Frackin’ Wells! Natural gas drilling is exempt from environmental laws like the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act and Safe Drinking Water Act. Photo: Courtesy Ecoflight

During his 40 years as a river rafting outfitter, Tom Kleinschnitz has floated thousands of people down Utah’s Green River. Customers from across the country pay upward of $1,000 for five-day trips through Desolation Canyon, a stretch of rapids and untamed beauty that has been called one of the wildest places in the lower 48. Now, Kleinschnitz and other longtime river rats are worried about the future of the Green and their guiding businesses.

The threat? America’s thirst for energy. Public lands around Desolation Canyon have been leased for natural gas drilling, part of a boom that is consuming many of the West’s last wide-open spaces.

Energy sprawl is creeping across public lands in Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and the Dakotas. Nearly 120,000 wells were drilled West-wide during the past decade, and more than 44 million acres of federal public lands are now leased to energy companies, mostly for natural gas drilling. “My customers tell me they didn’t realize there was this much drilling going on,” says Kleinschnitz, whose company, Adventure Bound, is based in Grand Junction. “People come out here to see nature and wildlife. They don’t want to see gas fields.”

Speaking Up

For boaters, hikers, mountain bikers, climbers, hunters, fishermen and other lovers of the great outdoors, natural gas exploration is eliminating some of the last unmarred scenic landscapes. Recreational crown jewels such as Wyoming’s Red Desert and Upper Green River, Colorado’s Roan Plateau and public lands adjacent to Utah’s Arches and Canyonlands national parks are either already being drilled or under threat.

The outdoor industry is becoming increasingly vocal about the need to minimize the damage caused by drilling. “Climbers don’t want to go to an area that is trashed and littered with oil and gas rigs,” says Jason Keith, policy director for the Access Fund, which works with 90 local climbing clubs nationwide to protect access to rock climbing areas. “We have a very real interest in preserving the character of the locations where we love to climb. Climbing is not just about getting a workout, or we’d go to a gym.”

Access Fund is part of the Outdoor Alliance, which was formed in part to counter the blitz of energy exploration on public lands during the past decade. The alliance also includes the International Mountain Bicycling Association, American Canoe Association, American Hiking Society, American Whitewater and the Winter Wildlands Alliance. While their mission is to promote conservation that benefits human-powered recreation, these groups must toe a fine line when opposing energy extraction, lest they appear partisan.

The International Mountain Bike Association took heat from some members when it sent out action alerts related to proposed gas drilling near Moab, Utah, in 2009. “People want to ride their mountain bikes in beautiful landscapes, but we also realize that energy development needs to take place,” says IMBA communications director Mark Eller. “We make sure there are trails directly at stake before we get involved.” IMBA will not raise objections if gas wells, for instance, would ruin the views from prime singletrack. But it will act if the roads associated with gas field development would trample existing trails.

Hoping to prevent drilling in wilderness-quality roadless areas, a large group of Westerners including rafting outfitters, guides and other sportsmen packed a hearing room in Washington, DC, in February to testify on behalf of a Wild Lands policy instituted by the Obama administration. The Wild Lands executive order would have required the Bureau of Land Management to inventory wilderness quality lands, with an eye toward preserving some of these areas for recreation and conservation under the BLM’s multiple-use mandate. Critics, however, called the Wild Lands policy a land grab and a jobs killer and, in April, the new Congress killed the policy and prohibited the Interior Department from funding similar initiatives.

Supporters were frustrated. “The outdoor recreation industry is dependent on the health of our public lands,” testified Peter Metcalf, CEO of Black Diamond Equipment. “These lands, in their natural undeveloped state, have economic value.” Affecting roughly five million acres, the area of lands that would be protected is tiny compared to the 44 million acres leased for drilling. A long list of outfitters and guides also signed a letter to the Natural Resources Committee in support of Wild Lands, saying that protected public lands create jobs and bring more long-term prosperity than the boom-and-bust of extractive industries.

Clean Natural Gas?

Drilling has slowed since 2008, when the economic meltdown and a glut of natural gas on the market depressed prices, and due to the Obama administration’s efforts to end the fast-track leasing policies of the Bush White House. Even so, the leasing of public lands continues under Obama, just at a more measured pace. Gas drilling is problematic for outdoors lovers because the gas fields sprawl across large areas. These gas fields are also a new source of air and water pollution. Visit any of the major gas fields of the West and it becomes clear that so-called “clean natural gas” is a misnomer. Sure, gas emits fewer pollutants and greenhouse gasses that coal when burned, but extracting it is dirty business.

Most of the remaining domestic reserves of natural gas are so-called “unconventional” deposits trapped in shale, coal and sandstone. To free the gas, companies pump chemicals, sand and water into the ground under high pressure to fracture, or frack, the rock formations. Water is then pumped out of the fractured formations, freeing the gas, which is piped to processing facilities to remove impurities. This toxic “produced water” is then dumped in holding ponds to evaporate. The water from hydraulic fracturing has been found to contain benzene, toluene and other carcinogens, along with low levels of radiation in some cases.

This type of drilling is legal only because gas drillers have been exempted from certain provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act, Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act. Legislation to remove these exemptions has been introduced in Congress but its prospects of passage are dim. The Environmental Protection Agency has begun a study of hydraulic fracturing to determine its impact on groundwater, but efforts are underway in Congress to cut funding.

A Gassy Future

Ironically, environmental initiatives are partly responsible for this rush to extract more natural gas. Groups including the Sierra Club have helped defeat plans to build up to 100 new coal-fired power plants in the United States, including in Colorado. Instead, utilities are building gas-fired power plants. Electricity from natural gas now comprises about 25 percent of the nation’s energy supply, and that number is growing. Meantime, Western coal mines are looking for new markets and have begun shipping more product to China. This would undo all the environmental gains associated with stopping the coal power plants in the United States.

Outdoor enthusiasts will become more familiar with gas wells on public lands. The United States will need 14 percent more energy in 2035 than it did in 2008, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Much of that new energy is expected to come from domestic natural gas. As the trade group America’s Natural Gas Alliance says, the United States has more natural gas than Saudi Arabia has oil.

The only question is whether this gas will be extracted with the same crude techniques used today, or if new policies and laws will require drilling to be done in a manner that minimizes pollution and visual scarring. “A society needs places to escape,” says Metcalf. “We in the United States don’t have a Sistine Chapel or pyramids. But we do have Yellowstone and Arches National Park and Canyonlands. Can’t we preserve some places?” Otherwise, he says, “our children and grandchildren will curse us.”

Eco Eye in the Sky

Pilot Bruce Gordon has watched from the sky as gas fields have proliferated across Western Colorado. “I can’t fly for 30 minutes in any direction without seeing drilling rigs and roads and well pads,” says Gordon, founder of Aspen-based Ecoflight. The nonprofit flies politicians, community leaders, students, journalists and environmental activists over energy fields to provide an aerial perspective.

“By getting people up in the air we hope to inform the public. A lot of people say they didn’t know how expansive the gas fields are.”

Here are a few areas that Gordon and conservationists are eyeing:

Hunters call Colorado’s Roan Plateau the “deer factory.” But the deer factory’s once-prolific game herds are in trouble. The Bush administration leased 54,000 acres atop the 3,000-foot plateau to energy companies, and opponents are now suing to overturn the deal. Meantime, much of the land at the base of the Roan has already been drilled. “I used to deer hunt up there. But now it’s not worth it,” says Bill Dvorak, who works with Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development. “It’s all roads and pipelines and well pads.” Visit saveroanplateau.org to learn more.

A proposal to drill 136 wells across 400 acres in Wyoming’s Hoback Basin outside of Jackson has generated stiff opposition from local residents. To develop the gas field the company would plow 30 miles of new roads into a roadless area that is now home to native cutthroat trout. Visit wyomingrange.org

The Obama administration suspended multiple gas drilling leases around Utah’s Arches and Canyonlands national parks after determining that they were granted improperly during the last days of the Bush administration. Drilling here would have wrecked views and jeopardized climbing, hiking and mountain biking access to the popular Courthouse Pasture. But the drill rigs could come back. The leases are to come back up for sale again in 2012.

Read more about the drilling here.

Paul Tolme’s work has appeared in Newsweek, National Wildlife, Popular Mechanics and Ski. See more of his writing at journalistontheloose.com.

Spectator Sport: Paddle at community parks or just hang out and watch. Photo: Courtesy Shane Sigle/REP

It’s hard to improve upon Mother Nature in Colorado. But even with 54 Fourteeners and mountains of snowfall, the state is leading the charge in an effort to do just that in the unlikeliest of places: rivers.

In a state where every single river flows out and none come in, including such behemoths as the Colorado, Arkansas, Animas, Rio Grande, Yampa, Gunnison and North and South Plattes, a move is underway to make our waterways even better for paddling. Communities are converting their downtown river corridors into a new wave of whitewater parks that are bringing recreation and new revenue streams to local economies.

“Colorado is the leader of the whitewater park trend, no doubt,” says Gary Lacy of Boulder’s Recreation Engineering & Planning (REP), which has designed the majority of such parks in the country. “It boils down to the state’s unique geography and strong boating community.”

The numbers tell the story. Colorado—which hosted the first-ever international whitewater park conference in 2005 in Glenwood Springs, and another last  year in Salida—has nearly 30 such parks, more than a third of the country’s total. They’re located everywhere there’s water, gradient and people, from resorts like Vail, Breckenridge and Steamboat Springs to towns like Lyons, Boulder, Pagosa Springs, Salida and Pueblo. The trend’s top designers are concentrated in Colorado as well. Joining Lacy’s operation in Boulder is S2O Designs, spearheaded by former REP employee and three-time World Cup slalom champion Scott Shipley; the McLaughlin Whitewater Design Group in Denver, which designed Confluence Park on the South Platte and the 1996 Olympic course on Tennessee’s Ocoee River; and Whitewater Parks International, one of whose principals is based in Carbondale and which served as the lead design firm for the 2012 London Olympic course.

Meanwhile, back in the Rockies, the craze is still running as strong as spring runoff. Last year Salida and Buena Vista each put in two new waves, and the Lawson Whitewater Park on Clear Creek opened. Steamboat rebuilt its popular C-hole wave this past November, with plans for more in the future, and a new wave opens in Gunnison this spring. The Grand County Board of Commissioners recently applied for water rights associated with two new whitewater parks on the Colorado — one in Hot Sulphur Springs and the other below Gore Canyon.

Gold Rush

One of the most recent additions to the craze is the Glenwood Whitewater Park on the Colorado River in Glenwood Springs, which opened in April 2008 and hosted the National Freestyle Championships. Seven years in the planning, its construction was made possible by an $888,000 City Council grant. Thanks to a near-record water year, word on the new wave spread quickly, luring even boardsurfers to town. Head there today and you’ll see as many people shredding it on surfboards as in kayaks. The last two years it’s even hosted the standup paddleboard national river championships.

All this is paying huge dividends for the town. “It balances out the tourist season, eliminating the slower economic periods of the year,” says Glenwood spokesperson Vicky Nash. “It’s a great asset to the community.”

Golden has also seen gold from its whitewater park. The first publicly-funded park in the nation, its first phase was built for $165,000 by Lacy in 1996, just a stone’s throw upstream from the Coors factory. Now it’s given the town far more to hang its hat on than just beer. According to Dan Hartman, the city’s director of public works, the park brings in 40,000 visitors and between $2.5 million and $4 million annually.

Other parks are similarly successful. According to a 2005 report by Stratus Consulting, features like Steamboat’s C-hole—which now hosts the annual Paddling Life Invitational, drawing some of the best kayakers in the world—can bring in as much as $7.2 million annually to the local economy. Salida’s park is also a boon. “It impacts all of downtown,” says REP’s Mike Harvey, also a partner in Salida company Bad Fish, which builds surfboards specifically for one of Salida’s waves. “Our annual FIBArk festival used to lose money. Now it makes more than $50,000 per year. And it’s all due to the park. It’s like South Beach, Rocky Mountain-style.”

Harvey is quick to give a nod to Golden for setting the trend. “While boaters here started moving rocks around in the Arkansas back in the ‘60s, Golden was the first real publicly funded whitewater park in the country, built explicitly for whitewater paddling,” he says. “It was the spark that helped spread the trend across the U.S.”

Right of Water

If it got the manmade wave trend rolling, it also did so for water rights. In 2001, Golden won a decision from the Colorado Supreme Court guaranteeing minimum flows for its park, creating a new fork in the state’s convoluted water-rights landscape. To do so, it had to prove it could capture, control and divert the water; put it to “beneficial” use; and show the minimum flow necessary for a reasonable recreational experience. The result was precedent setting. The Recreational In-Channel Diversion (RICD) the city received established for the first time that recreation is as beneficial a use of water as agriculture, industry and development. Unlike other rights, this new breed of water right is also non-consumptive, meaning it can still be used to satisfy other downstream rights. Vail, Breckenridge, Pueblo, Gunnison and Steamboat Springs quickly followed suit to secure recreational flows for their parks.

“The Golden decision was the big, big breakthrough for recreational water rights cases,” says water attorney Steve Bushong of Denver’s Porzak, Browning and Bushong. “These municipalities are trying to protect their investment, and the parks provide the diversion and control necessary to meet the right’s requirements. It’s the new West, showing that recreation has come of age.”

Grand County’s filing seeks to protect 900 cfs in the Colorado at Hot Sulphur Springs and 2,500 cfs below Gore Canyon between April 1 and October 15. As with the others, the rights are contingent on the development of in-channel features that will put the water to beneficial use. “The rights are supported as mitigation of additional depletions from Windy Gap Reservoir and additional storage in the Upper Colorado River basin,” says American Whitewater Colorado Stewardship Director Nathan Fey, whose group worked with Grand County to explore RICDs to help protect flows in the Colorado. “We’ve worked with landowners, outfitters and Grand County staff to identify potential locations of whitewater features and identify the flows necessary to preserve river-based recreation.”

Going Nationwide

The trend is seeping elsewhere. This past year Lacy completed a course on the North Fork Payette River in Idaho, as well as a $21 million park on the Bow River in Alberta. In the once automotive hotbed of Michigan, no fewer than four new parks are underway, creating an economic engine that relies on water instead of gasoline. In many cases, they also convert outdated and dangerous low-head dams into recreational amenities that can be enjoyed by the entire community.

They’re large and small, from a $1.5 million park on the Truckee River in downtown Reno, Nev., to the $37 million, REP-designed National Whitewater Center in Charlotte, N.C., and $23 million McLaughlin-designed Adventure Sports Center atop Maryland’s Wisp ski area. While some are entirely artificial—like the Whitewater Center and Sports Center, which pump water back upstream and include George Jetson-like conveyer belts for kayakers—others rely on natural runoff to enhance downtown river corridors

While the world got its first look at a man-made slalom course at the 1972 Olympics in Augsburg, Germany, Colorado has emerged as the trend’s current frontrunner – ever since Denver modified a low-head dam at Confluence Park on the South Platte in 1974. Then Golden cemented the trend in stone. “Golden broke the mold by allocating municipal funds solely for a destination whitewater park,” says Lacy. “They approached it as they would a new softball field.”

