Mammoth Lakes, California and the rest of the ski industry face climate change. Also, Obama nominates a recreation industry magnate as Secretary of the Interior, the information age renders remote archeological sites increasingly accessible, Lake Mead reveals a long-sunken ghost town, scientists track the surprising and increasingly urban movement of mountain lions, and more.
(Manmade) snow is for fighting over
Sipapu Ski and Summer Resort is tucked into a narrow valley above the northern New Mexico village of Peñasco. As ski areas go, it’s minuscule, with less than 5 percent of the skiable acreage of Vail. Yet Sipapu has built a reputation by consistently being the first resort in New Mexico to open for the…
Girl in the woods: A review of The Snow Child
The Snow ChildEowyn Ivey416 pages, softcover: $14.99.Reagan Arthur Books, 2012. Eowyn Ivey’s surefooted and captivating debut novel, The Snow Child, begins in 1920, as Mabel and Jack, middle-aged homesteaders in Alaska, try to rough it through their second winter there. They’d moved West to escape painful memories of their only child, stillborn 10 years earlier,…
Good wishes for the Badlands
I read with interest the feature article by Brendan Borrell concerning Badlands National Park (HCN, 2/4/13, “Making Good on the Badlands“). I served as the superintendent there in the mid-1980s and was responsible for the preparation of a revision to the park’s 1982 master plan. This revision was approved by the director of the Park…
Lake Mead’s retreat leaves Nevada ghost town high and dry
Looking down on a Nevada valley from a rocky ledge near the edge of Lake Mead, it was hard to believe that the bustling town of St. Thomas had ever thrived here. A woman shielded her eyes from the October sun and asked our guide, “Is this it?” Eighty years ago, neighbors gossiped under cottonwood…
Lessons from Washington State
Your recent placement of Washington’s Chelan County in Oregon could be construed as a benefit in disguise (HCN, 2/4/2013, “Love Wins“). How so? Judging from the polls, Oregon has a very good chance of passing a same-sex marriage ballot measure in 2014 or 2016. We of the critical mass of supporters who desire an equivalent…
Letterpress memories
Thank you very much for your “Postcard” about the Saguache Crescent (HCN, 2/4/2013, “There ain’t no app for that”). As a 1977 graduate of Colorado College, I had the pleasure of visiting Saguache on a number of occasions. On one such visit, we were the front-page headline, as in Colorado College Students Visit Saguache. I…
Making connections to the land
My husband, Delaney, and I wholeheartedly thank you for your incredible Jan. 21 issue on natural resource education. Both of us visited your office in winter of 2010 and talked to your staff about including more articles about education. We are educators ourselves and we love teaching outside in the rural West. We have dedicated…
Philip Anschutz’s outsized reach in the West
For the first time since 1981, Montana’s Glacier National Park is seeking bids to operate its lodges, restaurants and shops, set amid the dramatic Northern Rockies. Among those reportedly considering the opportunity is Xanterra Parks & Resorts, the nation’s largest national park concessionaire, which belongs to Philip Anschutz’s Anschutz Corporation. Meanwhile, the same billionaire’s Anschutz…
Ski industry supports cloud seeding but downplays climate change
About a decade ago, at the dawn of what now seems like an endless drought, some Colorado ski areas made a huge fuss about sponsoring a new effort to create moisture by seeding the region’s clouds. They’d offer tens of thousands of dollars each to a contractor to shoot silver iodide into oncoming storms, generating…
A new direction for Big Green
Judith Lewis Mernit hints at a recent past that needs resurrection and a hidden present that needs exposure if we are to have a sustainable future for our planet (HCN, 2/18/13, “Taking it to the streets“). In his book Let the Mountains Talk, Let the Rivers Run, David Brower asks what has happened to boldness…
Students take over HCN Facebook page
High Country News is thrilled to participate in a special educational project with marketing students from Washington State University. Under the guidance of WSU instructors and ActionSprout, a marketing firm that specializes in social media engagement, students are partnering with HCN to develop and implement a marketing campaign. The students will gain real-world experience, and…
An unlikely penitent: A review of On Top of Spoon Mountain
On Top of Spoon MountainJohn Nichols232 pages, hardcover: $24.95.University of New Mexico Press, 2012. In a career that spans five decades, New Mexico author John Nichols has written more books and screenplays than he can count on his fingers and toes. His first novel, The Sterile Cuckoo, was published when he was 23, and The…
Technology eases access to ancient ruins, for better or worse
My archaeological quest began in an SUV near Blanding Elementary School, where screaming children played kickball with a potato-shaped P.E. teacher. Winsten Dan, my cattle dog, slept on the backseat as I thumbed my smartphone; I had downloaded an app that saves PDFs from Web pages so they’re accessible outside cell reception. I used it…
Book review: The Wild Wyoming Range
The Wild Wyoming Range Edited by Ronald H. Chilcote and Susan Marsh. 120 pages, hardcover: $35. Laguna Wilderness Press, 2012. Eastern Wyoming travelers speeding toward the jagged spires of the Tetons or the Wind River Range might overlook a more gentle silhouette rising from the sagebrush. “Until recently the Wyoming Range has been known less…
‘We Don’t Give a Damn How They Do It Outside’
An Alaska native struggles to “blend in” in the Lower 48.
Can Sally Jewell interest a new generation in public lands?
The giant flagship store of REI — Recreational Equipment Inc. — is a steel- and timber-framed temple to outdoor consumerism, complete with a glass steeple that encases an indoor climbing spire. It’s something of a spiritual center for downtown Seattle, where “business casual” includes pants with zip-off legs and Vibram 5 Finger “barefoot running” shoes.…
Will Los Angeles bring its cougars back from the brink?
In fall of 2011, biologists Dan Cooper and Miguel Ordeñana installed 13 remote cameras in a 4,000-acre patch of wild hills known as Griffith Park, above Los Angeles, Calif. Each month, they combed through predictable images of a near-urban ecosystem: Coyotes marking, bobcats stalking, deer browsing the chaparral. One evening last March, however, they got…
Global warming’s reluctant poster child
When a report warning of global warming’s disastrous impacts on skiing garnered national headlines in December, activists hoped the news would encourage a serious response both at home and in Washington, D.C. But the ski industry itself, where bad press means all the difference between a banner year and a bust, greeted the headlines with…
Greg Hanscom on ski towns and climate change
KDNK, a public radio station in Carbondale, Colo., regularly interviews High Country News writers and editors, in a feature they call “Sounds of the High Country.” Here, KDNK’s Nelson Harvey talks with HCN contributor Greg Hanscom about his story “Climate change turns an already troubled ski industry on its head.” Thumbnail photo courtesy Flickr user slworking2
Climate change turns an already troubled ski industry on its head
George Shirk sits in his office at the Mammoth Times on a Saturday afternoon, with his dog, Fido, who writes his own weekly column for the paper, curled up underneath the desk. Early December is the quiet time between the Thanksgiving and Christmas rushes at Mammoth Mountain Ski Area, and Shirk, a 60-year-old news veteran…