by David Frey | Feb 17, 2011 | Environment, News, The West
Competitors vie in the 12 Hours of Snowmass mountain bike race. As ski areas like Snowmass Village expand summer offerings, the Forest Service is looking for more authority to permit them. Photo courtesy 12 Hours of Snowmass.
A bipartisan team of legislators is putting forward a bill intended to make it easier for ski resorts to get permission for non-ski activities on Forest Service land.
Touted as a job-boosting measure and a way to improve year-round economies at ski resorts, the legislation is aimed particularly at summertime activities. (more…)
by David Frey | Feb 9, 2011 | Environment, News, The West
High flows from Glen Canyon, mimicking historic floods, could help rebuild an ecosystem harmed by the dam. But the results are fragile. (more…)
by David Frey | Feb 7, 2011 | Environment, News, The West
When Aspen, Colo. resident John Bennett flew across Colorado after the devastating pine beetle infestation had taken effect, he was shocked by what he saw.
“I had a very strong sense of flying over a cemetery. A vast graveyard,” he said. (more…)
by David Frey | Dec 23, 2010 | Environment, News, The West
A mountain biker rides near Crested Butte, Colo. When the 1964 Wilderness Act set aside lands “where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man,” mountain bikes didn’t exist and bicycle riding in the forest was a rarity. Photo by Flickr user Trailsource.com.
Mountain bikers are barred from wilderness areas. But some cyclists are arguing for a Wilderness B designation: wilderness with bikes. Not all wilderness advocates are sold on the idea, though. (more…)
by David Frey | Nov 12, 2010 | Environment, News, The West
“Hate it or like it is irrelevant,” Christo says. “(An artist) wants his project to be discussed.”
In a repurposed garage in Denver’s trendy Lower Downtown neighborhood, the artist Christo stepped up onto the makeshift stage. Across the street in the museum of contemporary art hung sketches from his latest proposed project, Over the River, an ambitious – and highly controversial – work that, if approved, would suspend industrial-strength fabric over Colorado’s Arkansas River.
The plan is loved by some and despised by others, but among this crowd of art enthusiasts, Christo, with his mane of untamed silver hair and a rumpled khaki vest and jeans, received a standing ovation before his first slide wheeled around on the carousel projector.
“This is a love fest,” muttered Lewis Tom, of Denver, one of the few naysayers in the crowd. (more…)
by David Frey | Oct 12, 2010 | Environment, News, The West
David Frey photo.
Leaf-peepers from across Colorado swarm to the Western Slope each fall to catch the golden swaths of aspen forests. In recent years, though, aspen groves in Colorado and elsewhere in the West have been in trouble. Massive stands have been dying off, part of a phenomenon called sudden aspen decline.
But things are looking up for the iconic tree of the West. Recent research shows sudden aspen decline is on the wane. Some areas where the trees have died, though, may never see aspens again. And researchers say the death of these aspens may offer a glimpse of the West as the climate warms. (more…)
