Mishaps and mayhem from around the West.
Heard Around the West
Posted inOctober 14, 2013: The New Geronimo?
Hikers face assorted hazards, bull elk get revenge on hunters, and more
What have you heard?
Posted inSeptember 16, 2013: Intimate Geographies
Mountain goats, cats, glampers — that’s short for glamorous campers — and more
What have you heard?
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
What’s the nerdiest roadtrip you can think of?
ARIZONAComing back to Las Vegas from the Grand Canyon Skywalk on Arizona’s Hualapai Reservation, 32 Chinese tourists and their guide got more adventure than they planned for. Their driver, Joseph Razon, suddenly — and unintentionally — morphed into the captain of a floating barge when his bus was engulfed in a flash flood estimated at […]
Posted inAugust 19, 2013: Dinosaur Wars
River tubing mishaps and more
MONTANA What could be more delightful than floating down a lazy river on a summer afternoon in an inner tube? Andy Hill and his wife, Amy, were both avid boaters, but had never tried tubing the Clark Fork River until late this July. All was calm and copacetic as they drifted through East Missoula, when […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2013: Mojave Squeeze
Smokey the Bear gets cuddly
THE WESTTwenty-five years ago, river guides who’d mastered the art of steering boats through the Grand Canyon decided to start a magazine. It would celebrate the history of the ancient place and its band of young Colorado River runners, reveling in the job’s excitement and occasional tedium and revealing the sometimes-deadly hazards of ferrying tourists […]
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
Is the Rainbow Gathering a natural disaster?
THE WEST Sizzling, blistering, brutal: Whatever adjective you use to describe the West’s recent heat wave, it’s not strong enough. Normally cool places like Portland and Seattle hit the 90s. Phoenix soared above 104 every day in June, reaching 119 once, and a few nights the low was a baking 91 degrees. Rattlesnakes huddled in […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
My solar panel is bigger than yours
ARIZONA AND THE NATION It is puzzling, perhaps, that solar power accounts for less than 1 percent of the electricity generated in the United States. The cost of solar panels continues to drop, and canny utilities have begun to welcome the new power source as a way to stave off building astronomically expensive new power […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Shooting yourself in the foot–literally
COLORADO AND THE WEST The western Colorado town of Nucla only has about 730 residents, but its council is eager to tell them how to live — only in the name of freedom, of course, and to protect the Second Amendment. Recently, that meant telling residents that they must own a gun. There were loopholes: […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Beavers battle oil and gas spills
THE WEST It takes a bold person to tinker with Smokey Bear, the U.S. Forest Service icon who proclaims, “Only YOU can prevent forest fires.” Messing with the paunchy blue-jeaned bear and his strong message might just earn you a cease and desist letter, plus a threat of jail time and fines. That happened to […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Have a ponytail? Watch out for owls!
MONTANA AND COLORADO As the Missoulian puts it, “There’s rotten cellphone service, there’s nonexistent cellphone service, and then there’s what’s happening just a few miles east of Ovando.” Which is exactly nothing, because a 195-foot-tall cell phone tower near this tiny western Montana town has never connected a call to anybody. Clearview, a Florida-based company, […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
The coming Hairpocalypse
COLORADO It’s been a century or so since anyone definitely saw a North American river otter in Boulder, Colo., so the town’s wildlife staffers were excited recently when a motion-activated camera showed one of the animals — very much alive — on the banks of Boulder Creek, reports the Boulder Daily Camera. For some minutes, […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
A goat walks into a bar…
MONTANA A pygmy goat walks into a bar on a Sunday afternoon — and no, this isn’t the setup to one of those jokes; this really happened in Butte, Mont. The little goat seemed to enjoy the outing until a public-health-conscious patron called the police, who came and took the animal to a shelter. As […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Billionaires for energy conservation
MONTANA “If Montana residents can scrape it up, they can eat it,” said The Associated Press, about a roadkill-salvage bill signed by the governor April 4. “It really is a sin to waste good meat,” is how Democratic state Sen. Larry Jent of Bozeman put it. Elk, deer, antelope and moose are all fair game […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Do spoons make you fat?
UTAH If you want to watch the latest death-defying sport in the red-rock outback of southeastern Utah, check out “World’s largest rope swing” on YouTube, which has racked up more than 17 million views, according to TheSalt Lake Tribune. The video shows roped climbers leaping off the top of an arch and then swinging back […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Trading fish for sewage
One-percenter travel Western “luxury hotels” are offering innovative high-end outdoor recreation experiences to attract wealthy customers, reports The Wall Street Journal. The Hotel Jerome in Aspen, Colo., advertises an “ultimate adventure package” that includes “a three night stay in a Deluxe King room, a snowshoe tour (with lunch) and a twilight dog sledding excursion through […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Pot pilgrims
Traveling in the clouds “Marijuana tourists” are expected to converge on Colorado and Washington, hoping to score without fear of handcuffs, because voters in those states legalized recreational pot last November. Arthur Frommer, founder of the famous Frommer’s Travel Guides, observes that “already, hotels in Seattle and Denver are reporting numerous requests for reservations by […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Football players and other thugs
MONTANA After former Democratic Congressman Pat Williams attacked a certain sacred cow at the University of Montana, reaction was swift. Here’s what he told The New York Times: “We’ve had sex assaults, vandalism, beatings by football players. The university has recruited thugs for its football team, and this thuggery has got to stop.” Williams, now […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Scaredy-cats and dogs
IDAHO Some state legislators like to rail against government intruding into people’s lives — unless, of course, those same legislators want to do the intruding themselves. Idaho Republican State Sen. John Goedde recently introduced a bill requiring all high school students to read “and comprehend” Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, a doorstop of a novel about […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Bright bears
NEVADA Bob Halstead, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects was sad to see Energy Secretary Steven Chu leaving after four years on the job. Grabbing a garland of verbal images to describe Halstead’s reaction, the Las Vegas Review-Journal said Chu was “a breath of fresh air for Nevada after a string of […]