TORREY, Utah – J.W. Powell had returned from an extended summer vacation of camping, backpacking and whitewater boating. He found every outdoor-lover’s dream: beautiful, untouched backcountry and not another tourist on the trail. Best of all, this place was a secret, not even shown on the maps. So Powell did what many avid hikers are […]
Recreation
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
For guilt-free wilderness trips
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook. For guilt-free wilderness trips Leave No Trace, Inc., is a new nonprofit group that provides information about “light on the land” backcountry skills (HCN, 6/12/95). Contact the group at P.O. Box 997, Boulder, CO 80306 (303/442-8222). […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
Did federal negligence help kill two hikers?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook. SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – Who’s to blame when a backcountry hike turns deadly? Expert witnesses are being interviewed now for a trial next year that will ask that question. The case revolves around a disastrous […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
And you thought cows were bad…
I pull apart the sooty rocks, exposing wads of foil, blobs of heated plastic and paper plates. The trash goes in my yellow Woodsy the Owl bag; the ash I scatter in the bushes. This soggy alpine meadow here in Idaho offers no good burial sites for a summer’s accumulation of cinders, and I do […]
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
No more water for Aspen – for now
Aspen Ski Co. lost a bid for expansion when the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in June that the company could not drain a creek to make more artificial snow for its Snowmass Resort. The court agreed with the Aspen Wilderness Workshop and the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund that the Colorado Water Conservation Board had […]
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
A little sarcasm, a lot of love
I love tourists. I love everything about them. They are the mainstay of our economy and the joy of my life. They buy my newspaper even when I pick on them. What? Me pick on tourists? For example, I love the way they turn left onto Center Street from the right-hand lane on Main. I […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Falling arches
Tourist Jim Lin and his wife, Dafang, stopped to snap a picture of the 306-foot-long Landscape Arch at Utah’s Arches National Park June 5, when they were startled by a loud cracking noise. “It was a very big sound, like a dynamite explosion,” Lin said. What they heard was a 44-foot slab tearing away from […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Four-ton bandage applied to trampled peak
Some hikers bag Colorado Fourteeners – the peaks that top 14,000 feet elevation – as others do trout. But what happens when trails are trampled to death? There was so much wear and tear on the North Mount Elbert Trail, which bears nearly 10,000 hikers each summer, that it had to be closed and the […]
Posted inJune 26, 1995: Colorado's prison slayer
Ski resort flops in midst of land boom
Once considered a done deal, a planned ski resort near Steamboat Springs, Colo., suffered a major setback in early June when the principal investor pulled out. Houston-based spokesman Jack Crumpler said the decision by Mitchell Energy to “no longer participate in the funding and active development” of Lake Catamount doesn’t kill the resort. But it […]
Posted inJune 26, 1995: Colorado's prison slayer
Xerox copiers and black helicopters
In early June, Congressman Scott McInnis, a Republican from Colorado, materialized at the Interior Department building in Washington, D.C., and demanded immediate entrance. Unfortunately for the course of history, he had forgotten his photo I.D. and it took him and the reporter he had in tow 10 minutes to get past the guards. (His forgetfulness […]
Posted inJune 12, 1995: The Southwest's last real river: Will it flow on?
Moab area acts to regain control of public lands
MOAB, Utah – Visitors flock here like swallows returning to Capistrano, decked out in spring plumage of spandex, their vehicles sprouting bike racks and kayaks. Locals call this the “silly season” in Utah’s southeastern canyon country. But thanks to a dramatic change in visitor management at several of the area’s most popular attractions, this season […]
Posted inJune 12, 1995: The Southwest's last real river: Will it flow on?
Learning the trick of quiet
Some 50 years ago a bachelor farmer paid tribute to his mother by giving land to Idaho in her name. The park, named for her – Mary Minerva McCroskey State Park – is only 4,400 acres balanced on a narrow ridge called Skyline Drive. No one would ever mistake it for wilderness. Logging clear-cuts border […]
Posted inMay 29, 1995: Politics 101
Ranchers charge tourists for a dose of reality
SALINA, Utah – Jeff Powell and Susan Rottman are schooling about 60 ranchers in the vocabulary of the New West: Family farms are destination vacations, chores are recreational activities and cattle drives are adventure tourism. This is a crash course in “recreation ranching,” a fledgling industry in the mountain states and, some say, the economic […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
Working 24 hours straight
(This is a sidebar to an HCN magazine cover story on the New West’s servant economy.) Copper Mountain Ski Resort, Colorado Greg Smith was a 23-year-old ski bum when he drifted into Summit County in 1983 or so. “Now it’s just the opposite,” he says. “I work a lot and don’t get much chance to […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
The Leadville-Indy 500
(This is a sidebar to an HCN magazine cover story on the New West’s servant economy.) Leadville, Colorado Dead of winter in the highest town in the nation (elevation 10,152 feet), and it’s the kind of morning that requires willpower – at 5:30 a.m., still dark and so cold that the snow squeaks under boots. […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
Ski bums wrapped in concrete
(This is a sidebar to an HCN magazine cover story on the New West’s servant economy.) Vail, Colorado Jeremy Bernier finished his ski season, working his day job and going home each night to sleep like a troll under a bridge. Instead of postcard scenery, when he woke up each morning he saw a grey […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
Pedro Lopez, entrepreneur
(This is a sidebar to an HCN magazine cover story on the New West’s servant economy.) Avon, Colorado Pedro Lopez, from Aguascalientes in central Mexico, says he’s lived for three years in esta trailer. It’s a sheet-metal shack roughly next door to the chic Beaver Creek ski resort. Duct tape holds his cracked windows together. […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
It always comes down to finding a place to live
(This is a sidebar to an HCN magazine cover story on the New West’s servant economy.) Summit County, Colo., the top ski destination in the nation, did more business last season than all the ski areas in Utah. The county’s resorts hosted more than 3 million skier visits. Neighboring Eagle County hosted another 2 million […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
He came to ski and stayed to help
(This is a sidebar to an HCN magazine cover story on the New West’s servant economy.) Roman Catholic Archbishop J. Francis Stafford sprinkled holy water around an apartment complex in the resort town of Silverthorne, Colo., last June. He was blessing the apartments, which the church had helped establish, and he blessed the poverty-stricken families […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
Seeking power, a few ski workers go union
(This is a sidebar to an HCN magazine cover story on the New West’s servant economy.) It was a gritty interruption of ski business: At the base of the main lift of the Red Lodge ski area in Montana, on a busy January Saturday, 15 lift operators staged a sit-down strike. Their starting pay was […]