That approach and countless others are putting Colorado on the whitewater park map just like its slopes do so in the world of skiing. And it’s only fitting that both rely on two of the state’s best recreational traits: gradient and precipitation. “Just like our skiing, Colorado’s rivers are great to begin with,” says Lacy. “We’re just doing what we can to make them that much better and even more appealing to the masses.”

The Man Behind the Whitewater

REP Founder Gary Lacy

What kind of person bases his career around designing and building kayaking parks? Someone who lives and breathes his work like Gary Lacy.

Lacy, 55, founded Recreation Engineering & Planning in Boulder in 1983 and has since seen it grow into the leading whitewater park company in the nation, if not world, with offices along Boulder Creek in Boulder, Colo., and on the Arkansas River in Salida, Colo. From designing the Boulder Creek park in 1990 and Golden’s Clear Creek park in 1996, to the $37 million National Whitewater Center in Charlotte, N.C., and last summer’s $21 million park on Alberta’s Bow River, he’s had a hand in courses big and small, and has paddled every single one.

But despite his penchant for parks, his real love is downriver paddling. He’s competed in Salida’s 26-mile FIBArk downriver race every year since 1974—that’s 36 straight times for those counting—winning it six times and placing second 15. He competed in the downriver World Championships in Wales in 1980 and again in France in 1999. He also tackles water’s frozen medium, racing Wisconsin’s annual 52-km Birkenbeiner event 22 times and nearly every major Nordic race in Colorado. His kids, Mason and Spencer, are no slouches either, racing in the Downriver Junior World Championships in Switzerland.

While he admits to having shortcomings in freestyle events, he’s happy to play in the parks he creates and is glad to make room in the eddies for others to enjoy his whitewater wares. “‘Whitewater park’ wasn’t even a word when we got started,” says Lacy, who’s joined in his firm by course designers Mike Harvey and Shane Sigle. “We’ve been at it a long time and have seen a total transformation in their acceptance across the country. And we’re all pretty active paddlers ourselves, which makes the work all that much more enjoyable.”

Get Wet

With this year’s above-average snowfall, there’s no better time to kayak Colorado’s latest crop of man-made whitewater wares. Eschew the wilderness for a weekend and hit any of the following to see what the latest boating buzz is all about.

Check out these five Front Range paddle parks:

Clear Creek, Golden
Golden’s famous water is now used for more than just beer. A centerpiece and economic catalyst for the city, Golden’s Clear Creek Whitewater Park is located on 10th and Maple streets, just south of Lion’s Park. Hit one of 13 drops on the 800-foot-long man-made course, all of which was snow you skied during the winter at Loveland.

Arkansas River, Pueblo
Finished in 2005, the downtown Pueblo course on the Arkansas River was built by the Army Corps of Engineers as a fish passage and to ease navigation around an outdated and dangerous 12-foot-high dam. By no coincidence, it’s also a great passage for paddlers, with eight natural boulder holes for messing about in boats.

South Platte/Confluence Park, Denver
Confluence Park in downtown Denver serves double duty as paddling playground and flood control. Originally built in 1974 and refurbished twenty years later, it now includes sidewalks, planters, flood-control and whitewater features. Plus, if you forget your nose plugs (which you’ll want for water-quality issues), you can head to REI right next store.

St. Vrain River, Lyons
The Lyons course was remodeled in 2006, with plenty of rocks to choose from local quarries. Hit the newly improved Black Bear and October holes for a solid sousing, and swing by June 10-12 for the Lyons Outdoor Games, featuring events, competitions, bands and Dale’s Pale Ale.

Boulder Creek, Boulder
Long a haven for inner-tubers, Boulder Creek became Graceland for kayakers in 1990 with the building of a whitewater park at Eben G. Fine Park. Continue down toward the library and you’ll see park-designer Gary Lacy’s house on the right. Hit it May 28-30 and enjoy the 24th Annual Boulder Creek Festival between 9th and 14th streets, featuring 12 event areas and more than 500 vendors.

Want to build a whitewater park in your community? Start a conversation within your town, get elected officials onboard and then contact REP and learn how to make it happen. 303-545-5883; wwparks.com

Colorado cities are adopting pedal power as a viable means of alternative transportation but will bike share programs catch on with commuters?

Even by the standards of bicycle-happy Boulder, Elizabeth Train is something of an extremist. She owns seven bikes. But she’s looking forward to a new service that will let her leave them all at home and still pedal around downtown.

It’s called bike sharing, and this spring Boulder will join Denver as one of the first U.S. cities to adopt this alternative transportation system. The United States is playing catch-up with the rest of the world, where bike sharing has become part of the urban experience in cities including Paris, Barcelona, London and Montreal.

“A lot of people say, ‘why do you even need a system? Everyone rides here,’ ” Train says. But for errands or a lunchtime excursion out of the office, she says, a bike share bike offers no-hassle convenience. “You get on, you ride where you need to go, dock it back in the station and walk away. It’s really a sort of liberating feeling.”

Shiny Happy People: Boulder B-Cyclers giddy over cutting carbon emissions. Photo: Boulder B-Cycle.

Train hopes that free feeling will spread to others in Boulder. She is one of three employees of a new nonprofit organization that will operate the city’s bike share system. Called Boulder B-cycle, the $1.1-million system is scheduled to launch May 20—just in time for Memorial Day Weekend. It will be a sister system to Denver B-cycle, which opens a second season in March.

Checking out a bike in either city is simple: Walk up to a bike kiosk, wave a membership card near the touchscreen, and a cheery red B-cycle bike pops out. Ride the bike to a kiosk closest to your destination, park it in an empty slot, and walk away. The system automatically locks the bike for the next user and records the time you spent in the saddle. Use it for less than an hour (in Boulder) or 30 minutes (in Denver), and there’s no charge beyond your membership fee. Meanwhile, an on-board computer tracks the miles you covered and the calories you burned.

Lewis Wolman, executive director of Boulder B-cycle, believes Boulderites will embrace the new system because the city has such an ingrained bike culture.

“They love bicycles. They love community. They love alternative transportation. They love sustainable ways to address urban challenges. They love solutions and they love a vital quality-of-life city,” he says.

Urban Mobility
Last spring, Denver became the first U.S. city to launch the new generation of bike share systems. Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, now Colorado’s governor, joined hundreds of enthusiasts to inaugurate Denver B-cycle—appropriately enough, on Earth Day.

Later in 2010, bike share systems debuted in Minneapolis, Chicago and Washington, D.C. Many more are launching this year, and the big Kahuna—New York City—expects to unveil a 10,000-bike system in 2012.
Before shutting down for the winter, Denver B-cycle logged nearly 103,000 rides in less than seven months. The average trip was two miles. That’s a significant number, because 40 percent of all car trips taken in the U.S. are two miles or less. Cycling advocates say that replacing even some of these car trips by bikes or other means can significantly reduce traffic congestion and carbon emissions.

Denver was surprised by the low number of annual memberships compared with “walk-up” riders, Burnap said, indicating that most users were out-of-towners, or locals who used the system for recreation instead of for commuting.
“Overall, we’re really happy with the use, no matter what its reason, because it’s getting people on bikes and they’re having fun,” says Parry Burnap, executive director of Denver B-cycle.

Denver B-cycle will reopen in early March, with 500 bikes at 50 stations. Burnap hopes the system can add another 15 stations and 150 bikes this year. The biggest improvement Denver members will see this year is a redesign of the kiosk software and touchscreens. And the partnership between the Boulder and Denver systems should be especially good news for commuters. Boulder and Denver B-cycle members will be able to use the other system at no extra cost. That means a Boulder member could, for example, ride a Boulder B-cycle bike to the Boulder Transit Center, hop on the RTD Denver Express bus to downtown Denver, then pick up a Denver B-cycle bike at Union Station and pedal the last mile or two to the office.

“We just want it to be seamless,” Burnap says.

Meanwhile, a nonprofit group in Aspen hopes to launch a 100-bike system later this summer. Called WE-cycle, the system is intended to appeal to the resort town’s flood of summer visitors.

“There’s a large group of folks who come into work every day, riding the bus or driving, and we think they’ll be a huge user group,” says Philip Jeffreys, who co-founded WE-cycle with Mirte Mallory. “And, of course, there are a lot of visitors in the summer. With the congestion that we have here, we think they’ll be able to explore Aspen and experience it in a different way.”
Boulder is in many ways a natural candidate for bike sharing, even though it is the smallest U.S city to date to attempt a system.

“We basically bike at 20 times the national average, we walk at three times the national average and we ride the bus twice the national average,” said Martha Roskowski, program manager of GO Boulder, the city department that oversees alternative transportation.

The modern bike-sharing era in the United States, in fact, traces many of its roots to Boulder. The B-cycle system, which is being adopted by several U.S. communities, is a joint venture of Boulder-based advertising agency Crispin, Porter + Bogusky, along with Humana and Trek, the nation’s leading bike brand. Alex Bogusky, the now retired founding partner of Crispin, Porter, has been an outspoken advocate for bike sharing.

Trek is based in Wisconsin. But the B-cycle software is from Amadeus Consulting in Boulder, while the B-cycle kiosks and stations are made by Kiosk Information Services in Louisville.

“The reason it’s likely to be successful is that there’s an openness and a positive-mindedness, generally speaking, about anything that has to do with bicycling here,” says Tim Blumenthal, executive director of advocacy organization Bikes Belong. The presence of a bike sharing system shows that a community is serious about its cycling infrastructure, he says. “They’re almost an indicator species of a city on its way to becoming truly bike-friendly.”

Still, Boulder’s relatively small size will pose challenges. Bike share systems typically work best in densely populated urban areas where stations can be spaced closely together.

“The real question will be, will it be so popular that when you get ready to go to the Post Office or to OfficeMax or to lunch, will there be a bike in the station?” Blumenthal says. “What are the chances that there will be a station and a bike in it— or multiple bikes in it—when you come back out?”

Photo: Boulder B-Cycle.

A Bicycle Built for You
The system does its best to avoid those problems. B-cycle officials distinguish their system from bike rentals. Use a B-cycle bike for more than the minimum period, and members get socked with hefty fees: in Boulder, $4 for every half an hour after the free first hour. That’s because B-cycle requires quick turnovers. A tourist who wants take a leisurely ride along, say, Boulder Creek is encouraged to rent from a local bike shop instead.

Short, utilitarian trips is what the B-cycle bicycle is designed for. While Trek certainly has the chops to craft sleek, Tour de France-winning bikes, the B-cycle ride is a far cry from Lance Armstrong’s carbon fiber Trek Madone. The B-cycle bike is made in Taiwan, like most mid- to high-end bikes sold in the U.S. It’s made to be ridden by anyone. It’s heavy, sturdy and rugged, sporting fenders, a cushy seat and a commodious front basket.

Memberships for Denver B-cycle range from $5 for a day pass to $65 for the year. Boulder B-Cycle members will be able to buy $50 annual memberships or $5 day passes. They’ll have 200 bikes at their disposal at 25 kiosks distributed around downtown to Twenty Ninth Street.

Yet, perhaps the biggest challenge facing Boulder B-Cycle is money. Less than 30 percent of the $1.1 million it needs to launch is coming from public funds: $250,000 in federal stimulus funds, coupled with $45,000 from the City of Boulder. For the rest of its start-up costs, Boulder B-cycle is tapping the city’s business community, seeking companies willing to pay for sponsorships or to underwrite corporate memberships for employees.Google, which operates a Boulder office, has donated $25,000 to Boulder B-cycle and is also expected to buy memberships for its employees.

Once initial capital costs are covered, Wolman believes the Boulder system will be self-supporting beginning in the second year of operation.

“There’s a huge bike interest in the city,” he says, “It’s a pretty wealthy town, with a lot of successful people and successful companies.”

Denver relied on unconventional funding sources to get its program running, including a $1 million grant from the non-profit committee that organized the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Kaiser Permanente pledged $450,000 to the Denver program for the first three years. Now, Burnap is trying to raise funds to triple Denver B-cycle’s footprint to 150 kiosks and 1,500 bikes within five years.

Compared to traditional transportation projects like building freeway ramps or paving roads, bike share programs are relatively inexpensive but can have a significant impact on traffic congestion. GO Boulder’s Roskowski points out that a new pedestrian underpass costs at least $2 million to install—and the city has 76 of them.

“We’re looking at a cost of maybe $1 million to launch a bike share system, with a lot of it coming from sources outside of the city,” Roskowski says. “From that perspective, it’s a relatively inexpensive, low-risk experiment.”

The holy grail for bike share systems remains the Vélib’ system in Paris. Begun in 2007, Vélib’ boasts some 20,000 bicycles among 1,639 stations. An outdoor advertising company, JCDecaux, invested about $140 million to create the system. London last year launched a 6,000-bike system underwritten by Barclays Bank. But can it work in the U.S.?

“It’s taken a lot longer than I thought,” says Blumenthal. “But I think that we’re close. I know that New York is on the verge, San Francisco is back in the game, Portland is back in the game, and Montreal continues to do really well.”

The true test will come this spring when all those bikes will be out on the streets.

Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, the Democratic nominee, had been a supporter of the bike sharing program.

“These aren’t just warm, fuzzy ideas from the mayor. These are very specific strategies that are dictated to us by this United Nations program that mayors have signed on to,” Maes said, referring to Denver’s membership in an obscure organization, the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, which the city joined long before Hickenlooper took office.
According to the Post, Maes said he once thought bike sharing and other environmental efforts were harmless. But he soon realized, “that’s exactly the attitude they want you to have. This is bigger than it looks like on the surface, and it could threaten our personal freedoms.”

Maes’ dark suspicions didn’t gain much traction with voters. He ended up a distant third place — finishing far behind independent candidate Tom Tancredo. Hickenlooper and his U.N. dictates, meanwhile, cruised into the governor’s office with a comfortable 51 percent of the vote.

Denver B-cycle officials tried to stay out of the controversy, although executive director Parry Burnap said that Maes’ comments had “no basis in any reality at all. Nothing.”

For B-cycle, there was a bright side to the brouhaha. Maes was ridiculed in YouTube parodies, T-shirt slogans and by TV commentators including Keith Olbermann, giving the fledgling program more publicity than it could ever have generated through its small marketing budget.

Share the cycle… ditch the road rage
Join these bike share programs now to start commuting in the spring:

Boulder B-cycle
Launch: May 20
200 Bikes at 20 Kiosks
Annual Membership: $50
Day Membership: $5
boulderbcycle.com

Denver B-cycle
Re-opening: Early March
500 Bikes at 50 Kiosks
Annual Membership: $65
30-Day Membership: $30
7-Day Membership: $20
Day Membership: $5
denver.bcycle.com

Aspen WE-cycle
Launch: Summer 2011
100 Bikes at 10 Kiosks
Membership Prices (Estimated):
Annual: $39
Weekly: $15
Daily: $5
we-cycle.org/

Welcome to Elevation Outdoors’ rundown of the latest in snow safety to help you stay safe when you play the backcountry game.

It was the only time in my life, as I skied onto the slope, I felt reasonably sure there would be an avalanche. We’d talked about it at length and if it went—which it eventually did—we thought it would be small. I skied the pitch without incident, but the third skier, a close friend, triggered it and took a short ride, losing his skis and nearly tagging a tree.

It was a relatively shallow slide, but what if it had gone bigger? Had we cut it too close? What else could we have done, besides not skiing, to mitigate the danger?

