CRESTED BUTTE — On a Saturday morning at the end of July, Aaron Drendel, a recreation staff officer with the U.S. Forest Service’s Gunnison Ranger District, walked through Musicians’ Camp, a group camping area along the Slate River. Recent rain seemed to have scared some campers away, leaving several sites empty, but Drendel was focused […]
Slate River
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, Economy, Environment, Growth, News, Outdoors
Off-highway vehicles are revving up locals (in a bad way) in Colorado’s remote mountain towns
When Teri Havens bought two acres tucked in a thick stand of aspen on a hill south of Marble in 1995, it was her bit of backcountry nirvana. Yes, it sat along a popular jeeping trail ̶ a county road leading to the historic Lead King Loop. But she could live with four-wheel-drive vehicles jouncing […]
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 […]