When a mud and rock slide buried one of the more important highways in the West on July 29, the dramatic gridlock became a statewide spectator sport. That same historic rock slide, at the same moment, blocked off the most important river in the West. After decades of fierce arguments over damming up more of […]
Roaring Fork River
Posted inBusiness, Climate, Coloradans, Environment, Growth, Health, Wildfire
The high cost of climate change is already straining the budgets of Colorado towns
The Grizzly Creek fire still is smoldering, but Glenwood Springs is already contemplating the challenges it will leave behind: severe damage to the forest drainages the Western Slope city depends upon for its drinking water. “We are concerned about a lot of mud and ash coming down the creek,” said Shelly Kaup, the city’s mayor […]
Posted inColoradans, Environment, News, Outdoors
Great blue herons claim a dreamy stretch of river near Crested Butte for high-altitude love nests
Beyond a boggy meadow studded with beaver ponds, along the Slate River where it meanders past a bottom-rung ridge of Mount Emmons, is a prime patch of real estate for wetlands critters. Great blue herons have claimed it. The busy avian penthouse subdivision here — believed to be the highest altitude great blue heron colony […]
Posted inColoradans, Environment, Growth, News, Outdoors, Outsider, Water
The most thrilling commute in Colorado: How Grizzly Reservoir’s caretakers keep water flowing
TWIN LAKES — As the speedometer reaches 45 mph, Glenn Schryver turns off his headlights. The blackness is absolute in the arrow-straight tunnel a couple thousand feet beneath the Continental Divide. The engine roars, reverberating off the walls only a few inches from the sides of Schryver’s rushing pickup. “OK, I’m getting creeped out,” he […]