Back to Its Roots

Swallow Hill Music has been going strong for thirty years, but the roots, folk and acoustic music it has always supported can still be heard and interpreted in plenty of new ways. “We definitely want to beat the stereotype that we’re just for old folkies,” says Swallow Hill spokesman Chip…

Downhill slope: Tenderfoot Tavern

Between two epic days at Monarch to start off the week, there was of course a night in Salida. My belly’s growl silenced by an Amica’s pizza, I stopped in to watch the U.S.-Canada hockey match at the Tenderfoot Tavern.Some mountain bars are none too fond of outsiders, but this…

Moticon SkiGo: Gear you want but don’t need

An R2 unit for skiers looking to hone their skills without any of that pesky human interaction, the Moticon SkiGo consists of: A) a computerized brain (pictured above); B) insoles that detect your velocity and position, and thus whether you’re making good or bad turns; and C) an earbud that…

Cressted Butte gets on the Yonder Mountain bandwagon

These days, just about every major resort and ski town has some kind of music festival, and we just got word the Crested Butte is jumping on the, er, band wagon (sorry). Crested Butte Mountain Resort announced yesterday that they will be filling the Gunnison Valley with the sweet sounds…

Echo Mountain: Her Day

Gals, if you’ve ever skied or boarded past a terrain park and seen people throwing down jumps and tricks on the rails and wondered if you could do it too, Echo Mountain has a solution. This Thursday, March 4, is the second Echo Her Day. The event runs from 6…

Google Street View trike visits Boulder Creek Path

Soon you’ll be able to watch the Day-Glo bike commuters and asshole rollerbladers hogging the Boulder Creek Path from the comfort of your laptop. Google plans to send their goofy Street View tricycle to take 360-degree photos of the entire walkway.The Boulder Creek Path won a contest on Monday to…

Colorado’s top five drive-by mountain vistas

Sometime while driving south from I-70 towards Leadville last week on my way to Chicago Ridge/Ski Cooper, I found myself grinning and thinking again how lucky I am to live in Colorado. I’ve had a passion for the mountains since I was little, and I’ve seen and played in most…

Vail renames trail after Lindsey Vonn

She’s been training at Vail since the 1990s, and moved there from Minnesota to train. She and husband Thomas live there, and she serves as the skiing ambassador. Now, Lindsey Vonn, who won a gold and bronze medal at the Vancouver Olympic Games, has a trail named after her on…

Temporary “zipper lane” might ease I-70 traffic hell

So CDOT was metering again yesterday, and  I-70 again predictably turned into a parking lot at the tunnel, ending many a getaway with an interminably slow slog back to Denver. Critics are not too happy about the practice, claiming it turns a three-hour drive into a five-hour drive for no…

Downhill slope: Top 10 ski-town bars in the West

Why is it that booze goes down so much smoother after a day on the hill?And why does all that smooth booze go down even smoother when you’re at the right mountain bar? Sometimes the right atmosphere makes it go down so silky smooth that getting up the next morning…

Bring your Olympic fantasies to life: Five Colorado starting points

This year I’ve been going for the gold in the Winter Olympic sports of Fast Forwarding Through Commercials on the DVR, Snorting Hot Cocoa Out My Nose When People Fall Down and Get Hurt, and Falling Asleep On the Couch During Ice Dancing.  If you’ve been watching religiously this month…

Classic Climb: The Squid (WI5/5+)

Located in Rocky Mountain National Park just north of Emerald Like, a 60-minute hike from the Bear Lake Trailhead, the Squid (WI5/5+, M6) should be on every ice climber’s tick list, but climbing it presents multiple difficulties. For one, it’s one of the most ephemeral hard ice routes in Colorado,…

Telluride airlifts staircases onto Palmyra Peak

It’s not a stairway to heaven, but it’s close.Canada-based Heliqwest airlifted a pair of steel staircases and a bridge onto Palmyra Peak to span between Gold Hill Chutes 8 and 9 Wednesday morning. Telluride flacks say the getup will open up new in-bounds terrain once the staircases open for business…

Winter Park hosts TransWorld Trans Am Rail Jam

Hey boarders, have you been practicing in the terrain park all winter and feel you’re ready to start competing? This Saturday, Winter Park will host the TransWorld Trans Am Rail Jam. Previous competitions have been held at Wateville Valley, N.H., Big Boulder in Pennsylvania, and Buck Hill in Minnesota. After…

Moab in Winter: It’s cheap, and it’s awesome

Recently, I took fellow OTE blogger Greg Benchwick’s advice and I headed out to Moab, Utah. This isn’t a rare pilgrimage for Front Rangers — it just usually happens in spring and summer, when dirt hounds can get their tires and tread reliably on trails without snow. A mention of…

Change Your Stripes

Come down to Fancy Tiger, 1 South Broadway, with knitting needles, calligraphy pens or even that Bedazzler you have in the closet. It’s Craft Night tonight and every Tuesday from 6 to 9 p.m., a time to get together and make pretty things and new friends. “Part of why crafts…

Climb Every Mountain

If there’s one thing we Coloradans love, it’s our mountains. We hike up them, climb up them, ride trains up them. We have guys named after our state capital sing songs about them. Now we even have a museum dedicated to the exploration of them: The Bradford Washburn American Mountaineering…

MCA Denver brings an associate curator on board

Since MCA Denver was founded in the late 1990s, its directors have simultaneously served as curators for its exhibits. There have been guest curators — Julie Segraves, John Grant and Petra Sertic come to mind — but no one permanent. For most of the museum’s history, former director Cydney Payton…