A conversation with outdoor entrepreneur Bill Bryan.
Recreation
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
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
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
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 […]
Posted inGoat
Four women joyride the flood that will revive the Colorado River Delta
The guides warned us, of course. Or they sort of did. It was sometime after the river outfitter’s shuttle van had passed through the latticework of gates and fences that guards the steep, hairpinned road to the boat-launch at the base of the Hoover Dam, and possibly right before we realized that we had left […]
Posted inWotr
A little paddling won’t hurt the Yellowstone experience
RELATED: Paddling bill is bad news for Yellowstone and Grand Teton parks If we’ve gained any strength as environmentalists, it’s because we’ve stuck to science and public processes. The other stuff is for the bad guys who want to exploit public land for profit. As a longtime activist on forest issues, I could give you […]
Posted inWotr
Paddling bill is bad news for Yellowstone and Grand Teton parks
How boaters are looking for special treatment.
Posted inGoat
Google Street Viewers can now raft the Grand Canyon
Back in the early 1980s, the French philosopher Michel de Certeau went to the 110th floor of the then-brand-new World Trade Center and looked down at Manhattan. It was a revelation to him: “To be lifted to the summit of the World Trade Center is to be lifted out of the city’s grasp. When one […]
Posted inWotr
Let’s not bring Las Vegas to Grand Canyon
Critique of a developer’s plan to haul tourists on a tramway to the Colorado River.
Posted inGoat
Even unpopular national parks are economic engines
Last summer, I visited Rocky Mountain National Park for the first time and, to be frank, was a little disgusted. Not by the park itself – the mountains were beautiful, even if the beetle-kill and $20 backcountry permits were disheartening – but by the salt-water-taffy-munching, airbrushed-tee-shirt-wearing crowd glutting the park’s gateway community of Estes Park, […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 2014: The Gila $olution
Pacific Crest Trail: A Journey in Photographs by Chris Alexander
We recommend using the gallery view to enjoy these photographs. Pacific Crest Trail: A Journey in Photographs Chris Alexander, 120 pages, hardcover: $49.95. wanderingthewild.com, 2013. At 2,660 miles long and with over 400,000 total feet of elevation change, the Pacific Crest Trail, which stretches from Mexico to Canada, is not for the weak-legged. Chris Alexander’s […]
Posted inWotr
Deadly avalanches and the lure of the mountains
Mountains are our barometer and our playground, and, on occasion, our tomb.
Posted inFebruary 17, 2014: The Gila $olution
The Latest: Ecoterrorist in Vail fire is sentenced
Backstory In 1998, the Vail, Colo., ski resort was growing, and so were the tensions around it. Some accused the rich of monopolizing public lands for pricey recreation; others saw Vail’s planned expansion as encroaching on habitat essential to the rare Canada lynx. That October, members of the radical Earth Liberation Front set fire to […]
Posted inWotr
Recapture Canyon and an illegal ATV trail
A Utah county attempts to gain right of way on an illegal ATV trail built on public land.
Posted inWotr
Mountain bikes and wilderness don’t mix
To loosen wildland restrictions now starts us down a slippery slope.
Posted inFebruary 3, 2014: The Hanford Whistleblowers
Public-land users and abusers
I own property that borders several thousand acres of national forest, and with my neighbors control the area’s access road (“Public land, locked up,” HCN, 12/9/13). These public lands are used for grazing and for recreation. We allow public access, but are also aware that the public is basically clueless when it comes to land […]
Posted inWotr
Gliding past while bullets fly
Rafting the Yellowstone River while hunters shoot ducks out of the sky.
Posted inDecember 23, 2013: Beauty or Beast
Not all kayakers oppose limitations
As an avid kayaker in Grand Teton National Park, I was surprised to see it lumped with Yellowstone in “Forbidden waters” (HCN, 11/11/13). Grand Teton does not have a “blanket ban” on kayaking. To the contrary, 36.6 miles of the Snake River in the John D. Rockefeller Memorial Parkway and Grand Teton National Park are […]