Later, we discussed our choices and then we talked gear–specifically, airbags. It got me to thinking: There are various strategies and technologies available today that most of us don’t use. Why?

Since re-devoting myself to skiing 10 years ago, I’ve tried to educate myself through avy-awareness and guide courses, as well as skiing with a crew of smart, motivated guys. When it comes to gear, though, I have to ask… why am I not using an airbag? A fancier beacon? A helmet?

I don’t mean to suggest that gear will ever take the place of judgment, knowledge and experience, but technological advances have a place in the backcountry game, too.

Captain Intangibles: In the Aspen backcountry, Dan Roland relies on training, gear and a nod to the snow gods.

AIRBAGS
For those of you who haven’t seen an airbag, it’s simply a backpack with an integrated, inflatable bladder (usually 150 liters) the wearer deploys in the event of an avalanche. By enlarging oneself, one stays atop debris, rather than being buried beneath it–where most fatalities occur due to asphyxiation. Tests show well over 90 percent of airbag wearers end a slide above the surface. Impressive.

Depending on the design, some packs also offer protection from trauma. The bladder, once inflated, acts as a buffer against trees and rocks impacting the wearer’s head, neck, and upper spine. In Colorado, where we ski below treeline much of the time, this can be critical: here, trauma kills a higher percentage than in Canada and Europe.

Drawbacks? First off, weight. These things add several pounds to your kit. Backcountry Access offers its Float 30 ($700; backcountryaccess.com) at 7.4 lbs., while the Euro-popular Snowpulse ($1050+; snowpulse.ch) tips the scales at 7-or-so pounds, depending on the model. “ABS” is another European producer ($1050+; abssystem.com; 7.1 lbs. for a 30L model), with an innovative design allowing the inflation system to be married to any of their 15, 30-liter, or larger packs. They also offer a carbon canister to save some weight. Mystery Ranch, out of Bozeman, is said to be designing a model for 2011–stay tuned.

Needless to say, the next big drawback is cost. I guess, though, when the time comes you’d be willing to drop ten-grand to not go under.

The Snowpulse offers the most head and neck protection because of its bladder configuration, but some prefer an airbag that surrounds less of the head. They believe maintaining peripheral vision and the ability to swim/fight trumps additional coverage. Debatable.

The bags all work similarly, using a “rip-cord” handle to activate the system, which inflates in less than two seconds. Tests verify all of the airbags work tremendously well at keeping victims above the surface. Anecdotal feedback suggests there is indeed something to the trauma-protection offered by the packs.

Asks BCA’s Bruce Edgerly, “If you had the opportunity to wear a piece of equipment that could both protect you from trauma and from asphyxiation, why wouldn’t you use it?”

Surf the wild snow

BEACONS
Two trends in beacons have emerged within the market. One favors simplicity over full-gadgetry, while the other seeks to take as much guesswork out of beacon searches as possible.

Three-antennae beacons are now the standard. The addition of a third antenna makes close-in (fine) searching much easier, and handles deep burials better, too. The Ortovox 3+ ($335; 7 oz. plus a AA battery–superlight!) has created a buzz this season, not for its efficient searching and marking functions, but because it helps your buddies find you more quickly. How? Beacons transmit on one antenna, generally the longest of their three. Vertically oriented beacons can be tricky to find for inexperienced searchers. The 3+ senses when it’s buried vertically and shifts transmission to a perpendicular (and horizontal) antenna. Voila—instead of transmitting on its vertical antenna, it uses the horizontal, which offers longer range, and less-problematic retrieval.

I tested two different 3+ beacons in the field and the antenna-shifting worked as advertised. It mitigated a vertical burial without a hitch. Pretty cool. The marking function works flawlessly–the best of any beacon I’ve tried. User interface is simple and controls are easy to master and use. My only gripe–for some reason at the 10-15m range, the 3+ was occasionally (less than 20 percent of the time) confused by a vertical burial. Ten minutes of practice, though, and this was easily overcome.

As with any and all beacons, the trick is choosing the one that works for you and practicing; single-beacon searches, multiples, vertical burials, the works.

Nobody’s home

MORE GEAR
To turn away from safety and simply look at the best new goodies out there for a moment, think about racing. Ski mountaineering races, or randonnée races to get all Frenchy on you, have grown in popularity over the past decade. With all the interest, it’s only natural much of the gear has trickled into backcountry skiing.

Dynafit has led much of the way with its lightweight-but-functional ski bindings, boots, and skis. The brand’s “Low Tech Race” binding weighs 111g, as an example! Their products have trickled down to general backcountry skiers, incorporating the race-inspired weight savings, but offering four-buckle boots, wider freeride skis, and beefier (but still anorexic) bindings.

Most notably this season are Dynafit’s two TLT 5 boots (dynafit.us; 1,225 grams and $750 for the “Mountain,” or 1,050 grams and $1,000 for the “Performance”). The Mountain is an award-winning boot, with only two buckles, a thermo-moldable liner, and a supplementary tongue for the down. I’ve not skied them, but people are raving about these things. Skis well and they are crazy-ridiculous-stupid light! The walk function is amazing, too–tons of mobility and comfortable.

There are also several Dynafit-inspired bindings coming out of Europe this year. ATK, an Italian company, will import its version through LaSportiva. The “Ultra Light RT” weighs a mere 175 grams, costs $700, and offers release function in the toe and heel–up to DIN 10. Very cool. A French company, Plum (400 euros), also makes a version, but at present it’s unavailable in North America.

LaSportiva has also produced an all-carbon boot, the Stratos (lasportiva.com; $2,200; 1,068 grams or 2.35 pounds for the set!), with titanium buckles and Dyneema “cables.” The Stratos looks like a bombed-up version of a Pierre Gignoux, a one-off French boot from Grenoble.

Keep your eyes peeled for these and other crazy-light products at your local gear shop. I’m scheming to get a set of the TLTs and lighten my load this season … and do a rando race or two. See you there?

GUIDE LINES
If you are not confident in your backcountry skills or just want the inside track on where to find the goods, consider hiring one of these snowcat and/or guide services to explore the Colorado backcountry.

Vail Powder Guides operates in the Vail Recreation Area, located at the top of Vail Pass. With 3500 acres to chose from, they have something for just about everyone. Expect about ten runs and almost 2000 feet of vertical. V.P.G’s snow cat can handle up to 12 people at $375 per skier. Use of K2’s powder skis, beacons and lunch is included. vailsnowcat.com

Peak Mountain Guides covers the southern part of the state with a variety of courses and trips offered through the San Juan Mountains. Classic hut to hut trips, level one and two avalanche courses and backcountry ski outings offer a range of opportunities. If you want learn to travel safely, or just enjoy some fun powder skiing P.M.G. can accommodate you. Every guide holds multiple certifications so you learn from qualified instructors. peakmountainguides.com

Colorado Mountain School is focused on educating backcountry travelers of all types. Avalanche certifications, introductory courses, steep skiing clinics, hut trips and ski mountaineering courses mean you can learn all aspects of skiing the backcountry. They also offer scheduled one-day outings on the weekends. Based out of Estes Park, C.M.S. uses the stunning terrain of Rocky Mountain National Park as it’s classroom. Clinics start at $150. totalclimbing.com

San Juan Ski Company takes advantage of 35,000 acres between Telluride, Durango and Silverton. The terrain varies from chutes and bowls to glades and ridges. A day trip will get you around 10,000 vertical feet during your 8 to 12 runs. For the 2010/2011 season prices have been reduced to $250 per person and include avalanche safety gear. Buy out all ten seats available and you’ll receive two free seats, bringing the price to $210 per person. sanjuanski.com

Steamboat Powdercats offers several trip options. Along with the standard all day powderfest, they offer moonlight descent trips, ladies only powder adventures, and even a day just for kids! The day includes a three course lunch catered by the Steamboat Meat and Seafood Company at their mid-mountain cabin. If weather permits, a photographer will come along and give you a disc featuring shots of your epic day. Depending on the time of year and trip seats range from $100 to $400 per person. steamboatpowdercats.com

Can isolated mountain towns really revive their economies by taking a gamble on dirtbag ice climbers?

It’s a Friday afternoon in late February.  Fat, blue water ice—from which I’m hanging on a pair of ice screws—is bathed in warm, late-day sunshine. Tomorrow should arguably be the busiest day of ice climbing for the entire year, when sleepy Lake City—a tiny, remote community tucked away in a far corner of Colorado’s San Juan mountains—hosts its annual ice climbing festival. And yet, incredibly, my climbing partner, Dave, and I are the only people on the ice.

We’re at the Lake City Ice Park, what might rightly be considered the (much) lesser-known, baby brother of Ouray’s world-famous setup. A thick, black rubber hose runs downhill from a municipal water tank to the top of the climbs. From there, smaller black hoses end—literally—in showerhead nozzles hand-placed to spray water over the lip and “farm” the ice.

As Dave and I stand atop the cliff, coiling our ropes, a sole climber arrives along the Henson Creek road below, walks across the frozen creek, and free solos straight up the steepest, tallest section of ice, knocking off rotten chunks here and there and placing (and leaving behind) a series of ice screws. Topping out, we find out that he’s Craig Blakemore, head of Lake City Ice Climbs, the non-profit that manages the park, and the organizer of tomorrow’s festival.

Where are the Front-pointing Masses? Lake City ice is still a secret.

“This place is a volcanic shithole,” he says through a bushy goatee and easy smile, referring to the area’s poor rock quality. “But it has some great ice climbing.” Strictly speaking, that shithole is the Lake City Caldera, one of the youngest volcanic formations throughout the San Juans. The result is deeply in-cut river canyons that follow the fault lines of the collapsed caldera, and steep mountains, comprised mostly of crumbly, chossy, kitty litter, that erode into fantastic rock formations … and between those formations, ice climbs. (The exception is God’s Crag, home of steep-to-overhanging bolted routes, including Jedi Mind Tricks, an M13 put up by Jared Ogden and Ryan Nelson.)

It’s the ice climbs that locals hope might re-ignite a stagnant winter economy, much like in Ouray.  In the mid-1990s, Ouray was a virtual ghost town during winter. Just two restaurants stayed open.  Then, locals, climbers and town officials had the brilliant idea to build an ice park—free to anyone—and invite the ice climbers to come have at it. Those climbers would stay in local hotels, eat at local restaurants and otherwise spend their money in town.  Which is exactly what happened.  Ouray’s Cinderella story is, by now, familiar to most in the climbing community.

Lake City hopes to write a similar chapter in its own story.  Can a small, secluded San Juan community, surrounded by mountains, and brimming with edge-of-town and backcountry ice climbing potential, transform itself into a premier ice climbing destination, and in the process, revive its winter economy? In essence, if they freeze it, will the climbers come?  Lightning struck once.  Why not twice?

During summer, Lake City is relatively bustling.  Alpine wildflowers. Fly fishing.  Fourteeners. Four-wheel-drive routes over to Silverton.  Texans. (At one point during the mid-19th century, a narrow sliver of the Texas Territory extended up into this area, which locals point to when explaining Lake City’s seemingly inexplicable popularity with Texans.)

In the Black: Will new routes bring profit?

Winter is quite another story. Half of Lake City sits empty, and those residents who remain brace themselves against a long, dark, cold several months. Only a small handful of local ice climbers have known of the area’s potential.  Long, alpine, avalanche-exposed backcountry climbs such as Sherman and Senior Presidente up the Cottonwood Creek drainage (and many more up the Henson Creek drainage) have tempted them for years.

The ice park, which sits on the southwest corner of town, is a much more recent development. About a decade ago, Mike Camp, a local climber and volunteer EMT, discretely approached Lake City town manager Michelle Pierce about “pulling some water” from the municipal water tank in order to farm ice on a north-northwest-facing cliff just below. With unofficial permission granted, he did, but while on vacation in Georgia, got a call from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), who “wanted to know about all this ice on their land,” and who were threatening to charge Camp $12,000 to melt it all off. He rushed back to Colorado, and after a sit-down meeting with all the right people, the situation pulled an abrupt 180 and the BLM gave its stamp of approval.

Blakemore eventually took the reigns, and in 2006, the festival officially launched … with just 6 attendees, some music and free beer. This year, some 40-plus climbers are on-hand, as are Petzl and a few other sponsors. The Hinsdale County ambulance, pimped out with a lift kit—sits nearby. There’s a lead comp, and a top-roped speed-climbing competition. Given that Blakemore and Camp are pretty much the only local climbers, most everyone else is from out of town … Gunnison; Crested Butte; Parker; Fraser; Boulder; Los Alamos, New Mexico.

The atmosphere is laid back and chill, even by climbers’ standards. On festival day, there’s plenty of space to hop on the ice and climb—something unimaginable with the throngs that descend upon Ouray for its festival.  Five climbers enter the lead comp.

One climber, going leashless, drops a tool, but continues trying to climb, eliciting great hoots and hollers from the crowd below, before finally taking a whipper. Eleven climbers enter the top-rope contest. Throughout the day, groups of two or three climbers break off and head up routes to either side of the comps. The rest lounge in camp chairs at the base of the cliff, or huddle in groups around a roaring fire.

Spectator Sport: After drawing just six people in 2009, last year’s festival had a crowd of 40.

It’s this laid back, casual climbing atmosphere that sets Lake City apart from a place such as Ouray, and which is perhaps its main appeal. Here you’ll find uncrowded blue ice in a town that actually welcomes climbers (and which will probably know you and your buddies by name by the time you leave).

Lake City has more churches (four) than bars (two) than stoplights (zero). Over the course of the festival weekend, I keep bumping into the same people … at the ice park, at the two bars, at the Mocha Moose coffee shop, at the general store. When heading out to the pub, the rule of thumb is simple: go to the bar with cars parked out front. One night, that bar is Packer Saloon & Cannibal Grill, named for Alfred Packer, Lake City’s infamous mid-19th century cannibal. The next night, it’s The Depot, where the festival after-party rages late into the evening.

The following morning, while most of the ice climbers are shaking off hangovers (ok, so are we, for that matter), Dave and I squeeze in a half-day more of climbing at the park before making the long drive back to the Front Range. In our short time in Lake City, we’ve become enamored with the place and its ice. We’ll be back, and likely so will other ice climbers.  The Town of Lake City is betting on it. •

Peter Bronski (peterbronski.com) is an award-winning writer whose work has appeared in more than 70 magazines, including Rock & Ice, Gripped, Denver Magazine, 5280, Men’s Journal, and Trail Runner.

The Lake City Ice Festival
When: Late Feb (specific dates TBA)
Where: Lake City, CO
Cost: Free (just sign a waiver)
Lodging: The Matterhorn Motel, matterhornmotel.com, $89-$150
Food: Packer Saloon and Cannibal Grill, 310 N Silver Street, 970-944-4144

Cold Shower: Brainchild of local Mike Camp, the Ice Park pulls water from a municipal tank.

