The National Park Service’s new plan for the Grand Canyon river corridor may torpedo wilderness advocates, who are already swimming against a tide of motorboats and helicopters. Ten years ago, the Grand Canyon Management Plan required park managers to devise a new recreation strategy for the Colorado River that would address motorized usage, tourism’s impacts […]
Recreation
Posted inWotr
The unbearable triteness of skiing
Q: Why did Utah choose the slogan “The Greatest Snow on Earth” when it so closely resembled the Ringling Brothers slogan “The Greatest Show on Earth?” A: Both businesses attract a lot of bozos. It’s okay to hate skiing and to own an automobile without a ski rack. You don’t need to have your computer […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2006: Timberlands up for grabs
An ecosystem wanting for wolves
Predators could bring Rocky Mountain National Park back into balance
Posted inWotr
Cruising down a river
There is something liberating about the wide open vistas of a great river, something that encourages a person to break through the normal restraints of civilized society and expand outward — sometimes in ambitious directions, but as often as not along eccentric lines in isolated regions. I witnessed this even before I got out on […]
Posted inWotr
Death in the backcountry
News accounts about fatal avalanches — and we’ve had nine deaths in the West this winter — sometimes give the impression that the difference between life and death is one easy piece of technology: an avalanche beacon. If only the buried victim had been wearing a beacon, goes the story line, a life could have […]
Posted inWotr
Why one hunter is fed up with the NRA
I am a hunter. I care deeply about our hunting heritage and our ability to pass it on. Like most hunters, I consider organizations that work on behalf of hunting my friends, and those that work against hunting my adversaries. Like most hunters, I am confused when the lines become blurred. And today the lines […]
Posted inWotr
Panhandling in our national parks
The Bush administration has spawned more than its fair share of high profile conflicts in our national parks, from opening Yellowstone’s gates to fleets of snowmobiles to its approval of a creationist tract maintaining the Grand Canyon is the product of Noah’s flood. One of the more far-reaching changes in the appearance and operations of […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2005: Back On Track
Business booster still guides national park rules
A newly released National Park Service management policy will reduce environmental protection and boost commercial interests, according to conservation groups. Specific words, entire paragraphs and whole chapters in the new rules trace back to a controversial document written this past summer by Paul Hoffman, the Interior Department’s deputy assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks. […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2005: Back On Track
The Mountain Encyclopedia
The Mountain Encyclopedia Frederic V. Hartemann and Robert Hauptman 291 pages, softcover: $29.95 Taylor Trade Publishing, 2005. The Mountain Encyclopedia delivers just what its title promises: intriguing facts and figures about mountainous topics from calderas and Chomolongma to vicuñas and virga. Colorful maps and photos complement the entries, many of which come from the authors’ […]
Posted inOctober 31, 2005: The Public Lands' Big Cash Crop
A long walk into hope
This is a book by a tall skinny guy with a goofy warm smile who took “a long walk across America’s most hopeful landscape: Vermont’s Champlain Valley and New York’s Adirondacks.” Along the way, he meets up with old friends, many of whom also seem to be tall skinny guys with goofy warm smiles, who […]
Posted inOctober 17, 2005: The Ghosts of Yosemite
His photographs trace the passage of time
NAME Mark Klett VOCATION Photographer and regents’ professor of art at Arizona State University AGE 53 KNOWN FOR Documenting our changing relationship with Western landscapes HE SAYS “Photos always seem to exist as sort of stuffy, unnecessary antiques that we put in a drawer — unless we take them out, put them in current dialogue, […]
Posted inOctober 17, 2005: The Ghosts of Yosemite
Blood spills over a $14 camping fee
When Chief Ranger Jerry Epperson hired me to be a seasonal ranger at Arches National Park in Utah 25 years ago, I wasn’t sure what my duties were. So it seemed like a good idea to ask. Epperson smiled wryly and said, “A ranger should range.” So even though we had to endure chores like […]
Posted inWotr
Nature works better with us
You’ve seen the ads: Some eco-celebrity urges you to make a donation to save one of the earth’s last special places. Your generous gift will help protect this place so it remains healthy and pristine forever. Few of us bother to think that this pitch contains a huge assumption — that protecting a piece of […]
Posted inWotr
Fear and adrenaline can cause a ranger to kill
When Chief Ranger Jerry Epperson hired me to be a seasonal ranger at Arches National Park in Utah so many years ago, I wasn’t sure what my duties were supposed to be. So it seemed like a good idea to ask. Epperson smiled wryly and said, “A ranger should range.” So while all of us […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 2005: Squeezing Water from a Stone
To Save the Wild Bison
To Save the Wild Bison Mary Ann Franke309 pages, hardcover: $29.95University of Oklahoma Press, 2005. Mary Ann Franke traces the controversial history of Yellowstone National Park’s bison, the only wild bison herd that’s persisted since pre-Columbus days. Praised as a potent restorer of biodiversity, the animals have also been persecuted as transmitters of disease; dozens […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 2005: Squeezing Water from a Stone
The Boys of Winter
The Boys of Winter Charles Sanders257 pages, softcover: $19.95University Press of Colorado, 2005. Charles Sanders, an avid skier himself, tells the true stories of three champion skiers who joined the Army’s 10th Mountain Division during World War II. After training on the West’s snowy peaks, they went off to fight — and die — in […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 2005: Squeezing Water from a Stone
Revealed — secret changes to park rules
Critics say the Bush administration is again subverting the public process
Posted inWotr
RVs R Us
Living in a western Colorado mountain town that panders to tourists, vacationers and white-knuckled early retirees driving Greyhound buses converted to homes nicer than I live in, I, too, have suffered. I have been damned, dammed behind these tin-can condos as they’ve labored up passes like mastodons running a marathon. I’ve watched with a perverse […]
Posted inSeptember 5, 2005: Rangeland Revival
The restoration will not be televised
In nature, there is neither right or wrong — only consequences. The truth of that is demonstrated in After the Fires: The Ecology of Change in Yellowstone National Park. The wildfires that swept Yellowstone in 1988 were the first prime-time forest fires, according to the book. Television viewers stared aghast at the raging flames and […]
Posted inSeptember 5, 2005: Rangeland Revival
The meeting of heaven and earth
In the dog days of August, Hunter S. Thompson’s ashes were blasted from a custom-made cannon at the top of a 150-foot tower on his land near Woody Creek, Colo. A lot of people were on hand, including former Sen. George McGovern and actor Johnny Depp, when the “gonzo” writer’s cremated remains, encased with fireworks […]