While deep powder lines beckon many skiers in Colorado, when venturing into the backcountry, those lines have the potential to be exceptionally dangerous to the unaware. The unfortunate truth is that avalanche hazard is highest on slopes that are most attractive to skiers, in terms of the steepness. However, there…
I thought I was a badass by kayaking once and considering skydiving — but it turns out I wasn’t thinking big enough. Idaho BASE jumper Miles Daisher took the peanut-butter-and-chocolate route, combining the two tastes into something he calls (of course) “skyaking.”Check out the ridiculous footy after the jump…
If you had big ideas to go to Aspen this weekend in search of spring freshies, you might want to can those plans. In a bid to prove she’s still the boss around Colorado as well as Chile and Haiti, Mother Nature saw fit to rain down hundreds of tons…
Last month, a Department of the Interior memo leaked and broke the story that the Obama administration was considering establishing 14 national monuments in nine western states, including the Vermillion Basin in far northwestern Colorado. Republicans and property-rights hardliners have since been lashing out at the idea, denouncing the Clinton…
Have you ever wished you could convince your friends and family to buy you a lift ticket and not come off like a dirtball in the process? Now’s your chance: Not only can you get a free lift ticket, but a free lunch and other free schwag like a $25…
Whoever first thought up that old t-shirt slogan “Life’s a Mountain Not a Beach” must have spent one unfortunate Spring Break in Miami Beach, as skiers and snowboarders from around the world know that the real party is right here in Colorado. If you’re staying close to home this year,…
In Crested Butte, both the pro- and anti-development forces await word on the future of Snodgrass Mountain from the U.S. Forest Service’s Region 5 Deputy Regional Forester Jim Peña, the Crested Butte News reports. After local U.S.F.S. honcho Charlie Richmond kiboshed the resort’s proposed expansion onto Snodgrass Mountain last fall…
After four years of skiing an average of 30 days a season, my poor ski boots were becoming looser and looser on my feet, as the liner boot was completely packed out. This required me to buckle the boots tighter and tighter to maintain some level of control while skiing…
Vail Valley’s Lindsey Vonn crashed and burned in everything but the Downhill (Gold) and Super G (Bronze), but that hasn’t stopped the post-Olympics marketing bonanza: A gold medal is a gold medal, after all. Last week General Mills unveiled its Lindsey Vonn “Breakfast of Champions” Wheaties box art, making her…
Back in January, I wrote about how on three separate occasions in December, a personal locator beacon was triggered in the vicinity of Berthoud Pass. These false positives came from the same ACR PLB-300 Microfix (RescueFix) beacon. After the three at Berthoud, the same unit was triggered again twice near…
House Bill 1188, the controversial proposal to allow rafting companies to cross through private property on historically established routes, is now in committee of the state Senate. (Read a February OTE post on it here). According to this Summit Daily News story, its chances of making it into law are…
Legendary Telluride ski bum “Captain Jack” Carey passed away on Lizard Head Pass last summer after a truck hit his bike. The New Hampshire transplant and Ophir resident was an world-class hang-glider, skier, biker, and hiker, and beloved by the community he’d been a big, smiling part of for over…
On Wednesday, I wrote about Her Day, a night riding event at Echo Mountain on the first Thursday of every month. Her Day is designed to introduce women to playing on features in the terrain park in an encouraging and relaxed atmosphere.Though I’ve skied on and off for 30 years,…
Ready to live out those Dew Tour dreams and X Games fantasies and begin your Olympic odyssey? Your journey begins here: The United States Snowboard Association brings its 23rd annual Rocky Mountain Series to Copper Mountain this weekend, March 6-7, for the final event of the series before next month’s…
The good people over at Science magazine are blogging that too much ski wax is probably not a good thing. Apparently ski wax has a lot of stuff besides wax in it, including some nasty junk called perfluorinated octanoic acid (PFOA), and that’s not the best thing to have in…
Built in 1994, Francie’s Cabin is an excellent hut for backcountry ski trips and summer hiking and mountain biking. Francie’s Cabin was named in honor of Frances Lockwood Bailey. Francie’s is at an elevation of 11,264 feet, and is a 4.1 mile skin or snowshoe trip from the Burro Trailhead…
Times like this week, it’s easy to look westward and daydream of living in the thick of it all. Breck, Vail, Aspen, CB — they all seem like heaven in the middle of your favorite white dream. But living in a ski town is far from utopia. Why else would…
Colorado ski/soft porn fans, rejoice: Breckenridge’s Alex Guras has brought the crown to Colorado, winning the Rocky Mountain Region for the Freeskier/Local Lange Girl contest 2010. And unlike some poseurs, this Lange Girl actually shreds.(Bikini shot after the jump, you dogs.)…
“I’m from back in the day, as the expression goes,” explains Skip Reeves, host of KUVO-FM’s Saturday-night show “A Funk Above the Rest.” That’s why Reeves doesn’t consider ’70s R&B to be “old-school”; according to him, it’s the first school. “Many upbeat people from back in the time actually see…
In the early 1990s, with the millennium approaching, scholars, curators, collectors and writers in the art world were in a retrospective mood. Because of this, they began, for the first time, to look seriously at the history of art in Colorado. What has since surfaced from their sleuthing has been…
Allen True’s West. Allen Tupper True was Denver’s premier muralist during the first third of the twentieth century. Sadly, many of his commissions have been painted over or were lost when the buildings they were in were demolished. In an act of cooperation, the three big cultural institutions on the…
Girls Only. The trouble with Girls Only, a two-woman evening of conversation, skits, singing, improvisation and audience participation, is that it’s so relentlessly nice. Creator-performers Barbara Gehring and Linda Klein have worked together for many years; at some point, they read their early diaries to each other and were transfixed…