OTHER ROCKY MOUNTAIN ICE FESTIVALS
Bozeman Ice Climbing Festival
Bozeman, MT
December
(dates TBD)

Ouray Ice Festival
Ouray, CO
Ourayicefestival.com
Jan. 6-9, 2011

Southfork Ice
Cody, WY
Southforkice.com
Feb. 18-21, 2011

BEYOND THE WEST
Adirondack International Mountainfest
Keene Valley, NY
Mountaineer.com/?page_id=83
Jan.15-17, 2011

Catskill Ice Festival
New Paltz, NY
Alpineendeavors.com/ schedule_events/catskill_icefestival.html
Jan. 21-24, 2011

Smuggs Ice Bash
Jeffersonville, VT
Sunriseadventuresports.com/ice_bash_page.html
Jan. 28-30, 2011

Michigan Ice Fest
Munising, MI
Downwindsports.com/ice_fest.html
Feb 4-6, 2011

Mount Washington Valley Ice Festival
North Conway, NH
Icefest.blogspot.com
Feb. 4-6, 2011

Need the Swag?
We have all the ice climbing goodies you can handle online—including set ups for beginners and cold-blooded vets. Head to elevationoutdoors.com/ice_gear

Is the death penalty the only answer for pesky black bears who want to make a midnight snack run on your refrigerator?

It’s 3 a.m. on June 18 and Roxborough Park, Colorado, resident, Vickie Ockey, bolts upright in bed to the sound of someone breaking into her home. Her husband arms himself with a mop and heads downstairs to investigate. It takes a minute, but soon he yells up to her, “There’s a f#$@ing bear in the house.”

Vickie grabs a camera. Snaps a couple photos. The bear ignores the bright flash. Vickie dials 911 while her husband opens up the sliding door. The bear takes his cue and ambles off into the night. In the morning, officers from the Colorado Department of Wildlife (CDOW) arrive and tell Vickie they are going to set a trap for the bear so he can be tranquilized and relocated.

The next day, the CDOW captures the bear … and promptly euthanizes it.

Coexistence: Katmai’s 25,000 annual visitors watch bears from observation platforms without incident.

FED BEARS AND DEAD BEARS

According to the CDOW, the two main reasons bears must be destroyed in Colorado are because they habituate to easy access of human food and show no fear of people. However, to say that a “fed bear is a dead bear,” puts a bear’s fate squarely in citizens’ hands, and perhaps lets the CDOW off a bit easy. In 2009, the CDOW killed almost ninety black bears, more than double the average for the last fifteen years. If you ask them why, they will tell you it’s because they had no choice.

“People think we don’t like wildlife. Why would we come work here if we didn’t love wildlife?” says Jennifer Churchill, CDOW Public Information Officer, Northeast Region. “Having to put animals down for people’s laziness or ignorance about trying to take care of the trash around their home, you know, it’s a really crappy job. Bears are basically walking stomachs, driven by this need to eat. Once they learn to access bird feeders, garbage or pet food, they’ll return over and over again.”

However, preliminary results from the recently concluded Roaring Fork Bear Study (RFBS)—a cooperative study between Colorado State University (CSU), the CDOW and the National Wildlife Research Center—suggest otherwise.

“Garbage bears in one year are not necessarily always garbage bears,” says Kenneth Wilson, co-principal investigator of the study and head of the CSU Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology. The RFBS tracked over 50 Colorado black bears living in close proximity to urban areas over a five-year period. Wilson says, “We found that bears did not become addicted to trash, and in fact, the patterns of seeking human food reversed when more natural food was available.”

Walking Stomachs: According to CDOW bears become habituated to human food sources and will continue to go where they know there is food. Is it impossible for bears to live in close proximity to humans?

Still, the CDOW can’t control the weather to ensure a bumper crop of wild berry and oak acorn every single year, so it’s inevitable that bears will venture into towns located adjacent to open space and wilderness areas. If they find food, they’ll stay; if they don’t, they’ll move on. Churchill cites a recent success story where local government made a difference. In 2006, over forty bears had to be euthanized by the CDOW in Vail. In response, Vail enacted a city ordinance that mandated wildlife-proof receptacles at residences, condos and commercial properties. Lack of compliance was punishable by hefty fines. The result? In 2009, only two Vail bears were euthanized by the CDOW after breaking into homes.

Still, some people find fault with the CDOW for euthanizing bears that have not attacked humans or demonstrated aggressive behavior. Churchill references the Roxborough Park break-in: “Once they lose their fear of humans, we have no options but to euthanize the bears. We will always err on the side of public safety.”

Midnight Snacking: When the Ockeys woke up to find a black bear rummaging through their kitchen in Roxborough Park, they called CDOW and were told the bear would be relocated—it was euthanized.

THE CHURCHILL SOLUTION

Are bears as dangerous as we perceive? How can an agency like the CDOW gauge the effectiveness of its existing policies when it doesn’t keep statistics on how many calls it gets or the results of those calls (unless they end in the death of the bear)? In Churchill, Manitoba on the shores of the Hudson Bay, the population of polar bears, the world’s largest land predator, exceeds the population of the town. For almost eight months a year, the hungry and carnivorous bears congregate on this sub-arctic spit of land to wait for the ice to freeze so they can hunt ring seals. Yet even with this daunting one-to-one ratio of bear-to-human, only two people have been killed by polar bears since Churchill’s founding in 1717.

Locals at the Lazy Bear Lodge will tell you that the last time they can remember a bear attacking a human was in the late 1980’s, when a man got drunk and went outside a bar to wrestle with a bear. “Bear could’ve killed the fool,” a woman serving up coffee says. “Instead he just took the guy’s arm.”

Because the polar bear is a major part of the tourism economy for Churchill, killing the bears is not a viable option. Instead, this town with just 900 residents had to find a way to deal with over 1,200 polar bears, some weighing over 1,000 pounds, migrating through its streets. In 1982, wildlife officials converted an old sheet metal military storage facility into a “polar bear jail,” instituted town perimeter patrols at dawn and dusk, and installed a “bear hotline” for residents to report bears getting into trouble in town. The “bear jail” holds up to twenty-two polar bears in cement cells until they can be transported by helicopter (at a cost of $3,000 per flight) north to solid ice. Incarcerated bears stay an average of 30 days, before they are tagged, treated for injuries or infections, tattooed, tranquilized for flight, and then released.

Because the of the bear jail’s expense, logistics and exhaustion of manpower, wildlife managers count on residents to call the hotline so officials can haze the bears back out of town before they can interact with humans or property. Residents outside the Polar Bear Alert perimeter carry guns with non-lethal cracker shells or steel slugs to scare off the bears, and many keep “Churchill welcome mats” made of plywood and nails at the entrances to their homes. In Churchill, a bear breaking into a cabin for food doesn’t mean that the bear intends the homeowner harm. It just means that the bear is hungry and perhaps curious. It’s this same curiosity that local tour operators exploit in the winter months, by driving tank-like buses called Tundra Buggies through prime polar bear habitat for unparalleled viewing and photographs. While operators must maintain a distance of 100 feet from the bears, the carnivores can and will do whatever they want—often circling vehicles and peering through the windows to get nose-to-nose with tourists.

THE ALASKAN SOLUTION

While the town of Churchill seems to have found effective ways for residents and tourists to live in close proximity to bears, without the animals paying for it, Jennifer Churchill states that the CDOW does not study other states or countries to find out what might be working elsewhere. If it did, the agency would perhaps find another interesting case study in Katmai National Park and Preserve on the Alaskan peninsula.

In Katmai, a handful of park rangers monitor 2,000 brown bears and grizzlies with only two human fatalities in the history of the preserve (Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend, who were immortalized in the film Grizzly Man).  Treadwell spent 13 summers tracking the bears, living among them, and giving them names including “Mr. Chocolate” and “Rowdy.” Crazy as it may seem, Treadwell left behind stunning footage of the ursine residents of the Grizzly Maze and arguably demonstrated that these ferocious predators could adapt to a continual human presence for over a decade without incidence.

While Treadwell eventually fell victim and was killed by an older, late-season bear, over 25,000 annual visitors to Katmai walk unescorted and unarmed (even pepper spray is banned) among the grizzlies on miles of trails that lead to viewing platforms. On a simple day-hike, it is not unusual to see forty or more grizzlies, including protective sows with cubs. The bears demonstrate no fear of people, and park rangers seem relatively unconcerned about visitor safety, except at the platform sites overlooking the bears as they devour spawning salmon.

AND BACK HERE?

Still, most people agree that it’s important to keep bear-human interactions to a minimum for the safety of animals, people and property. Gretchen Born, Aspen’s Director of Community Safety, says, “Our habitat appears to be just what the bears ordered, and we built homes right at their dining table.” The RFBS (which included Aspen) tested a neighborhood Bear Aware campaign, where volunteers talk to residents about bear-proofing their home sites. Results indicate that education efforts did not change homeowner behavior. Instead, tougher city ordinances and enforcement of trash and composting rules were found to be more effective.

But the CDOW has not changed its policies. On June 23—after nine reported bear sightings in the Roxborough Park neighborhood and the highly publicized euthanization of the bear that trashed the Ockey residence on June 18—a second Roxborough Park homeowner was shocked to find a bear eating a bag of peanuts in her kitchen after entering through an open window. The bear left on its own accord but was trapped and destroyed by CDOW officers the following day.

If the largest land predators on the planet can live in harmony with human beings, why are we making such a fuss about a few berry-loving, 200-pound black bears? In the last decade, black bears killed just six people in the United States—only one of those was in Colorado, an elderly woman who regularly fed a bear on her property. In the end, we’re all complicit and responsible, but perhaps we are also over-reacting. We choose to live and recreate in bear country, and that means assuming certain risks. And the CDOW might look beyond the easy answers to find real solutions that it can prove actually work for bears and people. •

The founder of Women’s Adventure magazine, Michelle Theall teaches writing and photography courses at the Creative Conferences (creativeconferences.com). When she’s not teaching or writing, she’s chasing after her five-year old son or heading off in search of wildlife that can eat her. Visit her blog at michelletheall.com.

NEED TO KNOW

Want to save a bear’s life? Here’s what you can do:

1. Get active in your community by asking others to secure their trash, put up bird feeders, clean up after outdoor parties, harvest fruit from trees and the ground, and lock up pet food. Bear-proof your own property. Don’t feed any wildlife. Otherwise, consider that you get what you get, and you don’t throw a fit.

2. Lock your vehicle and keep it free from all food, trash, and coolers.

3. During bear season, keep doors and windows to your home and garage closed and locked. Bears can open latches, but not round knobs.

4. If you see a bear in your yard, scare it away using an escalating level of hazing. Yell. Clap. Bang pots and pans. Use an air horn. Throw pepper balls or use rubber pellets.

5. Never corner a bear. Give the bear an easy escape route. Do not block its exit or challenge it.

6. Re-evaluate the risks of living in close proximity to wildlife.

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

Read Living With Bears: A Practical Guide to Bear Country by Linda Masterson.

A few square miles on the outskirts of Boulder are the epicenter of big new trends on the indoor gym scene. And the climbing inside is attracting a crowd that considers it to be even better than the real thing.

If you are seeking the state of the art in climbing gyms, look no further than a four-block radius around Whole Foods in the heart of Boulder, Colorado. Within less than a half-mile radius of chain restaurants and mini malls, there’s a stunning 45,000 square feet of indoor climbing. This otherwise average strip of town is home to the Boulder Rock Club, CATS, Movement Climbing and Fitness and The Spot Bouldering Gym. Each facility represents a superlative in its niche. Each is a unique entity and in aggregate, indicate the shape of things to come, for Colorado and beyond. As go this concentration of gyms, so goes the American indoor gym market.

With a population just shy of 100,000, including 36,000 students, Boulder supports a disproportionate one-third of the major climbing gyms on the Front Range. An odd concentration, this layout becomes all the more remarkable when one considers that the entire balance of the region’s four million inhabitants are serviced by just eight climbing gyms, spread among the urban concentrations from Pueblo to Fort Collins.

“This situation is unique to Boulder. I doubt you’ll find anything like this anywhere else,” says Mike Alkaitis, General Manager of The Boulder Rock Club.

Destination Climbing: Gyms like the Boulder Rock Club may offer more interesting routes—and a better social scene—than the local crag.

The Best Crag on the Front Range
Why is Boulder so saturated with indoor climbing? To start, the city’s demographic favors it. When Movement Climbing and Fitness opened last July, it represented a new generation of climbing gym. With 40 foot walls, 17,500 square feet of climbing surface, iPod hookups, free wifi, yoga, spinning and a vast array of treadmills, weights and exercise machines, Movement is, according to Urban Climber magazine, “one of America’s newest and most notable next generation gyms.”

“Before launching Movement, we did an analysis of climber and outdoor enthusiast numbers in the Boulder area,” says co-owner Anne-Worley Moelter. “They showed we could sustain a new gym.” This assessment is remarkable given the massive econmic slump that began in 2008. But the numbers added up, Movement drew a stunning 10,000 unique visitors in its first 10 months of operation. One climber was overheard saying, of Movement’s steepest wall, The Chalice, “It’s the best crag on the Front Range.”

Recent growth for The Spot Bouldering Gym also reflects an upward trend. Says owner Dan Howley, “We have a ton of climbers in town with the demographic skewing towards the affluent, athletic, and the health conscious who allocate money toward fitness and recreation.” Howley recently added a 17 foot-high addition to an already packed venue, supported by a 10 to 15 percent annual growth in memberships for the last four years. It’s been called “the best bouldering gym in the world,” by one blogger. Just down the street, the Colorado Athletic Training School (CATS) shares a similar esteem among the cogniscenti. With a wider focus as a full gymnastic facility with a legendary (read notorious) bouldering wall catering to the hardcore, CATS’ rough hewn plywood walls are studded with a ridiculous number of holds–some dating back to the 80’s. Compared to The Spot’s sexy molded free-standing surfaces, CATS has a rep for pure utilitarian difficulty, garnering accolades like this one on climbingnarc.com, “I would move to Boulder again. Because of CATS. Second best area (not just gym) in the country, but with a much better concentration of problems than Hueco.”

The advent of Movement created competition in what one might consider an oversaturated market. It’s not a bright spot for everyone, however. The well-established Boulder Rock Club which also offers predominantly roped climbing, has felt the strain. With 10,000 square feet of climbing surface, the Boulder Rock Club was state-of-the-art when it opened in 1995. With all the amenities like wifi, training programs, yoga, and integrated world-class guiding and instruction under the Total Climbing brand, the BRC would dominate the market–anywhere else but Boulder. But, “Our numbers are significantly affected,” says Alkaitis. “Our membership and day passes are down considerably.” When asked about the future he shakes his head, “No idea, I wish I had a crystal ball.”

Hangin’ Out: A new concept in gyms, Movement offers smart, sleek lines but it’s also meant to be a place to take a yoga class or just lounge on the sofas.

Growing the Sport
Bill Zimmerman, Executive Director of the Boulder-based Climbing Wall Association, points to the bright side, “Competition in the gym market is an ongoing evolution. When we see healthy competition we also see improved product—programs, services, customer care etc.”

If that’s the case, that’s good news for the climber. Inspired by the succes of Boulder’s scene, gyms across the country are getting bigger. The upcoming Mesa Rim gym in San Diego and Stone Summit in Atlanta both plan walls with 30,000 square feet and up to 60 feet high. Urban areas without local outdoor climbing have the most growth potential. Zimmerman notes, “Climbing walls have made something unpredictable and dangerous into something safe and accessible. And they’ve changed the face of climbing. Period.”

