New guidance from federal land managers seems to require an inventory and review of all existing bolts and fixed anchors in wilderness areas
wilderness
Posted inOpinion Columns
Opinion: Protect access to wilderness climbing opportunities
It will encourage a new generation of wilderness advocates who will work to protect these places
Posted inEnvironment
How wolf reintroduction is supposed to go — and how it’s going
Wildlife biologists have developed a three-phase approach to restore the wolf population that has been absent from Colorado since the 1940s
Posted inOutdoors
To bolt or not to bolt? Federal proposals to ban climbing anchors sparks a wilderness climbing outcry.
Federal land managers are weighing a policy to prohibit fixed anchors in wilderness, stirring protest from climbers and legislation from lawmakers
Posted inOpinion Columns
Opinion: What a whiteout on Wolf Creek Pass taught me
Staying calm and thinking clearly can get us through stormy weather and the storms of the human kind.
Posted inOpinion, Opinion Columns
Laura Pritchett: Over the Gunnison Valley, airplanes and acronyms converged
Three things are true: One: I crush on my birth state and forever state of Colorado. Two: I do not crush on acronyms. I loathe them. I loathe them because they generally signal something suspiciously complicated; meetings with too many acronyms make me want a whiskey. Three: Yet I crush on my job shepherding students […]
Posted inClimate, Environment, News, Outdoors, Wildfire
20 years of planning saved Rocky Mountain National Park from the worst of the East Troublesome fire. It will take 20 more to fix the damage.
Early on the morning of Oct. 23, Mike Lewelling stood at the Forest Canyon Overlook on Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park and stared 2,500 feet down into what he called a cauldron of fire and swirling wood smoke. The East Troublesome fire had Lewelling, the park’s fire management officer for 15 years, […]
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 inOpinion, Opinion Columns
Opinion: Let’s act now to protect Colorado’s desert wildlands. The ball is in our senators’ court.
Colorado is blessed with an abundance of wild and remote public lands, free for the exploration and enjoyment by any and all. Among these are some of the most spectacular and undeveloped canyons and mesas of the Colorado Plateau, the lesser-known cousins of Utah’s famously renowned canyonlands. Now, after decades awaiting congressional scrutiny and action, […]
Posted inOpinion, Write On, Colorado
Of whoopie pies and wilderness, and how isolation robbed me of my ability to focus
Here’s the thing about whoopie pies: They aren’t that good. Never were. The official Maine State Treat is a century-old tradition with a similar shelf life. Made mostly of sugar, flour, lard, and cocoa, they live somewhere between a cookie and a cake and are decidedly not pies. They are ubiquitous at the check-out counters […]