had something else to contend with. When she was 9, her father, Kirk Hanna, died by suicide. Now, she’s working to bring more mental health resources to […]
Posted inBusiness, News
Pueblo saw hemp as an economic opportunity, so it pounced with taxpayer dollars and hopes of growing big business
PUEBLO — In 2016, Steve Turetsky was looking to get into hemp, scouting around Colorado for the right place to build the farm he would use to feed the growing market for CBD. He needed cheap land, plenty of water and infrastructure for distribution. Pueblo had all of those things — and wanted his business. […]
Posted inColoradans, Culture, Education, News, Outdoors
Colorado mountain biking program teaches girls to conquer trails, with an eye toward helping in other parts of life
Esmeralda Parro grabs her bike from a trailer marked “The Cycle Effect” and starts riding to join a group of girls warming up for the day’s practice. Pedaling up a steep hill, the 11 year old stops just short of the top. Her coach is watching. “Esme! Go back down and change your gear, then […]
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, Environment, Growth, News, Politics and Government, Water
As metro Denver grows, another caller wants to tap the vast aquifer under the San Luis Valley
This story was published in collaboration with Bitterroot, an online magazine about the politics, economy, culture and environment of the West. An adobe arch spans a well-kept dirt road northwest of Crestone, wooden arms protruding from its sides. The name Rancho Rosado is engraved in the weathered brown wood, the red letters fading to pink. Behind the arch, […]
Posted inHealth, News, Politics and Government
Rural Colorado struggles to find foster homes as new federal law seeks to keep more kids out of group settings
Finding foster homes for children is a challenge throughout Colorado, but in rural areas, the shortage is even more dire. In the San Luis Valley, a lone foster care coordinator this summer covered 3,000 square miles and six counties between the Sangre de Cristo and San Juan Mountains while awaiting a new hire. In those […]
Posted inColoradans, Culture, Environment, Growth
Whenever crews move dirt in the Garden of the Gods, an archaeologist helps link the present to the past
COLORADO SPRINGS — On a windy morning in Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs City Archaeologist Anna Cordova jumps a fence into the construction site with a practiced ease. A backhoe rests on the tracked up ground, and stakes with orange tape marking the perimeter of a new bathroom facility have already been placed. Cordova […]
Posted inBusiness, Environment, Growth
Can rangeland apprenticeships stem the exodus of Colorado ranchers and keep America fed?
MOFFAT — On an early spring day in the hills west of Moffat, two ranchers walk through open pasture with two women less than half their age. An ecologist guides the group through miles of rangeland, too dry for sagebrush or trees, that stretches between them and the snow capped Sangre de Cristo mountains to […]
Posted inEnvironment, News, Outdoors
Acres of destruction left by Colorado’s historic avalanche season are also delivering climate change evidence
A stunning avalanche season saw thousands of slides snap mature tree trunks like twigs, wipe historic buildings off the map and radically alter Colorado’s mountain landscape. But the big slides that splintered conifer forests and felled massive aspen groves also delivered an important new scientific resource to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center and U.S. Forest […]
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, Energy, Environment, News, Politics and Government
Acres of barren Boulder soil are headed to rehab (and that might just help fight climate change)
Walking toward the western edge of his farm, Marcus McCauley pauses to roll a cigarette, lighting up before jumping the fence dividing his property west of Longmont from the neighboring farm. A coyote walks across the far end of the 120 acres, traversing a patchwork landscape of exposed dirt and low greenery, pocked with prairie […]