A year of Outsider stories from Colorado’s Western Slope communities

Jason Blevins

Outdoors/Business Reporter

Happy day-after-Christmas! Here’s a roundup of top stories from this year’s Outsider, which seemed to revolve around Colorado’s mountain communities working to balance and protect lifestyle, recreation, conservation and economic vibrancy. I’m over-the-moon grateful for your support. Holler anytime.

-j

Sneak Peek of the Week

Turning up the heat on the tourists-or-locals debate

Tracy’s Ross’s early-January look at the simmering feud between ranchers and organizers of the wildly popular SBT GRVL bike race in Steamboat Springs reflects the increasing tension between tourists and locals in resort communities.

Now granted, the local bemoaning of tourist hordes is a time-worn narrative in resort communities, but it’s one that has gained volume in recent years as towns deal with skyrocketing home prices, a shortage of workers and a need for a better balance between local lifestyles and catering to visitors.

Steamboat-area ranchers said the gravel race, which drew 3,000 cyclists, was too big and disrupted agricultural work on rural roads around town. Supporters said one of the largest gravel races of its kind pumped $4.5 million into the local economy in only a couple days.

After contentious debate, local leaders scaled back the size of the sixth annual race for 2025.

That reflects an evolution in communities that are built on tourism and a common theme in this year’s Outsider newsletters. A survey by the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments and the Colorado Association of Ski Towns published in June showed a growing population of residents in mountain towns who are not necessarily dependent on tourism. And those newcomers are joining a growing swell of old-timers keen to shift away from a decades-long focus on visitors and find a new balance that includes local lifestyle considerations like fostering a sense of community and “a small town atmosphere.”

That shift might mean fewer tax dollars flowing into towns. And the survey showed residents OK with that. I’ve heard one leader in Crested Butte call it a move toward “Just Shitty Enough.” Yeah, the sidewalks maybe aren’t going to be meticulously cleared every snowstorm. And the roundabouts won’t be bursting with flowers all summer. Downtown parking will be a nightmare. That massive rec center — built with taxes paid by tourists — might not be open every day of the week all year. (The overarching logic in the Just Shitty Enough ethos is that maybe high-elevation mountain towns should not be unwaveringly accommodating to all comers.)

There’s a trade-off when tourist towns start to turn away from visitors. And with fewer mountain town residents actually depending on those tourists for their livelihoods, there’s a big evolution on the horizon in Colorado’s high country economies. Time will tell if locals actually are willing to make sacrifices for fewer visitors. And we’ll be there watching.

In Their Words

An agonizing decision on Arikaree Peak

Colorado search and rescue veterans are a dedicated crew. Across the state, about 3,000 volunteers spend somewhere around 400,000 hours on several thousand missions to find and recover lost people in the backcountry. And they are rattled when they are forced to abandon a mission when they know the exact location of that person.

Rescuers in Grand County agonized over their decision in September to end their efforts to recover the body of a 31-year-old hiker who had fallen on the remote and treacherous Arikaree Peak in the Indian Peaks Wilderness. The Grand County rescuers made two attempts to reach the body after they determined the man did not survive his Aug. 28 fall down the peak.

“This is the first one I’ve been involved in where, as rescuers, we had to say no,” said 50-year search and rescue veteran Dale Atkins.

In October, members of Teton County Search and Rescue from Wyoming flew to Grand County to long-line a recovery team to the fallen hiker’s body.

>> Click here to read this story

The Outsider now has a podcast! Veteran reporter Jason Blevins covers the industry from the inside out, plus indulges in the fun side of being outdoors in our beautiful state.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Breaking Trail

Pat Milbery felt his tires leave pavement on a snowy Red Mountain Pass. That’s when his snowboarding instincts kicked in.

Pat Milbery always captures a room. But his tale about tipping his rig off Red Mountain Pass is all time.

Pat is a former pro snowboarder turned amazing artist. And those snowboarding instincts kicked in when he felt his tires slip off pavement in a blinding snowstorm on Red Mountain Pass. Rather than jerk the wheel back toward the pavement — which would have surely resulted in flipping his 4Runner off the precipitous roadway — “I just decided to drop in,” Pat said.

“I just aired off the side of the road,” he said.

He hit the snowy slope and started gaining speed. He smashed through trees. Glass from all his windows sprayed him. The truck spun as it sped toward a cliff towering hundreds of feet over a ravine.

