Sun slants through the buildings on Elk Avenue in Crested Butte, turning cottonwood fluff into floating sparkle. The surrounding hillsides glow green and rise up into red-hued peaks, some of which still hold bright, white snow. It’s a real-life snow globe scene, and Chloe Bowman stands at the center of it, suspended in the surreal. […]
Gunnison
Posted inCOVID, Education, News
Colorado colleges want to offer more in-person classes this spring. Here’s what they learned from a tough fall.
Megan Walton would be the first to admit this semester has been hard. Maybe things are difficult because it’s her junior year — notoriously the most difficult one — or because she’s busy as a student athlete in addition to her job as a vice president for the Student Government Association. Maybe it’s because it’s […]
Posted inBusiness, COVID, News, Transportation
Fly from Aspen to Montrose for $30? Airlines are being allowed to cut small-airport service during coronavirus
The U.S. Department of Transportation has heard the pleas of airlines flying empty planes into regional airports and is allowing carriers to cut all flights into some cities and towns. The DOT on Tuesday issued a notice that airlines could remove 5% of the airports they serve, allowing relief for airlines that were obligated to […]
Posted inCOVID, Education, Health
How students stuck in Colorado dorms re-create college life by themselves
A romantic could look at Jade Brolly and her situation and find a little poetry there. Brolly spends most of her time — yes, probably 23 hours — in a room no bigger than a jail cell, with a bed, a desk and a bathroom. Brolly, 32, had a job in health care, a solid, […]
Posted inColoradans, COVID, News
Churches as empty as the tomb: Coloradans adapt to celebrate Easter together as coronavirus forces them apart
DELTA — It’s a few minutes before dawn when the first cars pull in, the moon still bright overhead, the ground soft and damp from overnight rains. Snow flurries are visible high over the Grand Mesa to the north. “Good morning,” said guitarist Rob Wolcott, the first person to arrive at the Tru Vu Drive […]
Posted inCOVID, Health, News, Politics and Government
Gunnison County bans restaurants, bars from serving people 60 and older to slow coronavirus spread
UPDATED: This story was updated at 1:33 p.m. on March 16, 2020, to report sweeping changes to the Gunnison County public health order, including closing all short-term lodging. Gunnison County has ordered a dramatic step in the fight against COVID-19: Bars and restaurants can no longer serve people 60 years and older. Those establishments can […]
Posted inCOVID, Health, News
Colorado’s other pandemic: The 1918 flu and the lessons learned — or maybe not — for coronavirus
A run on surgical masks. No viable vaccine. Opportunists. Uncertainty. Fatalism. Fear. These were just a few of the elements converging at the uncontrolled intersection of medical science, politics and human nature — not this week, but a century ago, when the flu pandemic of 1918 crept into Colorado, gathered deadly momentum and claimed thousands […]
Posted inHealth, News, Politics and Government
As Colorado’s anti-abortion pregnancy centers strengthen, abortion-rights advocates work to “expose” alleged “fake clinics”
GREELEY — Isabel Serafin hid the “pregnant pee” under her clothes, sealed in a glass container surrounded by hand-warmers. She kept her phone in her pocket, recording audio, as she walked into the pregnancy center waiting room. The University of Northern Colorado student was on an undercover mission to find out what happens when a […]
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, News, Outdoors
The fastest kids in America are running hills and chilling in creeks around Crested Butte
CRESTED BUTTE — Katelynne Hart, the country’s fastest high school distance runner, is giddily shivering in icy Coal Creek in the middle of this mountain community’s historic downtown. Hart, along with her best-in-the-U.S. teammates, has just finished a morning run at 8,900 feet and a complicated series of stretches and exercises at Team Prep USA’s […]
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, Education, News, Technology
All the classes, none of the Boulder: CU offers computer science degrees on Western Slope
Starting this fall, students enrolled at Western Colorado University in Gunnison can emerge with a degree from the state’s top computer science school, the University of Colorado in Boulder. It’ll cost them less over the four years compared to Boulder, and classes won’t be as crowded. Plus, it’s cheaper to rent an apartment in this […]