There’s also a gorwing national trend of increased indoor gym usage. More than ever before, climbers are introduced to the sport through the gym. “Back in the day, there were huge barriers to entry into the sport—gear, expense, finding instruction, and so on,” says Zimmerman. Today, a 14-year-old can go indoors and find the resources to learn climbing.”

The impact on the sport has been immense: casting a bigger net has increased the genetic talent pool, fostered a training approach that has increased technical climbing standards, and developed a true community in a one-time socially marginalized sport. The gym is truly beocming the most popular crag. As early as 2005, an Outdoor Industry Foundation study stated that climbing on indoor and artificial walls far surpassed outdoor climbing in both numbers—6.7 million vs. 5.0 million—and occasions—34 million versus 15 million. Artificial wall climbers 16-24 years old amounted to 59 percent. The 25 to 34-year-old age group accounted for 21 percent.

Rapid growth has drawbacks. Safety, education, tradition, and respect for ethics are often cited as the shortfall of the gym culture. Indeed, the transition from plastic to rock is full of pitfalls —requiring education and mentorship to evolve the sport.

But Zimmerman points out a solution. “A model for transition management and education from the gym to the outdoors is something like Total Climbing. The combination of the Boulder Rock Club facility and the Colorado Mountain School can take an entry level climber through the gym, the transition to the outdoors, and through every genre of climbing all the way to the highest peaks in the world,” he says.

Bigger, better gyms serve a growing market of climbers who see indoor climbing facilities as destinations. The performance dividends attract professional climbers and beginners alike. “Climbers are moving from all over the United States to this area to train,” adding, “A huge draw is not just outdoor climbing it’s the gyms,” says local climber Abbey Smith.

Destination Gyms
Remember when climbers would road trip to their favorite crag? Today, climbers travel to gyms as the destination. Anne-Worley Moelter says, “Some of our full membership clientele are from places like Colorado Springs and Cheyenne.” Howley observes the same, “You’d be shocked by our out-of-town visitors, I know guys from as far away as Europe with punch passes for when they’re in town. It’s definitely a destination for some.”

Some of the old guard look at gyms with a jaded eye, but the attitude has been eroding steadily. A former outdoor-only climber on climbingnarc.com, wrote about the Boulder gym scene, “We may be at gym saturation now, but I thought we were at Tibetan knick-knack store saturation after the first 10… I was wrong about that. I too thought climbing gyms were a total waste… when so much outdoor climbing existed. This is what has kept me (from) progressing. I used to climb outside four to seven days a week … this made me ‘fit’, but I was never very strong.”

“I’ve come to grips with the idea of a gym,” he adds. “I always have fun, get a better workout, see more friends, and without trashing my tips, wasting tons of gas and time, and battling snakes, ivy, ticks, bees, and choss.” •

Which Gym Is for Me?

The Boulder Rock Club
The indoor gym that set the bar when its doors opened in 1995. Boulder Rock Club’s 12,000-square-foot facility hosts great roped climbing, good bouldering, fitness classes, yoga and personal training from the likes of World Cup Champ Robyn Erbesfield. The BRC sports auto belays, a boon for quick hit training. It has a chill family friendly vibe and is renown for its phenom-generating youth program. The American Mountain Guide Association (AMGA) certified Colorado Mountain School offers full continuing education program and one-stop-shopping for outdoor climbing, ice climbing, alpine climbing and skiing mountaineering from local to international venues. Costs: Adult day passes $15 (1st time $10), student $12 (1st time $8), monthly unlimited, $69 ($56 students). 800-836-4008; totalclimbing.com

The Spot Bouldering Gym
With hip-hop, trance, plenty of youthful skin, plus world-class bouldering (and boulderers)—the Spot’s magical freestanding boulders and artful course-setting combine for a “singles bar ambience, with chalk instead of alcohol.” The Spot has a cool, youthful energy, and great mingling. The freeform socializing of bouldering leads to great posse-based problem solving and the promise of future hook-ups. Check out the new world-class comp expansion. It puts the high in highball bouldering. The integrated Spot Climbing School can introduce the indoor climber to the local outdoor venues. Costs: Adult day passes $15, 10-punch cards $129 (no expiration date), monthly unlimited $66. 303-379-8806; thespotgym.com

Movement Climbing and Fitness
In terms of vibe, Movement is The Spot’s roped climbing equivalent. With sleek, sexy lines, hip vibe and Verve inspired tan lines packed into a brand new 22,000-square-foot complex, Movement is geared for training, competition and fun. Stadium seating, open natural lighting to exercise rooms, extensive bouldering and lounge areas make Movement is a “home away from home,” according to more than a few climbers. The cutting-edge walls are qualified to host International Federation of Sport Climbing competitions. World-class training programs, yoga and spinning studios, and a complete line of Technogym cardio and weight equipment put the Fitness into Movement’s name. Costs: Day passes $16 ($12 student), monthly unlimited $75 ($62 electronic funds transfer/$65 students). 303-443-1505; movementboulder.com

Colorado Athletic Training School
One of the first climbing walls in the nation, CATS’ gritty, old-school, painted plywood, long traverses and bazzilion holds—some of which “were made before you were born,” screams hard-core training. Their credo, “Check Your Ego at the Door.” Primarily a 10,000-square-foot gymnastics gym—replete with pre-teen future phenoms doing floor exercises and vaults—CATS climbing delivers a no-frills approach to proven world-class performance and pure power. Costs: Drop-in day pass $5, monthly unlimited $30. 303-939-9699; catsgym.com

The demographics of the United States are becoming more and more diverse, but the National Parks Service wonders why it is not seeing more minorities applying for jobs—or visiting. Can the parks thrive if they aren’t relevant to a rapidly changing U.S. population?

The Intermountain Region headquarters of the National Park Service (NPS) is your standard federal office building in Denver. In this urban environment, concrete, glass and steel house office cubicles where government employees administer the parks and monuments of eight western states. Here in the city where he grew up, Dwane Matthews, 22, rides a desk in service to wilderness. Answering phones, drafting documents and preparing presentations, this young African-American college student looks forward to a long career in outdoor recreation.

“I don’t want to work outside so much as I want to work with the National Park Service,” he says. “I mainly want to work with youth and expose a new generation of kids to the outdoors.”

Introduced to nature himself through the Colorado-based Environmental Learning For Kids program when he was 12, Matthews is among a growing number of African-Americans who aim to join the National Park Service workforce. He’s also the NPS Intermountain Region’s student training administrative Assistant. The job’s part of the Student Career Experience Program (SCEP), an initiative that helps college students establish their careers while at school.

Matthews, who majors in business at Metro State College, works in human resources, helping to place young people in jobs that may lead to full-time positions. SCEP is just one initiative the NPS hopes will seed its workforce with qualified candidates for employment who never thought they would have anything to do with parks. Through these programs, the NPS hopes more minorities will fill its ranks.

“A lot of people out there think, ‘because I’m a minority I can’t do this kind of work,’” Matthews says. “I see people of color in the outdoors and say, wow! We can do this.”

As as the demographics of the U.S. continue to change, inspiring those like Matthews will be about more than promoting diversity—it may be critical to the long-term survival of the National Parks themselves.

The Changing Demographic
“One in three U.S. residents is a member of a racial or ethnic minority group. Forty-five percent of all children younger than six are ethnic minorities,” says Cheryl Armstrong, the workforce enhancement specialist to the Intermountain Region. “The country is changing. Our population is aging. The era of the white majority is coming to a close. And if we do not make parks relevant to a changing demographic in America, who will be our environmental stewards, our advocates in the future?”

Go to a National Park anywhere in the United States and you’ll find very few people of color. Either as visitors or park employees, relative to their percentage of the population a disproportionate number of African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, Native-Americans or other ethic minorities frequent these wild and scenic places. A 2003 NPS survey revealed that issues such as distance of travel, overall costs and lack of information on what to do inside parks contributed most significantly to limit minority attendance.

But it also revealed that African-Americans were “more than three times as likely as whites to believe that park employees offer poor service to visitors, and that parks were uncomfortable places to be for people similar to themselves.”

Mountains to Climb: Bill Gwaltney wants the NPS to ensure parks are more inviting to people from diverse cultural backgrounds.

What Diversity Looks Like
A long-standing history of segregation and racially motivated violence in rural areas throughout the U.S. have impacted negative feelings among minorities toward the natural world. In order to change these perceptions the Intermountain Region of the NPS is taking steps to proactively reach out to communities of color. With training in cultural competency, interpretation programs and exhibits that offer a variety of cultural perspectives and direct interaction with community leaders, the NPS is learning to relate to the interests of a broader cross-section of the population. While federal law prohibits discrimination or hiring preferences toward any particular race or ethnicity, workforce enhancement specialists like Armstrong are providing park managers with tools to create a more inclusive environment.

“We’re affecting systemic change,” Armstrong says. “We have two issues here, visitor diversity and workforce diversity. One helps the other. It’s comforting for people of color when they come to visit a park to see a person who looks like them in a Park Service uniform.”

At National Park Service units near Native-American lands, for example, managers intend to develop a workforce that reflects the cultural heritage of the region.

“We’ve had visitor feedback from places like Mesa Verde or Canyon de Chelley in Arizona that has said they want to hear from interpretive rangers who are members of the culture that the parks’ ruins or resources are representing,” Armstrong says.

“Just like in a park in Texas that has a lot of Hispanic and Mexican culture and history, it’s important to have an interpretive staff that has a connection.”

“The National Parks can only survive if all Americans understand, appreciate and cherish their natural, cultural and outdoor heritage,” says Bill Gwaltney, the assistance director of workforce enhancement for the Intermountain Region. “As the African ecologist Baba Dioum said, ‘In the end we will conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught.’”

Gwaltney says its possible to help build those relationships through skilled and culturally sensitive interpretation.

“It’s not our job to shove anything down anybody’s throat,” he said. “Our job is to be available, to be receptive, to be open and to be welcoming to everyone. We’ve got to find ways to make sure that everyone understands that these places are for them.”

New Faces: Cheryl Armstrong has been entrusted with finding ways to encourage more minorities to consider NPS jobs.

The Future
Despite his urban upbringing, Dwane Matthews had many positive experiences outdoors. When he was a child, he was given the opportunity to find a place for himself in the natural world. And as an adult, though an African-American, he can envision a future in outdoor recreation and find confidence in his job prospects.

Over the next ten years 70 percent of the federal workforce, including the NPS, is expected to reach the age of retirement. In this recovering economy and with a desire to diversify its ranks there has never been a better opportunity for qualified applicants regardless of race or ethnicity to build a career at the National Park Service.

“I was asked to work in interpretation,” Matthews said. “The job is interpretation and education division park ranger youth program assistant. And that’s a route I’m looking to take.”•

James Edward Mills reports on the people and issues of the outdoor community at the Joy Trip Project (joytripproject.com).

Read This!
Two books that explore the African-American experience in the American wilderness

Gloryland
In his premiere novel, veteran National Park Service ranger Shelton Johnson, who was featured in Ken Burns’ National Parks documentary, chronicles the path of an African-American man born mere hours after the abolishment of slavery at the end of the Civil War. Narrated by lead character Elijah Yancy, the story unfolds in the years that follow to track his life’s course to become empowered by the liberty to be found in service to his country and communion with nature. From their military service in the Philippines and Cuba to their deployment to patrol the newly designated National Parks of Yosemite, Yellowstone and Sequoia, African-Americans played a pivotal role in protecting the freedom we enjoy today. In Gloryland, Johnson defines the legacy of their service that was instrumental in the creation of the National Parks and endures through the present to inspire future generations.
sierraclub.org/parks/gloryland

Rooted in the Earth
The modern African-American experience is typically urban. After the Civil War, freed slaves fled from farms to populate the industrial cities of the north. Leaving behind forced labor on plantations and racially motivated violence in remote wooded areas, African-Americans also shed much of their connections with the natural world. In her new book Rooted in the Earth: Reclaiming the African-American Environmental Heritage, Morehouse Colllege professor Dianne Glave explores the importance of environment as a natural part of any human experience.

“We hold on to the past. That past includes the middle passage, being snatched from Africa and their known environment and being transported to another environment,” Glave says. “This was a very traumatic and painful transition.”

As a student of history Glave looks to the past in order to explain a modern African-American cultural aversion to nature. “In the United States, racism became violent in the woods and in the swamps,” she says. “These were places where African-Americans were lynched, often from a tree. There are still very negative connotations related to woods and swamps.”

Despite this tragic history there remains an indelible tradition of African-Americans in positive relation to the land. In her book Glave shares a history of conservation and stewardship, though often hidden, which stands as an important part of our national heritage. The book is due out in August 2010.

Meet IMBA government affairs director Jenn Dice, the woman who takes on Washington in the name of singletrack.

This spring Jenn Dice of the International Mountain Biking Association (IMBA) and the Outdoor Alliance (OA) went to Washington DC, to make the case for more singletrack. She came home to Colorado celebrating a renewed partnership with the National Parks Service (NPS) that may see more mountain biking in the parks. IMBA and the National Bike Summit brought 725 people to the capitol for three days, the largest ever gathering of bike advocates in DC. It’s a day’s work for Dice who as IMBA’s government affairs director convinces Congress and land managers that more bikes and trails make for better public lands. With a new President in DC and the collaborative muscle of the Outdoor Alliance to boost the cause, she sees more good news for singletrack on the way.

Dice in DC

What does it mean that IMBA is renewing its partnership the National Parks Service?
For five more years, we will be partnering closely with the NPS to build trails and get more kids and families out. It’s been such a big priority for IMBA because when most people think about pristine places, they think about the parks and we want to make sure that bicycling is a part of that experience. I mean when you drive through a park, how many cars, mini vans, RVs do you see with bikes on the back? We want to make sure they have a place to ride. Previously, there had been no opportunities. That’s why this has been such a high priority for us. We have had a lot of big successes in national parks, at places where you were told you couldn’t bike before and now you can.

Where are your greatest success stories?
The places where park superintendents have said not only do we want mountain biking, but we want more and expanded mountain biking. New River Gorge in West Virginia has been a big success story. We are building a new trail there. We have plans for trails in Chattahoochee, Mammoth Caves in Kentucky, and have been talking about a trail in Texas and even one in Rocky Mountain National Park, though that is still in the Environmental Assessment (EA )phase. But that would be our most exciting project. The trail would be on the west side of the park between Granby and Grand Lake. The existing trail is a mess—it’s falling off into the lake. So we could do a lot to improve the resource.

Were you surprised that the NPS was so receptive to building new bike trails?
We were worried about it going in, but we told them that IMBA is one of the world-wide experts in tail building and construction. We told them how we could help to protect the resource through sound tail construction. We can improve the parks by building better trails, sustainable trails that people love to use. We can increase the amenities for national parks. Once they figure that out they embrace us. And more partnerships have developed because the word is spreading.

What is the Outdoor Alliance and how does it help you with your work in DC?
The Outdoor Alliance was formed when six national human-powered recreation groups came together to advocate for lands protection and funding. Hikers, climbers, mountain bikers, paddlers—these are the people who know public lands the best. We united to become a political force to lobby for recreation management. We have done a lot of work on roadless area management. We have focused on Forest Service planning, mining reform, national parks funding. We have been able to see that our collective voice is much stronger. The big thing is the power of collaboration. When we started (IMBA was a founding member of OA), no one envisioned how big and influential the coalition could be. Just a short time later we are making a big difference. We have been influencing new planning rules and we have been building important realtionships with Congress, federal land management agencies and now the White House.

