Posted inCOVID, Environment, Health, News, Outdoors, Politics and Government

Warnings are working (for now) to keep visitors out of Colorado’s high country. But tickets, legal battles loom.

Police in Colorado’s mountain communities are doing a lot of educating and even issuing written warnings to violators of local and state health orders designed to slow the spread of the coronavirus.  But if mask mandates, closures, restrictions and locals-only access rules linger for months, warnings will soon turn to tickets. And that worries Western […]

Posted inColoradans, Environment, News, Outdoors

People are effectively training bears to get into trouble, and Colorado wildlife officials are sick of it

OURAY — The bear was immense by Colorado standards, 394 pounds of muscle and fur, and it lay sprawled across the necropsy table as the prime suspect in a murder. Days earlier, in August 2009, wildlife officers had been called to a grisly scene at a house outside Ouray, where a frail, 74-year-old woman named […]

Posted inBusiness, Energy, Environment, News, Outdoors, Politics and Government

Trump’s “energy dominance” push changing plans for 3 million acres of Colorado land, local stewards say

Federal land managers are about to close the door on public input to decade-long resource management plans for sweeping swaths of public land in Colorado that now reflect the Trump Administration’s focus on boosting domestic energy production.  That focus conflicts with new state laws aimed at protecting wildlife and improving air quality, which has united […]

Posted inCulture, News, Outdoors, Outsider

Showers, catered meals, wine lists: Colorado’s newest backcountry ski huts are following Euro and Canadian model

RED MOUNTAIN PASS — Their moms were not pleased with the plan. Four 20-something pals from the Midwest were preparing to go backcountry skiing in the San Juans, around Red Mountain Pass. Their parents had read news reports of an avalanche — the first of the Colorado season — involving a student in an avalanche-education […]