BackstoryRevised Statute 2477, passed in 1866, allowed settlers to build highways across public land. Western counties later exploited it to reopen and maintain abandoned routes, even in national parks and wilderness study areas (“The road to nowhere,” HCN, 12/20/04). In 2004, Utah and San Juan County filed an R.S. 2477 suit to reopen the Salt […]
Recreation
Posted inWotr
Outdoor recreation binds us in the West
Travelling through the Beehive State recently, I was struck by two completely different stories emerging from Utah. On one weekend, San Juan County Commissioner Phil Lyman led a group of angry protesters — many of them armed — on an illegal ATV ride through Recapture Canyon, the site of 1,000-year-old Ancestral Puebloan dwellings that some […]
Posted inGoat
Utah denied claim to road in Canyonlands National Park
High Country News has been around for 44 years now … and sometimes it feels like we’ve been covering certain stories for darn near that long too. Like the Animas-La Plata water project in southern Colorado, meant to fulfill the Utes’ water rights, or the Central Arizona Project, which supplies Phoenix, Scottsdale and other major […]
Posted inArticles
A reluctant rebellion in the Utah desert
For ATVers at Recapture Canyon, realpolitik meets out-of-town zeal.
Posted inGoat
Unlikely partnership seeks to end turf wars in western Colorado
The room was a brawl waiting to happen. Horseback riders sat next to mountain bikers. ATV, jeep and motorbike enthusiasts took their seats across from wilderness, hiking and “quiet trail” advocates. Even a survey of peoples’ heads revealed the potential tension: There were cowboy hats and shiny, banker-like pates; spiky mullets and hair flattened by […]
Posted inMay 12, 2014: Parks for All?
Hunting for conservation dollars
State wildlife agencies struggle to broaden funding as their duties expand.
Posted inMay 12, 2014: Parks for All?
This is our land – until it’s privatized
It’s 6 a.m. on April 8 as I head out for a hike on Mount Lemmon, in Arizona’s Coronado National Forest. Today, the temperature in Tucson will break 90 degrees, so I’m looking forward to the cooler, higher elevations. Passing Rose Canyon, I notice that the campground is still closed. Making a quick decision, I […]
Posted inApril 28, 2014: Two-Wheel Revolution
Two-wheel revolution in Gallup
Can a bunch of trails and bikes transform this down-and-out New Mexico town?
Posted inApril 14, 2014: A landscape of surprises
A Japanese fly-fishing art comes to life
Centuries-old tenkara is becoming a hit on streams in the American West.
Posted inGoat
Has Durango sold its river, and its soul, to recreation?
Several months ago, an old friend and sometime source contacted me with a tip on a big local story going down here in Durango, with statewide and even national implications. I had been looking around the immediate region for something into which I could dig my investigative reporting teeth. This might be it. A week […]
Posted inApril 14, 2014: A landscape of surprises
Mind over mountain
As adaptive adventure sports boom in the West, a paralyzed athlete pushes his limits.
Posted inApril 14, 2014: A landscape of surprises
Touring Indian Country via footrace
How to run in a reservation race that’s both sport and cultural tradition.
Posted inApril 14, 2014: A landscape of surprises
Native American tourism quietly thrives
Even the customers seem to emerge from thin air.
Posted inApril 14, 2014: A landscape of surprises
Adventure travel vs. conservation
A conversation with outdoor entrepreneur Bill Bryan.
Posted inGoat
Corporate giant Xanterra takes over operations at Glacier National Park
As winter fades to bright green spring in northwest Montana, three men are hitting the pavement in the towns of Kalispell, Whitefish and Columbia Falls, shaking hands at local businesses and visiting Rotary Clubs like politicians on the campaign trail. The comparison isn’t far off: the men are the new faces of Glacier National Park, […]
Posted inApril 14, 2014: A landscape of surprises
49 trout streams of southern Colorado
49 Trout Streams of Southern Colorado Mark D. Williams and W. Chad McPhail, 120 pages, softcover:$27.95. University of New Mexico Press. 2013. For southern Colorado anglers in search of plentiful, hard-fighting trout, getting to gold-medal waters is the easy part: there’s the Gunnison, the Frying Pan, and the Animas, to name a few. But as […]
Posted inApril 14, 2014: A landscape of surprises
Backpacking with monster skeeters
An Alaska encounter with the fiercest of the 176 mosquito species that roam the U.S.
Posted inApril 14, 2014: A landscape of surprises
Houseboaters vs. river runners
Andrew Gulliford, a professor in Durango, Colo., spent five days last summer on a houseboat floating around Utah’s most famous party scene, Lake Powell – a reservoir on the Colorado River – and then another five running the Yampa and Green rivers on the Colorado-Utah border. Gulliford noticed sharp differences between the cultures of houseboating […]
Posted inApril 14, 2014: A landscape of surprises
How to travel the West on $5,000 per day
(NOTE this is part of the April 2014 special issue of the HCN magazine devoted to travel in the West.) Hermès Hiking BootsThe Paris company offers a “low boot in black oily calfskin” with a “palladium plated Albion buckle, orange lining … double leather sole and lugged rubber sole, water-resistant.” The Wall Street Journal praises […]