With the thermometer well below zero, cars full of Crested Butte residents lined up on a private air strip starting at 7 a.m. last week to stick swabs up their noses. While that doesn’t sound like a fun morning for anyone involved, Gunnison County residents and public health officials were eager for the chance to […]
San Miguel County
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, COVID, News
Colorado ski resorts work to stay open as COVID cases snowball
By Christie Aschwanden, Kaiser Health News TELLURIDE — The day after Thanksgiving, Dr. Jana Eller and Dr. Shiraz Naqvi were seated beside an outdoor fire pit at the base of Telluride Ski Resort, taking a short break from skiing. The two physicians from Houston had driven more than 18 hours to get here for the […]
Posted inColoradans, COVID, Health
Contact tracing in Colorado immigrant communities is most effective with voices from within
By Markian Hawryluk, Kaiser Health News Early in the pandemic, Ximena Rebolledo León, a registered nurse at Telluride Regional Medical Center in southwest Colorado, needed to find everyone who’d been in contact with a sick Latino restaurant worker whose boss had told him he would lose his job if he didn’t show up. The man […]
Posted inOpinion, Opinion Columns
Opinion: Colorado’s small-town newspapers connect communities – and deserve community support
Imagine, for a moment, that you live in a rural Colorado community of, say, 1,000 people. Then imagine a major news event happening in your town. You know, like a dangerous pandemic, invisible and deadly, that threatens your neighbors, your friends, your family. Where do you go for the latest information on health guidelines, on […]
Posted inNews
2 people die in small plane crash near Telluride
TELLURIDE — Two people died when a small airplane crashed as it was approaching the airport near the Colorado resort town of Telluride on Thursday, authorities said. The Telluride Regional Airport lost contact with the single-engine plane at about 1:30 p.m. and several witnesses reported seeing it go down, the San Miguel County Sheriff’s Office […]
Posted inColoradans, Crime and Courts, News, Outdoors
Colorado’s first-ever criminal charges following an avalanche could be slippery slope for backcountry travelers
The two snowboarders talk about snow conditions and route selection as they drop in, one at a time. Gusting wind is blowing snow across the ridge as they wind between reefy rocks. “Avalanche!” yells Tyler DeWitt as he cranks to a stop below his friend Evan Hannibal. The two watch the slide — captured on […]
Posted inBusiness, News, Technology
Gigabit internet coming to more rural southwestern Colorado communities
Bit by bit, southwestern Colorado is cobbling together fiber-fast broadband service to get its residents up to speed, or at least to 2015 internet standards, when the Federal Communications Commission updated its benchmark to 25 megabits down and 3 Mbps up. The latest bit came this week as three Colorado counties learned that Utah-based Emery […]
Posted inNews
Small plane crashes near Telluride, killing newlyweds from Florida
A small plane crashed Monday afternoon near the mountain town of Telluride, killing both people aboard. Authorities say the two people killed were a couple from Port Orange, Florida, who “had eloped to Telluride for a small wedding and adventure-filled honeymoon that they were documenting online for friends and families to follow.” They were identified […]
Posted inNews, Politics and Government
In Colorado’s hard-to-count communities, census outreach and coronavirus support are one and the same
To say that 2020 has not been a normal year to take a national census — well, it doesn’t quite capture the full extent of the situation. The Census Bureau’s normally nonpartisan operations have been repeatedly undercut, whether it’s in the form of chronic underfunding, the federal administration’s fear-stoking attempt in 2019 to add a […]
Posted inOpinion, Opinion Columns
Opinion: Here’s why our Colorado communities are demanding climate justice
Former state Rep. Ken Summers is urging Coloradans to “dance” with the oil and gas industry. But to date, fossil fuel companies have proved to be unreliable partners. The industry has spent millions of dollars over the past several decades on lobbying and deceptive advertising to spread its destructive agenda and to block meaningful action […]