The above trailer for Beyond Midnight: The Grand Traverse, a documentary covering the most recent Elk Mountains Grand Traverse, the annual backcountry ski race from Crested Butte to Aspen, makes me want to see more. Based on mining-era mail routes, the race’s course covers forty miles with plenty of elevation…
Earlier this month, the U.S. Forest Service killed Crested Butte Mountain Resort’s plan to enter the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process to expand onto Snodgrass Mountain with an additional 276 acres of predominately intermediate terrain that has been pegged for skiing in Forest Service plans since 1978. The denial…
Level 1 – Refresh Teaser from Level 1 on Vimeo. Level 1 Productions’ new flick Refresh is a celebration of the Denver-based production company’s decade of badass freeskiing filmmaking, a simultaneous look back and glimpse of the future. Native New Yorker Josh Berman, Level 1’s mastermind, started shooting his buddies…
El Niño, the atmospheric condition characterized by warmer Pacific waters, is back. That means we’ll probably get more early- and late-season dumps in the Rockies. As the above map indicates, it also means we have an equal chance of having above normal, normal, and below normal snowfall this winter. Yeah,…
Via our friends at ToplessRobot.com: What did you expect, Tattooine?…
Sure, Vail will be a popular destination for opening weekend — but do they have sharks?One brave alternative to the festivities at 8,150 feet: snorkel or dive at the Downtown Aquarium. The sharks aren’t aggressive; some of them are downright snuggly, despite having skin like sandpaper. You need to be…
After breaking the seal on my Loveland pass yesterday, I woke up this morning feeling like I’d been run down by a truck, or at least a compact SUV. I can’t be alone in having a few early-season aches and pains in certain cranky muscles that weren’t in high demand…
Every few years, Hollywood cranks out another fictional skiing movie. While the subgenre’s never hatched a bona fide blockbuster, there have been a few good films sandwiched in between the myriad variations of “Animal House on the slopes.” (Snowballing, anyone?) As with most sports movie subgenres, the catalog is a…
After Breckenridge voters overwhelmingly chose to decriminalize possession of small amounts of pot two weeks ago, the move generated considerable chatter in the national media, including coverage in The New York Times last Friday. The story speculates as to what impact the move will have on tourism, positive or negative…
Okay, so it didn’t even miss a single winter, but the news that Phil Anschutz was pulling the plug on the Ski Train because it wasn’t making money — although it never made any money — was met with a collective groan.But the company that operates the Rio Grande Scenic…
Certain antsy astronomers are super-freaked-out: The sun has lost its spots. The sun’s magnetism has been decreasing for years, and now there hasn’t been a single sunspot since last year. The last time this happened was during the “Little Ice Age” in the late 17th century, when Europe was reportedly…
It was so nice Wednesday that I bagged work after lunch and headed down south to Palmer Lake for a hike up to the reservoirs above town. I met a buddy for the trek up to the second reservoir — about 1.5 miles with a fairly abrupt 600-foot gain –…
I happened upon ColoradoSkiHistory.com on the intertubes last night and found it pretty addictive. I got especially hooked on the comprehensive ski lift database, with stats on every lift in the state, and the “Lost Resorts” coverage. Random stuff I learned: Defunct Colorado resorts outnumber operating ones 145 to 30,…
Recession or not, Colorado’s ski resorts were plenty busy this off-season. The cranes that went idle in Dubai and Vegas were still running in high gear at many of the base villages, and the list of on-mountain improvements is long. In my estimation, the top five improvements at Colorado resorts…
As we anxiously wait for the winter snow, it’s important to remember the building block of a blizzard — the humble snowflake — is not necessarily a unique individual.Scientists now believe that of the million billion cubic feet of snow that annually falls on the planet, some might well be…
“Polished” and “punk” are musical adjectives that don’t always mix. Buff away the rough edges from good punk, and you can easily end up with soulless quasi-pop. It takes a lot of care to produce aesthetically pleasing punk without sacrificing its unkempt side, but the Agency pulls it off nicely…
Not every musician smokes pot. But a lot do and always have. Long before the term “stoner rock” became shorthand for describing a certain subgenre of music, reggae bands smoked bales and bales of the stuff. So did metal bands, rappers and jazzbos. Plenty of cats have been intimate with…
Sweat cascading over your brow, one eye on a road atlas and the other on the road, anger percolating as you curse yourself and everyone within earshot of the car. You’re completely, utterly and hopelessly lost. Go with it. It doesn’t matter that you don’t have a clue where you…
An anachronism but no mere mimic, Eddie Clendening fills the bill of ’50s-era teen idol a half-century after Elvis got his big break. Clendening’s full-length debut, The Rage of the Teen-Age, features the youthful frontman backed by three separate combos (including Deke Dickerson on three tracks), strumming a mean rhythm…
Memo to Denver’s aspiring megalomaniac masterminds: Your ideal lair is currently on the market for a cool $1.4 million. “Massive 45,000+ sq. ft. of underground floor-space; high chain-link fence around central complex; 2 high capacity deep wells in power dome,” reads the listing on broker 20th Century Castles’ website. Mountain…
I’d finally driven my 1986 Jeep Wagoneer into the ground. I’d driven it over the Rockies and the Sierras and all sorts of lesser mountain ranges. I’d driven it to the second-largest meteor crater in the country, just past the oil derricks and the tumbleweeds outside Odessa, Texas. I’d driven…
A co-ed, lo-fi trio with a sound that’s as garage as a dusty croquet set, the Speeks have been all over local stages in recent months. An upcoming gig will punctuate their hectic schedule: On Wednesday, April 2, at the Larimer Lounge, the band opens for Riverside, California’s finest soul-punks,…
