Rick Bombaci hit many nails on the head in “The Big Nasty” (HCN, 5/26/14), but he missed a few. Before my horses and I got too old and lame to hit the mountain trails, I resorted to hanging a trash bag from my saddle horn to carry out the beer cans left by snowmobilers during the […]
Recreation
Posted inJune 9, 2014: Border Out of Control
Snowmobiling for science in Idaho
Scientists and snowmobilers team up for smarter wolverine management.
Posted inMay 26, 2014: The Great Gun Rights Divide
The Big Nasty
On garbage and tolerance in the wilderness.
Posted inMay 26, 2014: The Great Gun Rights Divide
Ordinary heroes
It was refreshing to read the article “Mind Over Mountain” (HCN, 4/14/14). As one who lives with a spinal cord injury, at first I thought, “Oh no, not another hero story.” There are heroes, and Jon Arnow may be one, but there are thousands who live with similar injuries and who “care about the West” […]
Posted inMay 26, 2014: The Great Gun Rights Divide
Respect your rescuers
Thankfully, “How to get search-and-rescued,” Shaina Maytum’s travel horror story (HCN, 4/14/14), was short. Fixated on what the volunteer rescuers were wearing (Postal Service uniform, jeans, Keds), she neglected to admit what’s important: She’s lucky to be alive. Any sense of personal responsibility was missing, along with any gratitude for the search-and-rescue folks who drop […]
Posted inMay 26, 2014: The Great Gun Rights Divide
The Latest: Utah loses Salt Creek road suit
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 […]
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.