By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House Every year, from sunup ‘til sundown, from Memorial Day into October, there’s a traffic jam of sorts high above the Yosemite Valley floor. The trek to the top of Half Dome, Yosemite National Park’s iconic peak, is a destination hike for people from all over the world. The trail, which ascends […]
Recreation
Posted inRange
Exploring the myths of the Yellowstone supervolcano
Editor’s note: These stories were produced for High Country News by students in the University of Montana’s online news class. They will be running over a period of two weeks in the Range blog. See a list of all the stories here. By Tor Haugan When bestselling alternative-history writer Harry Turtledove published a recent novel, […]
Posted inRange
“The Way Home: Returning to our National Parks”
The beauty and grandeur of our national parks may best be witnessed through the eyes of those visiting them for the first time. And in a new film by Amy Marquis, a vision of Yosemite is revealed to a group of people absent from the parks not just over their own lifetimes but for many […]
Posted inRange
Boy Scout habitat takes a hit in Idaho
The US Forest Service maintains habitat for endangered owls and salmon — so why is the agency retreating when it comes to habitat for Boy Scouts? Today, the Idaho Panhandle National Forest is reviewing its forest plan, including its plan for one of the most special places it manages — the Mallard-Larkin Area. Mallard-Larkin is […]
Posted inWotr
When an avalanche comes calling
On Jan. 24, an avalanche raced down the slopes of Mount Taylor, a 10,352-foot peak in Wyoming’s Teton Range. You might think this is hardly worth mentioning, since thousands of avalanches scour mountainsides in the West each winter. The Mount Taylor avalanche, however, has launched a flurry of debate in the world of backcountry skiing […]
Posted inWotr
Nothing to lose but your leash
On a gorgeous sunny morning at a cross-country ski area on the California-Nevada border, the parking lot was full. So why was I the only one skiing while marveling at the deep blue waters of Lake Tahoe? The hut at the end of the trail sat lonely in the sun, waiting for skiers. Had everyone […]
Posted inRange
Tourism creates jobs, but it’s still a mixed bag
In the past few days, Twitter has been hopping with responses to the White House’s #VisitUS campaign. Initiated by President Obama’s speech on January 19th announcing new proposals to boost tourism (and the jobs that it creates), tweeters (tweeps) were invited to solicit visitation to their hometowns, and they have, in droves. “Rapid City SD […]
Posted inRange
Target shooting on public lands should be regulated
Recently, I participated in a spirited response sequence to an blog post in HCN on yet another heated debate about motorized vs. non-motorized travel on public lands. The article’s author, Marian Lyman Kirst, described non-motorized travel as “quiet” use, a handy, aggregate term that is widely used to describe activities such as hiking, bicycling, kayaking, […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2011: Perilous Passages
A Q&A with former Colorado National Monument head Joan Anzelmo
In 1976, fresh from the University of Maryland with degrees in French and Spanish, Joan Anzelmo began her National Park Service career greeting international tourists at the agency’s new Visitor Center in Washington, D.C. But it wasn’t long before the former “city girl” came out West, where she spent most of her 35-year tenure, including […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2011: Out on a limb
What is that dead deer thinking about, and why is he hanging there?
Ten points. That’s what my hunter friends would have noticed. They would have coveted the owner of those 10 points, would have risen early in the autumn morning chill, crept toward him silently as the sun warmed their backs, until they heard the echo of his hooves in the distance, caught a flash of brown, […]
Posted inRange
Open season on Smokey the Bear and Woodsy Owl
By Heather Hansen, Red Lodge Clearing House Some of my most vivid childhood memories are of time spent exploring the outdoors — being a Junior Ranger at the Cape Cod National Seashore, hours-long games of Kick the Can with every kid in the neighborhood, tracking frogs and catching fireflies in mason jars with holes poked in the […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2011: Out on a limb
Mountain bikes are vehicles, too
Mountain bikes are vehicles, and like all vehicle access, Nadia White and her partner got into a landscape they probably wouldn’t have if they had to walk (HCN, 11/14/11, “Food and friendship, fossil-fuel free”). That’s what happens when someone uses mechanical advantage to further access, and like all motorized and mechanical access, it degrades the […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2011: Out on a limb
In appreciation of simplicity
What could be better than harvesting your own wild game without consuming gas by the minute and purchasing hundreds of dollars worth of gadgets to augment the “hunting experience” (HCN, 11/14/11, “Food and friendship, fossil-fuel free”)? Keep it simple. It helps that Nadia and Andrew live practically in the lap of a game reserve. But […]
Posted inRange
Cheers to land trusts
At last it’s December, a month when central and Southern Arizonans can finally turn off the air conditioning for good and revel in the glorious, 70 degree weather. Our beautiful desert beckons, and we respond in droves. Just in time, in keeping with this season of renewal and hope, there is good news to be […]
Posted inGoat
Travel planning theatrics
Currently, Koch’s ranch is split by a slim Bureau of Land Management parcel. That parcel contains a public access road into the Gunnison National Forest. In return for eliminating this forest access, and gaining a few other parcels in the same area (totaling about 1800 acres), Koch is offering the federal government a pair of […]
Posted inNovember 28, 2011: Growing a Revolution
Fighting the wind on a Montana camping trip
My wife does not like the wind. I know this because she says so. “I hate the wind!” Crissie hollers, doing her best to be heard above it. It’s late June, 7 p.m., the first night of a three-day float down the Marias River in northern Montana, 40-some miles from the Canadian border. We woke […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2011: Possessing the Wild
Hunting deer on a mountain bike
In the tangle of gear in my daypack, the phone started ringing. It was a wholly inappropriate moment: My phone is pink, and its jaunty notes clashed with the traditional hunter’s world of blaze orange and camouflage. I sat on a rock by the trail and cringed. Everything about this — my first hunting trip […]
Posted inGoat
Trampled by tourists
In the five years I’ve been an environmental journalist, and during the previous several seasons I worked in conservation, helping manage and mitigate recreational impacts on public trails in Colorado, I’ve often heard the argument that maintaining a constituency for environmental protection depends on getting as many folks as possible out into the places most […]
Posted inRange
Nibbled to death by neighbors: the future of public lands?
Editor’s note: Sharon Friedman blogs on forest policy at “A New Century of Forest Planning” and will be posting occasionally on the Range blog. Some of the “public lands issues” that you usually don’t hear much about in the press are what we call “lands” issues. These have to do with infringements on public land […]
Posted inRange
Rhetoric around wolves clouds reality
If you only believed what you read in the papers, blogs or bumper stickers, you might think that hunters in the northern Rockies are revving up for a war on wolves. But when you look at hard numbers, the picture is quite different. Biologists have taught us that looks can be deceiving and unquestioned prejudices […]