For four years in the 1980s, I lived in Vermont, and then left for the West after tiring of its busybody politics. But I certainly admired one aspect of life in the bucolic yet politically correct Green Mountain State: No billboards. Back in 1968, the Vermont Legislature passed a law banning billboards, and since then […]
Recreation
Posted inMay 16, 2005: Unsalvageable
Why should the Arctic Refuge matter to the ski industry?
Why should the 19 million acres of wilderness that make up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the potential oil beneath it, and its resident herd of caribou, matter at all to the ski industry? Sure, the refuge in Alaska is wild and beautiful, it’s pristine, it’s a crown jewel of wilderness. We in the ski […]
Posted inWotr
My kind of river flows fast and gritty brown
My kind of river, the White. Near twilight, we camp at the put-in, a two-track rut into a brush-ringed clearing on the outskirts of Rangely, Colo. No ramp, no parking, no fire grates, no tables, no signs — a wide spot on the river bank just out of town, where we lean our canoes against […]
Posted inApril 18, 2005: What Happened to Winter?
Skiing, or wheeling and dealing?
New resorts smell a lot like real estate bonanzas
Posted inWotr
Mickey Moose and the West’s newest frontier
The Walt Disney Company is coming to Yellowstone National Park, and already the “Mickey Moose” jokes have started. What’s not funny is the way this venture by a multinational corporation marks a new frontier for the West. In a quiet announcement last month, Disney said it intended to test-launch a “Quest for the West” weeklong […]
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
Ski areas’ ‘green’ image not backed by action
Researchers call ‘Sustainable Slopes’ program ‘greenwashing’
Posted inMarch 7, 2005: Anarchy in the Gas Fields
On the dark side of the park: a ranger’s memoir
Park ranger Jordan Fisher Smith dreamed of a career in Yosemite or Grand Teton, but fate led him to California’s Auburn State Recreation Area, a place he calls “the inverse of Yellowstone.” During his 14 years as a ranger in the canyons of the American River, the long-planned Auburn Dam loomed over the place, always […]
Posted inWotr
Ski areas must move to end white on white
It certainly isn’t obvious when you arrive at a ski resort in the West, but nearly all are located primarily on publicly owned lands. It is, to use the U.S. Forest Service’s pet phrase, a “partnership.” The federal government provides most of the land; the ski area operators run the lifts and cafeterias. In theory, […]
Posted inWotr
You don’t need a motor to experience Yellowstone
While I disagree with Interior Secretary Gale Norton’s agenda for Yellowstone National Park, I have to admire her political smarts. She showed great form during her recent snowmobile and snow coach tour of the park this winter. Secretary Norton charmed reporters with her grit, gamely bouncing through sub-zero temperatures on a three-hour snowmobile excursion, and […]
Posted inWotr
The Far East yearns for the Wild West
When my friend Kevin passed through South Dakota on a cross-country road trip a few years back, I did the decent thing as a host and took him to see Mount Rushmore. Why pass by the ninth or tenth wonder of the world and not at least stop by? Still, it’s one of those things […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 2005: Have Environmentalists Failed the West?
Snowmaking on sacred slopes stirs controversy
The U.S. Forest Service will soon decide whether to allow the owners of an Arizona ski resort to create artificial snow from the city of Flagstaff’s treated wastewater. Since 1937, recreational refugees from Phoenix and Flagstaff have enjoyed the 777-acre Arizona Snowbowl ski area in the San Francisco Peaks. On average, the resort gets 260 […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 2005: Have Environmentalists Failed the West?
Let’s not ram more boats through the Grand Canyon
Each year, nearly 5 million people visit the Grand Canyon, most of them traveling to the South Rim, where they spend as much time looking for a parking place as they do looking at the canyon. Only a small fraction venture below the rim on a trail. Another 22,000 people a year see the canyon […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 2005: The Asphalt Graveyard
Mountain Harmonies
Mountain Harmonies Howard L. Smith 192 pages, hardcover, $23.95. University of New Mexico Press, 2004. In Mountain Harmonies, Howard Smith offers more than musings on environmental philosophy: He crafts a useful guidebook of sorts that takes readers from Glacier National Park to New Mexico’s Gila Wilderness. Whether you travel a thousand miles or two blocks […]
Posted inWotr
Kerry blue and snow white: Ski counties vote Democratic
The recent Snowdown festival in my town of Durango, Colo., celebrated with silly costumes, a parade, risque humor and even some events centered on snow. People threw themselves down the slopes on everything from skis and snowboards to kayaks, bicycles and even unicycles. The enthusiastic diversity shows how ski areas have evolved, and it also […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 2005: The Asphalt Graveyard
Developers push ahead with mammoth ski village
Feds say they’re largely powerless to regulate impacts of ‘The Village at Wolf Creek’
Posted inFebruary 7, 2005: The Asphalt Graveyard
‘Redneck liberal’ defends a hard-to-love landscape
“I want to see people enjoy this country the way it was meant to be enjoyed, the way God created it,” says Tim Faber, speaking about Montana’s arid, rough-hewn Missouri River Breaks. “It’s a place like no other place in the world.” Faber grew up on a cattle ranch in the Bear’s Paw Mountains east […]
Posted inWotr
Let’s not ram more boats through the Grand Canyon
Each year, nearly 5 million people visit the Grand Canyon, most traveling to the South Rim where they spend as much time looking for a parking place as they do looking at the canyon. Only a few venture below the rim on a trail. Another 22,000 people a year see the canyon from the bottom […]
Posted inJanuary 24, 2005: Written in the Rings
The Utah backcountry gets crowded
And a chance for change in the Wasatch comes and goes
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
Lawsuits swarm around Yellowstone snowmobiles
As predicted, after seven years of lawsuits, contradictory plans and court rulings, the National Park Service announced on Nov. 4 that it will continue to allow hundreds of snowmobiles per day into Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks for the next three winters (HCN, 11/8/04: Judge vaporizes Yellowstone snowmobile ban). The new rules will allow […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
Anasazi outpost dodges the drill
In early December, Hovenweep National Monument, in the remote southeast corner of Utah, narrowly escaped an attempt to lease nearby land for oil and gas drilling. The monument’s 400-acre Square Tower unit was created in 1923 to protect the remains of an almost 800-year-old Anasazi settlement, where as many as 500 people once lived. From […]