Each fall, columnist Laura Pritchett goes to her special place. From nature to inclusiveness to mini golf, the YMCA of the Rockies has offered her treasures large and small for 20 years — and counting.
Rocky Mountains
Posted inColoradans, Environment, Outdoors
Determining how much water Colorado’s snowpack will yield is an inexact science, but researchers persist
On a sunny April day at the tail end of last winter, Jeff Deems, a researcher at the Boulder-based National Snow and Ice Data Center, and Nathan Elder, the water supply manager for Denver Water, used snowshoes to reach a point high above the Blue River in Summit County. There they dug a pit, which […]
Posted inEnvironment, News, Outdoors, Technology
We know the earth is warming. We know that will stress water in the West. But we don’t know how.
Flavio Lehner was a graduate student working with computer models simulating Earth’s climate at the University of Berne in Switzerland when he had a chance to join a research vessel collecting sea temperatures and measuring ocean currents between Greenland and Svalbard, Norway. “As a lifestyle, field work is very agreeable,” Lehner said. “But for me, […]
Posted inColoradans, Environment, News, Outdoors
A fungus threatens survival of the only toads that live high in the Rocky Mountains
BUENA VISTA — Tim Korpita is wearing blue rubber gloves and thigh-high waders, but when someone shouts “Toad!” he lunges like a ninja. He takes a giant step over the marsh grasses and is on his stomach at the edge of a slow-moving creek, clutching a tiny, speckled boreal toad between his thumb and index […]