Is there ever any dissention between the different groups? Don’t hikers want trails without mountain bikes for example?
We have a good set of bylaws to stay away from issues of conflict. The only places where we may conflict are regionally so we try to keep OA on a national level. We try to stay away from local infighting. It’s been easier than you might think.

The biggest issue IMBA seems to be fighting against is the creation of new Wilderness areas that close mountain bike trails. But do you have a compromise solution?  Have you thought about a new designation that could protect wild lands yet include bikes?
It’s something IMBA is very much working on. There are quite a few things you cant do in Wilderness. You can’t mountain bike, set up yurts, use fixed anchors. You can’t do mechanized trail building. You can’t use a chainsaw. So we have working on other, alternative public lands designations, that are all about backcountry recreation. It’s a big initiative for IMBA.

Are there any places where Wilderness supporters and mountain bikers are working together successfully?
In Colorado, we support the San Juan Wilderness bill because they made a ton of concessions and they have wilderness plus a companion designation, a specially managed area. We love this bill because they made boundary adjustments for mountain bikes and, hey, it also protects the land.

Are there any other issues you deal with in Washington beyond managing public lands for bikes?
We are branching out more with health and obesity and getting kids moving through the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and public education. When I first came to IMBA [in 2001] we reached out to the CDC. They were open but not real partners. Now, we see a lot more coalition work where bicycling is front and center and considered part of the solution. Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign lists recreation cycling as an important way to fight the health crisis. A few years ago the CDC was not making any link to biking and fighting obesity.

Has it been prodcutive to work with the Obama Administration?
It’s still too soon to tell. The threats with the Forest Service and the old administration are still here. That’s our biggest challenge—working with the Forest Service and how they manage bicycles. In certain forests they are closing a lot of trails to us. The worst thing that happens is that in certain forests, they group mountain bikes with motorized users. They don’t have a unique category for bicycles. It’s a kneejerk reaction. We get thrown in the same category as motorcycles and ATV, which do more damage. We are fighting it every step of the way.

And what about on a local level away from Washington? How do you sell mountain biking to small rural towns?
We can go to the community and say, “this is how we can build trails so that people all over the world will come.” We do consulting for trails tourism, how to turn your community into a destination for mountain biking and make it more like Moab, Downiville or Ashville. Frutia is the best example in our back yard. The parking lots are full. Hotels, gas stations and restaurants are busy. You bet those communities love mountain biking and what we do for their bottom line.•

With plenty of options for untracked lines and an authentic vibe, the little town that rocks makes for a perfect close-to-home winter weekend.Salida is still a bit off the radar when it comes to backcountry goodness, but just three hours from Denver, it offers up a whole platter of powdery ski and snowboard options for all ability levels.

Baby Steps: Mirkwood Basin
If you are still new to the backcountry game or just want to rack up some lift served vertical, Monarch’s Mirkwood Basin delivers the goods. It’s a short hike to steeps and a quick cat road back to the lift. A nice line goes from Orcs at the top down into trees that hold soft snow and open into short chutes. The good? It’s controlled by patrol so you don’t need to worry about avy gear and training. The bad? You have to share. skimonarch.com

Still Lazy: Monarach Snow Cat
If you truly want to maximize your powder intake, pony up for a day on Monarch Mountain’s snowcat, which ferries you up and down the terrain past Mirkwood. It accesses some of the steepest cat terrain around (think dropping cornices and 50-degree chutes) and the guides have the same core laid-back vibe as the area. Hint: Go late season, after March 22, when the snow is still good and the trip cost drops from $250 to $180. skimonarch.com/main/index.php/generalinfo/snowcat-tours

Highway Stashes: perfect trees
To find free tour-to-‘em turns, you need look no further than across the highway from Monarch. Make sure your skills are up to snuff then sniff out the lines that start where the Monarch Crest bike trail starts.  The area is known as Perfect Trees. Guess why?

Touring: Old Monarach Pass
With only a short 1.5-mile skin required, Old Monarch Pass road offers a little bit of everything. It’s a fine Nordic tour on its own, but it also accesses some untracked turns in powder glades.

Spring Mountaineering: Mt. Shavano
With the largest concentration of 14ers in the state in the Collegiate Range,  the big-descent options when the snow corns up here are endless. The signature run is the Angel of Shavano, a 5,000-vertical-foot epic (if you tag the peak).

Racing: Race the divide
So proud of your backcountry prowess you want to hammer some likeminded sickos? Race the Divide  competitors power through four climbs and descents, racking up 3,500 verts to crown a resident badass. salidamountainsports.com

Beta: salida mountain sports
The man when it comes to Salida backcountry is Nate at Salida Mountain Sports (salidamountainsports.com), who skis the bc pretty much every day. Stop in and ask for recommendations, get your boards tuned and rent any equipment you need. •|

IN TOWN
The best place for an erudite dirtbag to stay in Salida is the Simple Lodge and Hostel (simplelodge.com). This is no Eurotrash hangout, rather it’s more of a hipster bed and breakfast that serves the backcountry community. You can go cheap and solo and rent a bunk for just $22/night or opt for a classy private family room, which is still a great deal at $76/night with one queen bed and two twins. Or check out the Circle R Motel (thecirclermotelus.com) a clean, classic kitsch motel that counts kayakers and skiers among its top clientele. For the best eating experience in town, go big and head to Laughing Ladies (laughingladiesrestaurant.com). The peppery salmon filet with sweet potatoes is the best fish EO’s discriminating editors who grew up on the beach have tasted in Colorado.

The Dirt Club on the prowl

The Godfather

C-Level breathing deep

At the risk of blowing the most closely guarded secret in the Front Range, we send a former Nederland resident back to his old stomping grounds to uncover the truth about the riding scene, local politics, all those hidden trails and what the future has in store for a community that still rides for the joy of suffering.

We pursue our shadows through the late-afternoon light in a meadow outside of Nederland. Randy is on point, followed by Chad, me and Robert. We’re locked in tight formation, 10 feet separating our wheels, tires humming and spitting pebbles. Randy barrels into the S-turn at full speed, side lugs biting into gravel as he lays his bike to one side, then the other, and rockets down the trail. The rest of us step on our pedals, digging hard to catch him.

We’re engaged in a game familiar to many Nederland mountain bikers. It’s called Chasing Randy. The goal is to go balls-to-the-wall fast down technical singletrack—carving turns, jumping rocks, weaving trees, ducking branches—while trying to stick with Randy. It’s no easy task. Randy is not only fast; he has ridden these trails for nearly two decades and knows every twist, turn and log-hop. To chase him down the trails around Nederland is to witness a man in his element.

I played this game often before moving to the coast three years ago. Now I have returned to re-join the chase and ride with my old posse. There’s only one problem: I’m dead exhausted. It’s Day 7, the last of my visit, and this is my eighth hard ride. Last night I cramped up so badly that I had to lie down on the floor for 15 minutes, unable to lift myself. But that hardly matters now. Randy and Chad are pulling away, and I need to step on it. So I ignore the pain, pedal hard, and fly back to Chad’s wheel, who is hot on Randy’s, Robert glued to mine.

The Nedhead Dirt Club has reunited.

Robert and Chad picked me up curbside at Denver International Airport (DIA) a week earlier, and after a quick man-hug we sped off for Ned.

“Chug it,” Robert said, handing me a jug of water. “You don’t want to dehydrate.”

I came from sea level. A smarter individual would take a few days to acclimatize, but there’s no time to waste. We pulled up to Robert’s house, suited up, and banged out a ride on a loop called the Hot Lap—a favorite after-work ripper when I lived here. The guys showed mercy by granny-gearing the climbs to avoid exploding my heart on my first day at altitude.

There will be time to destroy me later.

Easy Riders: Randy and C-Level

Nederland has defied gentrification despite a visually stunning location on a reservoir with the Continental Divide just 9 miles west. The town is equal parts corndog and tofu, mountain hillbilly and Boulder yuppie. There’s a liquor store and supermarket, natural foods co-op, smoke shop and gas station. Eldora Ski Area is nearby and a new half-million-dollar skatepark was recently dedicated by Tony Hawk. And there are trails. Mile after mile of steep, rocky, root-crossed, sandy, sketchy, hammer-fest trails. For my money, it’s the best-kept secret in Colorado. Sure, Crested Butte and other resort towns have better riding, but who can afford to live there? Ned is the working man’s mountain bike Mecca.

I first came here in 2000, hot on the trail of a beautiful mountain biker chick. We bought a jalopy house downtown and I set about learning to ride. My previous cycling experience consisted of commuting to work. To say I sucked is an insult to sucked. But I was an eager student, and Nederland is the school of rock.

There were hard lessons. While riding alone one afternoon I bashed a pedal against a babyhead on the down-stroke, causing my cleat to come unclicked and my foot to shoot forward. My crotch landed on the top tube, and my front tire spun perpendicular, catapulting me. I slammed to the ground chest-first, knocked out my breath and bruised my ribs. As I lay there, clutching my privates and gasping, it dawned on me that it might be a good idea to have some wingmen.

A year later, Ledge bought the dump next door, and soon we rode together. Ledge is a multisport athlete who can telemark, skateboard, paddle and climb, and does them all well. He talks nonstop, even on steep climbs (I nicknamed him Verbal). Robert moved into town a year later, and I had another riding partner. Robert is a Georgia boy, carpenter, smack-talker and former BMXer who bunny-hops with style and laughs like a maniac. Robert introduced me to Chad, a former racer and downhiller. Chad smiles a lot, says little, eats sprouted grains, drinks only filtered alkaline water and is built like a tank mechanic. Aside from Randy, he’s the fastest mofo I’ve ever met. Then there’s Randy: the Godfather. He owns Happy Trails coffee and bike shop and practically invented Nederland mountain biking. He wears body armor and a full-face mask and is wiry and lean. Meeting him for the first time, in civilian clothes, you would never suspect he’s a sex machine on wheels. Robert calls him the world’s fastest 47-year-old.

Me? I’m C-Level, and I’m out of breath but rising.

“Let’s go big,” Randy says as we gather at Happy Trails on Saturday, Day 4 of my Nederland ride-a-thon. Yesterday, we slogged uphill for nearly an hour, gaining 1,600 feet of elevation, and then ripped down a steep descent whose name shall remain secret. Unfortunately, I dropped my $200 sunglasses on the climb, requiring a second, brutal, solo ride to retrieve them as night fell. The day before we grunted uphill through West Mag, then sheltered under trees to wait out a downpour before descending through dense lodgepoles, ripping across a plank above a slop zone and careening past a decrepit school bus.

Happy Trails bustles with customers as we prepare for our big ride, a weekend ritual. Two cheese-dogs are flirting with a cute barista working the counter, and Boulder cyclists cover the porch out front, having taken the RTD bus up. “The Trails” is the epicenter of Ned mountain biking—the gathering spot and HQ where maps are studied and missions planned. Sometimes, Randy plots big group rides, but today we want to travel fast and light, with no stragglers.

Downtime? Not a common site.

Misty rain falls as we work our way to the top of Eldora, then plunge down toward Jenny Creek, banging over embedded rock. The creek is raging with spring snowmelt, forcing us to shoulder our bikes and plunge through icy water to continue the ride on the other side. After another climb, we scream downhill, launching over rock and root drops and high-siding turns to avoid slippery black batter. Hours later we emerge again near the ski area and duck into an expert trail that swoops through aspen stands and wildflower rock gardens. There is no good line down this trail, only worse and worst. Glacially deposited boulders, rounded and slick with mist, must be ridden at speed. Go slow, and your front tire stops hard. I once saw my buddy Tom’s feet go up over his head here, his bike somersaulting down the cold stone.

But there are no wipeouts today, and after a five-hour ride we return to Happy Trails to hose off. Randy founded Happy Trails in 1994, when mountain biking was still a niche sport. Randy was an early devotee, and he began riding here in the mid-80s, fully rigid. With a core group of Ned cycling pioneers, he explored the old mining grades, Forest Service roads and social trails. In 1997, Chad and Robert arrived. “That’s when it went to the next level,” Randy says. “They not only wanted to ride every day, they were skilled riders.”

Randy’s bikes got beefier and beefier to deal with the brutal conditions. He rides a 27-pound, 6-inch travel Intense that’s both meaty and nimble, with a burly 2.5-inch tire in front for surfing crumbly decomposing granite, and a 2.35 in the back for traction on merciless uphill grunts. Randy has a secret weapon on climbs: a 20-tooth chain ring. The extra-small ring provides a superlow granny gear that allows Randy—a master of the uphill slow-ride—to clear steep grades when everyone else blows up or spins out. It’s as if his bike goes to 11.

Randy is not only the world’s fastest 47-year-old; he’s also the slowest.

“Nederland has some of the most technically challenging long cross-country riding in Colorado,” he says. “You have to be able to climb.” There’s just one problem: nobody but locals can find the trails, which are mostly unmarked. Nederland’s economy is hurting and could use the boost more mountain bikers would bring. “Nederland is a hidden jewel of Front Range mountain biking,” Randy says. “Instead of driving to Fruita or Moab or Winter Park, cyclists could come here. Some already are. Look around town at the number of cars with bikes on the roof. Mountain biking is becoming an economic driver for this town. It could be moreso.”

We’re sitting outside Robert’s garage, sipping beers during a post-ride barbecue. “It would be nice for out-of-town riders to have a marked trail system to follow, so they could do a two- to three-hour ride and not get lost,” Randy says. “That would be huge.”

The Boulder Mountain Biking Alliance and its predecessor BOA have worked with the Forest Service to mark several West Mag trailheads, but more work is needed. The lack of an organized trail network has led to misuse. I witness this one afternoon, when two dirt bikes roar up a trail posted as nonmotorized. The second rider is a lard-ass, and he spins out and stalls while trying to negotiate large, slippery roots that we clear on our bikes. If not for the blue smoke, I could almost smell the shame as he stalls a second time.

Another impediment is the locals-only ethic of some. “Don’t ruin it,” one rider tells me when he learns I’m writing about Ned.

Nederland mountain biking needs a leader. The Forest Service is flush with cash for trail-building thanks to the federal stimulus bill. Better-organized communities across the West are gobbling up the cash and building sick trail networks. When I ask Randy why he hasn’t formed a local mountain biking group to lobby on behalf of Nederland trails, he demurs.

These are unhappy times at Happy Trails, which for 15 years has operated out of two iconic train cars downtown. This year, Randy was forced to move out of “the cars” when his landlord jacked up the rent. Repairing bikes and selling coffee is no get-rich-quick scheme. Randy has relocated across the street, and the new space is actually bigger and nicer than the cramped train cars, but Randy fears that tourists accustomed to stopping at the cars will not see his new shop.

The New Home: No longer the caboose

Now, word on the street is that a competing coffee shop will open up in the cars. Local cyclists have vowed to boycott the new business and patronize Happy Trails, but the whole experience has left Randy emotionally battered. “I’m fighting to stay in business,” he confesses during a ride. “I don’t like to talk about it. It brings me down.”

