A Rocky Road

While officials continue to stand behind the report, they say they recognize that there is a "serious problem" with morale and trust. A special panel convened by superintendent Jones met last week to look into the situation surrounding Detterline and Holien. Jones says the lack of trust runs so deep that he wanted to bring in outsiders and put any topic on the table. Holien, though, says he doesn't trust the panel.

Holien recommended having an outsider such as a retired judge or a college professor on the panel, but that request was denied. The superintendent tells Westword that he just didn't have time to find a non-Park Service employee.

"They get you no matter what," Holien says. Jones's response to that is a frustrated sigh.

The superintendent vows to be more vigilant about transfer requests from his subordinates, the people who supervise the rangers. The next time he gets a transfer request from his chief of operations in the ranger division, he says, he will have a better understanding of how sensitive transfers are and will ask more questions before he signs off, especially if the Longs Peak ranger job is involved. "I didn't understand the degree [to which] that position was important in the mind of the public," says Jones.

Evans tried twice to ask Detterline to come and meet with an "independent mediator that everybody agrees on," he says. "Both times I have been ignored." Chief ranger Evans says he still hopes that will happen. Detterline says the one condition Evans put down--no lawyers--was unacceptable. Both Detterline and Holien have been paying a lawyer to get advice as they wend their way through the bureaucratic processes. They both say they don't intend to sue to make any money, but they are suspicious of a request to meet without lawyers present, because their lawyer has helped spot traps that they might have otherwise fallen into.

Even with all the hard feelings currently in the park, Jones says that he thinks the park will "come out stronger" for all the troubles. Detterline says that may be true, but the process doesn't need to be this painful for so many people. "We don't need to learn like this," he says.