Ski Tuning 101: Home tunes, step 1

For the next four days, we’ll go over what types of things you can do to maximize the performance of your boards on the slopes. Check back tomorrow to learn how to deburr and sharpen your edges.While there are several places in town that can tune your skis or snowboard,…

Downhill slope: The Rathskeller

I suspect I would drink at Loveland Ski Area’s resident watering hole even if I didn’t have a pass to the mountain. That might be overstating it, but I definitely have a soft spot for the cavernous, vaguely German joint. There are near-daily beer specials, good mountain banter, and 50…

In praise of the winter 14er

14ers are both the Colorado hiker’s hallmark and his/her bane. You can’t help but want to tick them off your personal list and “collect ’em all!” like they’re toys or trophies. Problem is, you’re not the only one, and the tops of all but the hardest can seem like a…

Telluride adds night skiing in superpipe

Echo Mountain near Mt. Evans in the Front Range has long believed that offering park and pipe skiing — with night options — is a viable business model. To date, with the exception of Keystone, the bigger Colorado resorts have left night skiing alone. But last week, Telluride offered a…

Mountain party of the week: Mary Jane’s birthday

It’s Mary Jane’s birthday, and the people at Winter Park have come up with plenty of ways to celebrate, making it worth your while to make the drive this weekend. Always wanted to throw on a pair of skis and get towed around at 30 mph by a horse, but…

Snow magic: Wash your car and burn your skis to get the snow falling

In yesterday’s Telluride Daily Planet, staff writer Ben Fornell tackled a story about snow-summoning rituals and hit on some of the biggies:Wear shorts and flip-flops to dare the pantheon of snow deities to retort with a blizzard.Light a time-tested, environmentally-unfriendly used-ski bonfire.Make a shrine involving Buddha and canned clams and…

Is Leadville your next pot town?

Following in the footsteps of toker-friendly mountain town Breckenridge, Leadville plans to hold a ballot initiative this year that will decriminalize pot possession for amounts of less than one ounce. The issue came up when pro-pot advocates crashed a city council meeting and asked their government to decriminalize marijuana. (Leadville…

Looking to blaze up? Find a smoke shack on the hill

Last week, the Summit Daily reported on the efforts of two U.S. Forest Service officers to bust a pot smoker on the Snowmass chairlift. For the record, smoking any substance, whether legal or illegal, is generally frowned upon while riding the chairlifts. It’s especially vexing when cigarette smokers decide to…

Survey: Brits like to ski drunk

Almost a quarter of British skiers have hit the slopes drunk, according to a recent survey. In a poll of 1,072 skiers, 23 percent said that at some point during the season, they expected to have more than a dozen drinks in a night and ski the next day. Seventy-four…

Mountain lions to people: “We will eat your dog for sport”

If you’ve ever pined for life in a mountain town, with easy access to peaks without all the traffic, now’s a good time to reconsider the negatives — like watching your pet dog get snarfed in front of your eyes. The Butts family (seriously) of Green Mountain Falls got a…

Bounce With Me

It takes me less than five minutes to soak through the front of my T-shirt, but I can’t stop. With my hair clumped together and plastered to my forehead, I jump, jump, jump, bounce, roll, drop, fall, jump, jump. Sometimes I bound straight up and down ten or twelve times…

Edge is filled to the rafters with artist pairings

Edge Gallery, one of the city’s most significant artist co-ops, is putting a twist on the typical members’ show by including non-members as well. The idea for the wide-ranging group exhibit, Edge Pairings, was originally proposed by Rian Kerrane at a co-op member meeting, and her thought was to have…

Now Showing

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…

American Faust: From Condi to Neo-Condi

Remember Condoleezza Rice? Just over a year ago, she was the Secretary of State, as well as one of the most divisive figures in American political life. But after being washed out of Washington amid a Democratic tidal wave, she’s all but vanished. Her boss, President George W. Bush, remains…

Home by Dark sheds no light on family secrets

Autobiography can be dangerous territory for creative writers. Of course, many writers use their own life stories to some extent; reality provides all kinds of useful insights and evocative bits and bobs of memory. But to work as a script or novel, truth needs to be rejiggered, and it helps…

Roller Skating With My Cousin will have you going in circles

There’s an expectant, zizzy feeling in the air, along with the smell of wet paint, as Roller Skating With My Cousin begins. Everyone’s in a high good humor, and between the whirling designs on the floor, the crazy whine of music and the promo materials that bill the piece as…

Flick Pick

If ever there were a true-life tale that laid bare the laws of South African apartheid in all their arbitrary lunacy, it’s the one dramatized in Skin, Anthony Fabian’s straight-ahead biopic of Sandra Laing, the visibly black daughter born in the 1950s to white Afrikaner parents as full of denial…

Get the skinny on art at Design After Dark

This year’s Design After Dark, a fundraising gala hosted by the Denver Art Museum’s Design Council (the support group for the department of Architecture, Design & Graphics) has been given the subtitle Skin. But don’t get the wrong idea: The reference has nothing to do with nudity. Instead, Skin is…

Food Revisited

ArgusFest founder and operator Jason Bosch spends a lot of time watching documentaries; after viewing Food, Inc., which documents the hidden costs of large-scale agricultural production, he was ready for something that continued to examine the food-production industry but also offered positive examples for viewers who could incorporate some of…

Size Is Better

If local fashion maven Brandi Shigley had a million dollars, she’d use it to help local designers build their businesses. Since she doesn’t, she’s doing what she can: Shigley recently moved her cramped Fashion Denver headquarters to more spacious digs around the corner at 1070 Bannock Street, where she can…

New York, New York

The time was right, says Plus Gallery’s Ivar Zeile, to listen to the advice of others and build his gallery by breaking into “the blue chip market” — the works of New York-based artists of renown. The opportunity then fell into his lap at the suggestion of Plus artist Naomi…