Day 7 comes too soon. Everyone is shagged. After our go-big Saturday, we reconnect with Ledge and again go large on Sunday, hammering through the Hobbit Trail and banging out a hot lap around a Rollinsville meadow before working our way to a hilltop overlooking the Toland rail yard, where trains tunnel beneath the Divide. Everyone promises to go easy for my last ride. But as we drop into the trail in tight formation and build up a head of steam, all bets are off, and the chase is on.

Randy tears into a sharp turn that drops abruptly to the right and then up to the left. Chad rides too far up the high-side berm to avoid cross-wheeling Randy and skids into a bush, a rare flub for the big man. I come around him and hear Robert laughing behind me as I take off in pursuit of Randy, who has gained 20 feet in a few seconds.

The trail narrows and swoops through an aspen glade, requiring quick turns on the greasy soil. I see Randy’s silhouette ahead, through tall grass and aspen leaves, and I big-ring it hard, feeling my quads burn. The gap closes, but I fudge a rock jump and my rear tire lands hard on stone. In the instant it takes to regain control, Randy has gapped me again.

We shoot up and out of the aspen glade and emerge into bright light on a bunch-grass hill. Randy stops pedaling and coasts over the crest, allowing me to grab his wheel for the final fast section. We descend back into the aspens and Randy surges as trees whip by our shoulders and we duck decapitators. I pedal furiously, my legs spent, and close in. But I have run out of time. Randy coasts to a stop atop the final knoll. Game over.

“Aaaaand cut!” Robert says like a movie director, clicking off his helmet cam. Yes, cameras off please. I want to sit down in the grass and puke. I’ve ridden faster, but never harder and closer to the edge of destruction. Someday I may get lucky and catch Randy when he’s going full-out, but that’s not the point. Chasing him is thrill enough.

We coast down Stinky Gulch, avoiding the Hershey-squirt muck from a homeowner’s leaky leech field, and head for home. The next morning I leave town as I came, in the truck with Robert and Chad. They drop me curbside at the Boulder bus station, and after a couple back slaps, I board the Skyride to DIA.

Everyone has special places. Best of all are those that combine a strong sense of place with friendship. That’s why I will always return to Nederland. The Nedhead Dirt Club will ride again. •

Click here to watch POV video of riding with the Nedhead Dirt Club!

Paul Tolme is an environmental and outdoors writer who rides six days a week along the NoCal coast. His work for publications including Newsweek, Popular Mechanics, Ski and National Wildlife can be seen at paultolme.com.

Buggin' Out: Climate change is a major reason why the tiny, seemingly innocuous mountain pine beetle is decimating forests.

The invasion is here and it doesn’t look pretty. Most of the trees in 2 million acres of Colorado forests are dead or dying. Will the forest ever be the same?

Vince White-Petteruti had seen some messed-up trails in his years as a founding member of the Wilderness Volunteers, but seldom had he seen anything like the one along the Gore Range Trail in the summer of 2007. A sudden windstorm had knocked at least 400 trees across the trail, creating a tangle of trunks and branches 6 to 8 feet high, the kind of blowdown that foresters call jackstraw. The Volunteers had come to remove these trees, but power tools aren’t allowed in the Eagles Nest Wilderness Area, so the crew had to labor four days with crosscut and bow saws to reopen 4 miles of trail.

Only a small percentage of those toppled trees displayed the telltale red needles that betray the ravages of mountain pine beetle, but the Gore Range blowdown nonetheless presages problems that soon will face outdoor travelers across north-central Colorado. Beetle-infected lodgepole pines now cover nearly 2 million acres in the state—an area more than seven times the size of Rocky Mountain National Park—and within a few years those dead trees will start falling over in massive numbers, creating a nightmarish tangle of dead timber that will impact Colorado skiers, hikers, hunters, and other outdoor lovers in myriad ways for decades to come.

“That blowdown replicated what will be occurring in eight to 10 years once pine beetle trees end up falling down on top of each other,” White-Petteruti says. “Land managers are going to have to ask themselves: ‘Are we even going to bother to reopen some of these trails?’ ”

The Red Death

Colorado’s pine beetle epidemic began in 1996 and has spread like a ghost fire, killing trees throughout the north-central mountains. The destruction has been especially bad in the popular skiing, hiking and mountain biking areas around Summit County, Grand Lake and Steamboat Springs. Now, it’s moving onto the east side of the Front Range.
“The epidemic will last until the beetles run out of an adequate food supply that will sustain their high populations, or until we have sufficient cold temperatures to reduce the beetle populations,” explains Joe Duda, a supervisor at the Colorado State Forest Service.

Natural denizens of Colorado, mountain pine beetles have exploded in population because of recent warm winters (which failed to kill the larvae), extended drought conditions (which weakened trees that otherwise could fight off beetles with a toxic resin) and the decline of Colorado logging, coupled with consistent forest-fire suppression (which creates homogenous, mature stands of lodgepoles that make ideal beetle chow). The female pine beetles bore into the inner bark of mature lodgepole pines and lay their eggs, which develop into larvae; the beetles carry a fungus that blocks the flow of water and nutrients up the trunk, and the hungry larvae further damage the trees. An infected tree’s needles begin to turn red about a year after the beetle attack kills the tree. By then the beetles have already abandoned their dead or dying host. Young beetles invade fresh stands of lodgepole in an annual mass flight.

With neither the financial resources nor practical means to control the plague on a wide scale, foresters and landowners must let it run its course. In most places, control efforts have been limited to cutting down small stands of infected trees or spraying healthy trees to protect visual corridors and safeguard campgrounds. Rocky Mountain National Park, for example, has spent more than $800,000 since 2006 on beetle mitigation, yet it has scarcely touched the damaged trees in the backcountry, which comprises 95 percent of the park.
For most high-country residents and visitors, the immediate impact has been visual: The sight of vast mountainsides of “nevergreens” dismays tourists and locals alike. But the danger of falling trees to property and people is no idle threat: Last October, a beetle-killed tree fell on a forester just south of Grand Lake, killing the man. Two weeks earlier, another Grand County man was hit in the back by a falling tree as he walked down a road.

Mary Ann Chambers, public affairs officer for the Rocky Mountain Region Bark Beetle Incident Management Team of the U.S. Forest Service, says 911 miles of trails in the Medicine Bow-Routt, White River and Arapaho and Roosevelt national forests lie in beetle-affected areas. Forty percent of all roads in these forests are affected. Both trails and roads could be closed periodically because of hazardous trees; in some cases they may be closed indefinitely. Nearly 20 percent of all the developed acreage—mostly campgrounds and picnic areas—in these national forests may be closed or restricted as beetle-killed trees are cut down and trucked away.

Cost Cutting: Rocky Mountain National Park has spent $800,000 since 2006 fighting the beetles—to little avail.

Closed Out

In 2008, 32 campgrounds and picnic areas in three Colorado national forests were partially or completely closed. As the beetle-kill mitigation work continues this year, many campgrounds are expected to be completely or partially closed (see sidebar). In the last 12 months, 4,000 to 5,000 dead trees have been removed from Steamboat Lake, Pearl Lake, State Forest and Golden Gate Canyon state parks; another 6,000 trees are slated for removal this year. The work may inconvenience visitors and cause crowding at the campgrounds that are still open, but the biggest impact is likely to be the unfamiliar and mildly shocking sight of acres of clear-cuts in once-pristine state parks and national forests. And don’t forget a sunshade for that picnic table: There won’t be many trees to provide shade or shelter from gusty winds.

The U.S. Forest Service in Colorado has already received $5.6 million of federal economic stimulus money for the removal of hazardous trees—and much more money is expected soon. Some of the funds will be used to employ teams of workers from the Colorado Youth Conservation Corps to clear trees from campgrounds and trails.

It’s not just hikers and campers who will be affected by the beetle plague. Ski resorts in the north-central mountains are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to clear beetle-killed trees. Winter Park has removed thousands of affected trees from its slopes since 2004, and the cutting continues. At Steamboat, the glades are growing subtly thinner as trees are removed, and trails are widening. On the one hand, such thinning could make for more accessible tree skiing. But opening up slopes may increase wind’s negative impacts on snow and lifts, and skiers may perceive more crowding at their favorite resort when once-tight tree skiing becomes more accessible through thinned forests.

At Nordic skiing resorts, millions of red pine needles on the trails have wreaked havoc with waxed skis, and more snow is drifting onto trails, forcing frequent grooming. To deal with deadfall along their trails, dude ranches have begun outfitting wranglers with saws and axes along with their lariats. The Rocky Mountain Orienteering Club has had to revise its ultra-detailed map of the Frisco Peninsula because of new logging roads and cut-down trees near the Frisco Nordic Center. Sherry Litasi, president off the club, said orienteers may soon have to stop racing at Frisco altogether if authorities end up clear-cutting substantial swaths of forest. Tigiwon Road, the standard access for climbing 14,005-foot Mt. of the Holy Cross in the northern Sawatch Range, is expected to be closed for an entire summer, possibly in 2010, to remove dead trees lining the road. And mountaineers who rely on unmaintained “user trails” to reach seldom-climbed peaks may soon find the approach has become the crux of the climb.

A Burning Question

The biggest impacts on outdoor recreation are still to come. One is the danger of major forest fires from all those dead trees. This will come in two phases. The first is right now, as millions of trees filled with dead needles increase the risk of a fast-spreading “crown fire.” After the needles fall—two to three years after a tree dies—the fire risk eases substantially, and the presence or absence of drought and wind become the overriding factors, just as they are in a healthy forest. However, says Monique Rocca, a wildland fire science professor at CSU, “The fuels on the forest floor will accumulate through time as the trees die and eventually fall over.” Fires burning this kind of fuel spread slower than crown fires, says Rocca, but, on the other hand, the presence of so many downed trees will make it hard for firefighters to move through the woods.

Apart from fire, the biggest impact on outdoor recreation is going to be the skeletons of millions of dead trees—standing and fallen. Three to seven years after trees die, their bases will begin to rot and they’ll just fall over—much faster if a wind event like the one along the Gore Range Trail strikes. “Within 15 years, 90 percent of the mature lodgepole pines in affected forests will be blown down,” says Kurt Mackes, research scientist for the Colorado State Forest and a CSU forestry professor.

These dead trees will make life miserable for many wilderness visitors. “Wildlife viewing, hunting and general recreational access to the forest will be more difficult,” says Duda. “Many trails may be closed due to the risk of falling dead trees, and this condition will exist for many years. Once the dead trees fall, they will remain on the ground for several decades.”

And if maintaining the narrow corridors of hiking and mountain biking trails is going to be tough, imagine how difficult cross-country hiking and backcountry skiing will become, once logs are scattered everywhere at waist height. Fortunately, Colorado’s best skiing is often among higher-elevation spruce-fir forests that have not been impacted severely by insects, but lower-elevation slopes may be dangerous and difficult to ski in all but the deepest snow cover.

When entire forests are downed, profound but unpredictable effects on Colorado’s snowpack are likely. Ethan Greene, director of the Colorado Avalanche Information Center, says, “We have discussed the beetle kill issue, but have more questions than answers. Less forest will mean more avalanche slopes, and avalanche paths may widen and lengthen as dead trees are knocked over. However, if avalanche slopes are covered with downfall, this could actually increase the stability of the snow by increasing the surface roughness. It will vary from slope to slope.”

Seeing the Forest

The beetle kill is not all bad news. Once you get used to the color, the mountainsides in beetle country are still beautiful. “It looks like the changing of the seasons back East, with the difference that it doesn’t change back,” Mackes says. In many places, the views for hikers, mountain bikers, and skiers will be better than ever as lower-elevation forests thin out. And some wildlife species will benefit. “As canopy dies and recedes, moisture and sunlight will increase on the forest floor, adding forage for elk,” Mackes explains. “Other than access issues from blowdown, the [beetle kill] may provide a boon to hunting. It will really improve elk and mule deer habitat.”

And the trees eventually will come back. Employing the sort of ecology-in-action spin you hear after forest fires, Chambers says, “You have to look at it as an ecological happening. Although it’s heart-wrenching to watch the old trees die, the trees will grow back.” Absent a large fire, younger lodgepole trees and seedlings usually survive the beetle epidemic, and new growth is already appearing in many beetle-ravaged areas. Where there were pre-existing aspen root systems, aspen groves should flourish. Soon, golden hillsides in the autumn may replace green forests above many mountain towns.

State park and national forest campgrounds, as well as private landowners and ski resorts, have begun replanting trees in damaged woodlands. The Colorado state parks are planting about 4,000 seedlings in areas where trees were removed, including aspen, spruce, and other species. “We’re trying to kick-start forest health by planting multiple kinds of trees—this should help to create a diverse, multi-age forest in our campgrounds and will help us avoid the single-species forests that have been devastated by the pine beetle epidemic,” explains Matt Schultz, the state parks’ forest management coordinator.

On a wide scale, however, a healthy post-beetles forest—multiple tree ages and species—is only possible if forest management practices change. That might mean more logging and, in particular, allowing fires to burn in wilderness areas. “I see an opportunity to maybe manage our forests to avoid these occurrences in the future, but that would take political will that I’m not sure is there,” Mackes says. “I have a hard time imagining the community of Winter Park, for example, allowing large, uncontrolled fires to burn in their backyard.”

In the meantime, hikers, skiers, and other backcountry travelers will have to make do—or move on. “My guess is that people aren’t going to want to go backpacking or hiking on some of these lands, even if the trails are cleared,” says trail volunteer White-Petteruti. “They’re going to say, ‘Man, is this ugly. And one of these babies could fall down on me.’ They’ll be asking themselves: ‘Do I want to go backpacking here or go to Aspen or some other less-affected place?’ ”

The cowboy was clearly in a pickle. We had stumbled upon him after rounding a corner during a high-water river trip through the Yampa Canyon, and he needed help to get him and his horse across the river. The only neighborly thing to do was pull over and lend a hand.

His cattle, it seemed, had crossed the river during winter, and the spring runoff had left his herd stranded on the other side. So we tied the horse to our dory, ferried them both across, and spent the next three hours herding his cows back across in our kayaks. He’d round them up and heyaw! them into the water, then we’d peel out Blue Angels-style in our kayaks and nose them with our bows in the right direction.

It’s hundreds of memories like these, stretched along the Yampa’s 250 miles, that hold the river as close to my heart as that cowboy’s horse is to his. The Yampa, which runs from its origins in the Flat Tops to its confluence with the Green, is billed as the last major free-flowing tributary to the Colorado. It changes from a trickle during drought years to a raging torrent in spring, and cycles through every level in between. And it’s as unbridled as the wild horses in Brown’s Park, which once played host to Butch, Sundance and the nefarious Hole in the Wall Gang.

As a recreational resource, the river supports canoe and kayak schools, rafting operations, anglers and even a thriving tubing scene. The river hosts seven towns, acres of agricultural interests, endangered fish species and even snowmaking operations for a world-class ski resort. But like other free-flowing rivers, especially those in the arid West, the Yampa often gets caught in the crossfire of Western politics.

Because the Yampa is the last major river basin in the state that still harbors unappropriated water, everyone from mining operations to municipalities has set their sights on its bounty, prompting what is leading to a showdown at the Yampa Corral.

Colorado’s water-right and river-navigation laws—if the water’s not spoken for, it’s yours if you can put it to “beneficial” use—run a course as complicated as the river’s lower canyons. Landowners can own both banks, and even the river bottom, but not the water coursing downstream. Riddled with fences and no trespassing signs, the upper Yampa is lined with many a landowner intent on protecting his/her property.