Pat’s story of survival on one of the deadliest passes in Colorado is now only one of many enthralling chapters in the life of a Colorado character whose radiance eclipses the colorful murals he paints all over the state.

>> Click here to read Pat’s story from Red Mountain Pass

The Playground

Collisions and injuries at Colorado ski areas

No one really wants to talk about how many people are injured on Colorado’s ski slopes. But the lack of discussion doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. We collected five years of hard-to-find injury data and spent time in Summit County emergency rooms, where doctors and nurses take care of a steady flow of skiers injured on some of the busiest ski slopes in the country.

In our first few minutes inside the busy clinic at the base of Breckenridge ski area, patrollers wheeled in a 13-year-old boy who hit a tree. He was not very responsive as emergency doctors called his name — “Silas!” — and cut off his ski jacket. A few hours later, Silas Luckett was up and talking at the St. Anthony Summit Hospital in Frisco, with his grateful dad at his side.

Silas was one of thousands of people injured on Colorado’s ski slopes last winter. Thousands more will get hurt this winter. It’s a seemingly accepted part of a multibillion-dollar Colorado resort industry that hosts as many as 14.8 million visits every winter. Skiing at resorts is Colorado’s signature business, anchoring the state’s $17.2 billion outdoor recreation economy. And injuries, while rarely discussed, are part of that math.

The numbers do show a declining trend in ski injuries, but each of those injuries can be lift-altering for the people who need months or years to recover after an accident.

“Something has to change,” said Stephen Kim, whose wife was hit and injured by a young skier who fled the scene in January 2019. “It’s absolutely terrifying what is happening at some of these ski areas.”

>> Click here to read this story

The Guide

Gaming the river permitting system

The numbers in Tracy Ross’ March story on river permits were jaw-dropping. For example, 60,000 people in 2022 applied for only 1,054 permits to float four of Idaho’s most popular rivers. That’s an increase of 300% from 2012. And 12,000 boaters applied for 430 permits on the San Juan River. For the 300 annual permits to float the Yampa River: 18,325 permits.

Are there even 18,325 expedition rafters in the country?

“There’s no way that many more people are applying for the hellish-work-nonstop-non vacation (of river trips) as their data suggests,” said Crested Butte paddler Chad Crabtree after yet another year with zero permits. “Has to be bots. Go back to the mail-in system until the government can figure out how to eliminate the bot.”

Are Ticketmaster-esque bots gaming the rec.gov application system? Is there a cadre of hacker-skilled rafters who have decoded some backdoor into the permitting system? If that’s happening, federal land managers aren’t talking about it. But one bright light: the U.S. Senate’s passage of the EXPLORE Act last week includes legislation that will overhaul the permitting for outdoor outfitters across all land management agencies, which should lead to an examination of private permitting and maybe loosen the bureaucratic chokehold on river permits. Maybe.

Big wins for Colorado’s small towns in 2024

Colorado’s mountain towns are filled with folks who are ready to fight to protect their community.

Crested Butte locals in September wrapped a nearly 50-year battle to prevent mining on the glowing peak above town they call the Red Lady. Conservation groups in the town inked a deal with the Mt. Emmons Mining Co. to permanently end any prospect of molybdenum mining in the watershed that drains the Red Lady.

The town of Minturn along the Eagle River in September reached a deal with an international developer that gives the town land worth more than $47 million. That deal settles promises made by Florida developer Bobby Ginn in the early 2000s when he needed a mountaintop parcel annexed into the town to build a gated community of ski-and-golf manses. Ginn’s Battle Mountain dream evaporated in the Great Recession, but Minturn held the property’s owner to the promises.

“This town is filled with amazing people who really want to live here and they love their town,” said Minturn Councilwoman Lynn Feiger, a nationally acclaimed attorney who spearheaded the legal battle with development firm Lubert Adler.

And this month the tiny village of Cuchara in Huerfano County landed a couple of big grants to help them restore a chairlift at the Cuchara ski area, which sat dormant for more than 20 years after a series of Texas owners bought, sold, opened and closed the southern Colorado ski hill. The grants from the Colorado Outdoor Recreation Industry Office and Colorado Parks and Wildlife should have the community-owned ski hill turning a chairlift by the summer.

— j

The Colorado Sun is part of The Trust Project. Read our policies.

Corrections & Clarifications

Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.