River runners and fly anglers know this better than anyone. There are some sections that are just plain off limits. Fortunately, there are also some river advocates who are just plain off their rockers.

Consider the exploits of my friend Pete Van De Carr, who owns the Backdoor Sports kayak shop in downtown Steamboat Springs. In protest, he took matters into his own hands in a case of vigilante justice that would do Charles Bronson proud. He spent 10 days kayaking from the town of Yampa, Colorado, near the river’s headwaters all the way down to Jensen, Utah. While he wasn’t packing heat, he was packing a package of Hostess Twinkies, which he secured inside a waterproof Pelican box. When he arrived in Jensen, he pulled them out and sold them to outfitter Adrift Adventures for a quarter. “I wanted to show that you can use the river to conduct interstate commerce,” he says. “That means the river’s navigable and that land-owners can’t block passage.”

Attempts to block passage on the river aren’t new. In fact, the government’s efforts to stifle the Yampa with the Echo Park Dam in 1956 led to one of the conservation world’s biggest environmental victories ever, thanks to the efforts of the late David Brower, then  executive director of the Sierra Club. But these days the river is staring down the barrel of other threats. Foremost are those involving the water within its banks that is still up for grabs.

For whitewater paddlers, the river’s crown jewel is 7-mile-long Cross Mountain Canyon, which at high water turns into a Class V-VI maelstrom that funnels the river’s 7,660-square-mile watershed into a tight-walled chasm so fierce that ABC Sports once featured it on “The American Sportsman.” At lower flows, it’s a more manageable Class III-IV classic. Still, miss your line in the Osterizer, its opening rapid, and you can count on getting recirculated.

Some interests have recognized the value of an unfettered Yampa. In 2003, the City of Steamboat Springs got in on the action, filing for and winning a Recreational Inchannel Diversion (RICD) water right, proving that recreation is as beneficial a use of the river’s water as are industry and agriculture. One of only a few communities in the country to garner such a concession, it based its filing on two play waves it built downtown: the D Hole, named for the nearby Dream Island Trailer Park, and the C Hole just upstream, named for the late Charlie Beavers, a local whitewater kayaking pioneer with several first descents in the region. At the right flows, the structures create two of the best surf waves in the state, drawing kayakers from across the country. The beauty of the city’s water right is that it’s non-consumptive, meaning it keeps the water in the river and still satisfies downstream uses, but other proposed filings would siphon the Yampa’s flows.

Other agencies have unveiled recent plans to recirculate some of the river’s water for their own needs. In 2007, the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District proposed the $4 billion Pumpback project, which would direct 20 percent of the river’s high-water flow from the town of Maybell to the thirsty Front Range, effectively drying up Cross Mountain Canyon’s historic highs. Energy developers are also making a play. To shore up its oil-shale plans, Shell Oil filed for a water right in December that would pump 8 percent of peak runoff into a reservoir near Maybell.

If these plans go through, the river itself, as well as the wildlife depending on its natural flows, will be the biggest losers. While the Yampa’s upper reaches offer some of the best trout fishing in the West, many of its other aquatic species aren’t faring as well. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lists the humpback chub (Gila cypha), bonytail (G. elegans), Colorado pikeminnow (Ptychocheilus lucius), and razorback sucker (Xyrauchen texanus)—all endemic to the Yampa Basin—as endangered due to habitat degradation and competitive nonnative species. Peak flows are vital for the spawning habitats of these unique species. It won’t be long before we start seeing bumper stickers proclaim, “Humpback Don’t Want No Pumpback.”

On January 29, 2009, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar stood before a room full of federal employees and reporters at the Lakewood, Colorado, office of the Minerals Management Service and laid down the new law. “The president has made it clear that the type of ethical transgressions, blatant conflicts of interest, wastes and abuses we have seen over the past eight years will no longer be tolerated,” said Salazar. “The Department of Interior will raise the bar for ethics, and we will set the standard for reform.”

The Boss: 5th Generation Coloradan, Ken Salazar

Just nine days into his new post as the overseer of many of the nation’s natural resources, Salazar was deriding the rogue employees of the Minerals Management Service, the agency that oversees development of the West’s vast oil and gas reserves, for a departmental scandal last year in which oil and gas industry representatives traded sex and drugs to government officials in exchange for favorable rulings. The revelations fueled further public scorn about the roughshod development of natural energy extraction careening through Colorado, Wyoming and Utah.

Six days later, Salazar was taking full advantage of the power of his new post. He cancelled natural gas leases on 77 parcels of proposed wilderness areas on Bureau of Land Management plots in southeastern Utah. These parcels—located close to Arches and Canyonlands national parks, Dinosaur National Monument and Nine Mile Canyon—had been sold in a hasty December 19, 2008, auction, just a month before the Obama administration took office. Again, Salazar spoke with conviction. “In its last weeks in office, the Bush administration rushed ahead to sell oil and gas leases at the doorstep of some of our nation’s most treasured landscapes in Utah,” Salazar said in a press conference. “We need to responsibly develop our oil and gas supplies. We must do so in a thoughtful and balanced way that allows us to protect our signature landscapes.”

The message was clear. After two terms of pro-energy and pro-development policies by the Bush administration—resulting in widely documented abuses that range from ignoring science to letting rivers run dry and weakening the Endangered Species Act—America’s natural resources are under the protection of a new chief. Things are going to be much different. But what everyone who uses public lands wants to know is will it be better?

Striking the Balance
A fifth-generation Colorado rancher turned lawyer, Salazar paid his dues in state government before earning a seat in the U.S. Senate in 2004. In between, as Director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, he funded recreation and reformed mining and petroleum operations. When President Barrack Obama nominated him to head the Interior Department, which oversees the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, Minerals Management Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, National Park Service and Office of Surface Mining, Salazar sailed through his confirmation hearings and became the first Hispanic to hold the office.
For the most part, representatives from both sides of the political fence were relieved. Salazar is a moderate, thoughtful, measured Westerner who will strike a balance between protecting the natural world and drawing energy—oil, natural gas and renewable energies—from our public lands. They credit his family ties to a ranch in Colorado’s San Luis Valley for giving Salazar profound, influential experience to head an often contentious department. As a result of his heritage, however, Salazar has a personal and complex connection with the land that will give him necessary empathy as he makes important decisions, says Patty Limerick, faculty director at the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado in Boulder. “The cowboy hat is really perfect,” she says, referring to Salazar’s trademark white 10-gallon headpiece. “He is so credentialed in not just looking like a Westerner, but actually being a Westerner.”

Geography matters in this post. The vast majority of the Interior Secretary’s domain is in the West. He oversees the administration of all federal public lands with the exception of national forests. His influence extends from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to Rocky Mountain National Park to the Washington Monument to Nevada’s Badlands and beyond. Salazar has made it clear that he’s no Ed Abbey, but neither is he a “drill-baby-drill” demagogue like Gale Norton and Dirk Kempthorne, his predecessors from the Bush Administration. Just what does the cowboy hat-wearing, soft-spoken, moon-faced czar of the natural world intend to do? In a word: balance.
“I’ve spent my political career fighting for Colorado’s land, water and people,” Salazar said in an interview with Elevation Outdoors. “And in the last four years [as a U.S. Senator], I worked very hard moving us forward to a new era of energy. I expect the Department of Interior to be a strong contributing force for continuing that work.”

Cleaning Up the Mess
Salazar is facing a formidable task. The Bush administration adopted aggressive policies to promote domestic energy development, limit the power of the Endangered Species Act and sideline scientific evidence when crafting policies. In Colorado, that translated into increased acreage opened to oil and gas drilling, construction of a controversial natural gas pipeline that transected three roadless areas in the forests near Aspen, and rule changes to facilitate oil shale development, among other changes. In addition, those folks in charge of overseeing the mining and drilling were embroiled in the embarrassing scandal of trading drugs and sex for lease permits.

Drill Somewhere Else, Baby: The deserts of Vermillion Basin should be spared from oil and gas development under Salazar’s watch

When he took office in late January, Salazar pledged his agency would scrutinize actions taken by the Bush Administration. Done effectively, Salazar could chart a new era for his agency, according to Limerick. “There really is quite a bit of the bully pulpit that comes with the Secretary of Interior,” says Limerick. “If he speaks in the right places with the right tone, the Secretary of Interior can be quite an opinion maker.”

Granted, that power can manifest itself on either side political spectrum. Under Ronald Reagan, James Watt led the rampage on public lands mineral extraction, loosening regulations and stripping away environmental protections. Then, under the Clinton Administration, Bruce Babbitt oversaw the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone and Idaho. George W. Bush’s first Interior Secretary, Gale Norton (whom Salazar endorsed), withdrew federal lands from consideration for formal wilderness designation and promoted more aggressive oil and gas exploration.

Arapahoe Basin offsets 100 percent of electricity used via RECs, has an extensive recycling program and vermacomposting bins in its administrative offices.

Aspen/Snowmass built three LEED-certified green buildings, including Snowmass’ Sam’s Restaurant and base village (certified as LEED for Neighborhood Development).

Copper Mountain offsets 100 percent of electricity used for snowmaking, lifts and all Copper-owned buildings, plus it operates three environmentally friendly buses that are nearly 60 percent more efficient than conventional buses.

Crested Butte offsets 100 percent of its carbon footprint with RECs and it focused on recycling things like beams, kitchen equipment and toilets into other uses when remodeling its Gothic building.

Eldora focuses on public transportation advocacy and improving the efficiency of snowmaking equipment to net lower energy use at the resort.

Purgatory at Durango Mountain Resort uses bio-fuels in all vehicle fleets and machines and offers attractive incentives to employees who participate in the resort’s carpool program.

Silverton uses dead wood as its primary source for heat, stops lifts when empty to save energy and organizes boot-packing days to cut down on explosives use and reduce energy use.

Steamboat uses a combo of solar and wind power to run three of its lifts, and all disposable products are made from renewable, biodegradable resources. The resort also has an extensive recycling program (150 tons in ’07-’08) and even has new patio furniture made entirely from recycled milk jugs.

Telluride offsets 1 million kWh of electricity via the purchase of RECs, utilizes biodiesel in some mountain machinery and uses natural sugar cane to-go containers in all restaurants.

Winter Park offsets with RECs and launched the Connexion brand, which is used as a logo on recycling stations and to educate skiers and the community about the environment in which they play.

Wolf Creek purchases about 150,000 kWh a month to offset 100 percent of its energy use and recycles everything from kitchen oil and aluminum to batteries and old uniforms.

Luke Cartin’s do-good eco-exuberance is palpable as he extols the virtues of Vail Resorts’ sustainability plan, from its purchase of renewable energy credits (RECs) to the hydro power studies it’s now conducting on its mountain streams. As the environmental manager of Vail Resorts’ five popular mountains, Cartin wields influence at an important time in snowsports history—a time when resorts across the country are breaking new trail on the path to sustainability.

“The green efforts being made in Colorado are amongst the most aggressive in the ski industry,” says Troy Hawks, communications manager for the National Ski Areas Association (NSAA), which issues a Sustainable Slopes report on resort sustainability initiatives each year.
The big guys aren’t the only Colorado ski resorts walking the walk. Even fledgling ski areas like Silverton Mountain are looking to lessen their impacts. “Everything we have here is recycled or reused and those items would have ended up in a landfill,” says Silverton owner Aaron Brill. According to Colorado Ski Country USA, the combined environmental initiatives of its 22 member resorts translate to more than 3,600 metric tons of carbon dioxide being offset per year.

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Despite its jet-set clientele of second-home-owning glitterati, The Aspen Skiing Company has managed to become a beacon of green-ness in a cluttered sea of sustainability claims. At the helm is Aspen Skiing Company’s executive director of sustainability, Auden Schendler, who has a knack for making solid eco-conscious decisions while also shaking things up at the industry level.

For example, Vail offsets 100 percent of its five resorts’ electricity use (making it the largest buyer of certified wind power in the travel and leisure industry)—an act, it says, that keeps 211 million pounds of CO2 emissions out of the atmosphere every year. That’s the equivalent of taking 18,000 cars off the road every year or planting 27,000 acres of trees. But Aspen has chosen to veer away from offsets at Schendler’s recent urging.

“We stopped buying RECs because we didn’t feel they were legit,” explains Schendler, who originally had urged his employers to dive into RECs in 2006. “We are focusing on developing renewable energy in the ground with concrete.”

Schendler points to the micro-hydroelectric system Aspen installed on Snowmass Mountain, the three wind turbines it’s considering and the 147-kilowatt solar array it funded in neighboring Carbondale, which is the largest of its kind in Western Colorado. Aspen Skiing Company has also developed the ski industry’s first climate policy by committing to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from 2000 levels by 10 percent by 2012 and 25 percent by 2020.

Green or Greed?
While all of that sounds positive, the bottom line is that ski areas, by their nature, take a heavy toll on the planet and local ecosystems. There’s the impact to the local environment, the intense use of resources such as water for snowmaking, and skiers’ CO2-boosting travel to resorts. In fact, a 2007 study showed that 62 percent of visitors to Colorado resorts (approximately 7,748,545 people) were from out of the state or out of the country.

While many resort efforts are valiant, how can the public be sure they’re not greenwashing? Ski resorts’ toughest eco-barometer may well be Durango-based Colorado Wild, an environmental group that runs the Ski Area Citizen’s Coalition. Each fall, the nonprofit group issues the Ski Area Environmental Scorecard, which rates the environmental performance of ski resorts across the West and parts of Canada on a scale of zero to 100. The 2008 top performer? Aspen Mountain. The lowest scorer? Copper Mountain Ski Resort.

“The biggest problem with ski areas and what makes them not sustainable is that many look to expand with real estate and more ski terrain,” says Hunter Sykes, coordinator of the Scorecard and the co-director of Resorting to Madness, a documentary flick on the impacts of the modern ski resort industry. He argues that there has been little growth overall in skier visits in the last few years and that these expansions are simply an effort to lure skiers from other mountains. “Ski areas say to be successful they have to expand,” says Sykes, “but that’s a ridiculous argument in my view. There aren’t any more skiers out there to bring to your mountain.”

The big question is, for all their efforts, from energy reduction and recycling to carbon offsets and LEED-certified green building, can these behemoth travel-dependent businesses really be run sustainably?

“How do you define green and sustainable?” asks NSAA’s Hawks. “In the ski industry we feel good because we are leading these efforts and hopefully we’re setting an example for other businesses.”

Could skiing and snowboarding go the way of the slow food and slow travel movements? If such a slow skiing revolution were to launch, skiers and snowboarders would stick to their local hills and only travel out occasionally to enjoy the culture and slopes of one other resort, slowly. “Silverton or Mad River Glen are examples of community ski resorts and that might be what a sustainable ski area looks like in the future,” says Auden Schendler, Aspen Skiing Company’s executive director of sustainability. Even today, the troubled economy is keeping skiers and snowboarders closer to home, a fact that is good for the planet. “You’re seeing some of that this year,” says Troy Hawks, communications manager for the National Ski Areas Association. “People are being more economically minded and resorts in New York, New Hampshire, and Vermont are seeing strong visitations while fly-to destinations like Aspen and Steamboat have reported dips in their numbers in bookings.”