Icy anglers landing lunkers for cold cash on Blue Mesa
Plus: Keystone, Crested Butte workers fighting for better pay, Precourt Healing Center breaks mold for mental health care, a ski train to Steamboat?
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Sneak Peek of the Week
CPW manages swollen lake trout population in Blue Mesa Reservoir by luring ice anglers
4,055
Number of lake trout reeled through Blue Mesa ice holes at the inaugural lake trout tournament in 2020
There are too many lake trout in Blue Mesa Reservoir. So Colorado Parks and Wildlife is luring anglers — with a $10,000 pot — to help manage the swollen population of prolific mackinaw.
The four-month Blue Mesa Lake Trout Tournament kicked off this month and Sun freelancer Nancy Lofholm caught up with the frigid fisherfolk as they dangled and jigged flashy hooks through ice “as thick as four Russian novels.”
“Catching fish is just fun,” Ivan Medina of Delta told Nancy as he huddled over a hole in a hut with his wife and daughter. He landed 14-inch brown trout in his first hour of fishing, which didn’t count toward prize money but worked fine for dinner.
The icy fishing tournaments on Blue Mesa are about more than anglers landing lunkers for cold cash. They are helping control a too-big fish population, not unlike hunters who pay for licenses to shoot deer or elk. This is the fourth iteration of the fish-a-thon, which follow annual surveys by CPW biologists showing lake trout eating the reservoir’s kokanee salmon fry population – as evidenced in 2023 when a Gunnison fisherman reeled in a 73-pound lake trout.
“It’s a win-win situation the way I see it,” said Giulio Del Piccolo, an aquatic biologist who inherited the tournament when he walked into his new job as the Upper Gunnison Aquatic Specialist three weeks ago.
There were about 300 anglers out on the ice last weekend as temperatures finally settled around a balmy zero degrees after a couple weeks of dipping into the minus 30s. There were even sparkles of sunlight to burn away the arctic blues. They dragged loaded sleds and erected colorful tents on the ice, where they augured plate-sized holes in the ice.
“I’m out here for the sheer enjoyment,” said Fue Moua, who drove over from Broomfield and spent the first hour on the ice setting up a hut duplex with four friends. “Even when you don’t catch anything, it’s just good to be out here.”
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In Their Words
Park City strike settlement looms large in labor negotiations
CRESTED BUTTE — Just about every driver honks. A bundled fellow on a tired townie bike chants “go on strike, go on strike” as he pedals past.
Nathan Rodekuhr and Rob Alexander lift their signs high as locals voice support for their union. The lift mechanics at Crested Butte Mountain Resort want the ski area’s owner — Vail Resorts — to pay them more and help them offset the cost of safety training and equipment. The mechanics say they will strike if North America’s largest ski area operator does not negotiate a contract that starts their pay at $23 an hour, up from $21 now.
“It worked for Park City,” Alexander said, pointing to the Park City Mountain unionized ski patrollers whose first-in-decades strike hobbled the 7,300-acre ski area over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, generating a torrent of bad publicity for Vail Resorts. The company settled with the Park City patrollers after a 12-day strike, delivering an average wage increase of $4 an hour.
“They think anyone can come in and do our job, but we have pretty special knowledge about this ski area,” Rodekuhr said. “Vail Resorts is really good at bringing people to the mountain.”’
“But what if the lifts don’t turn? That’s when things will get interesting,” said Alexander, as the cars honked at the Crested Butte four-way stop and drivers shouted their support for the workers who keep Crested Butte Mountain’s 12 lifts spinning.
Labor negotiations have challenged Vail Resorts as the company endures a pummeling rain of blows in the past month. The company is currently negotiating employment contracts with Keystone ski patrollers and Crested Butte Mountain lift mechanics. The specter of the Park City strike looms large in both of those negotiations as Vail Resorts works to repair relationships with its workers and communities.
Crested Butte lift mechanics this week in an Instagram post said the company “has genuinely stepped up to negotiate” as more people sign the 12-member union’s petition for increased pay and donate to the union’s strike fund.
Last week, Keystone ski area’s unionized patrollers said the most recent negotiating session ended with a Vail Resorts representative saying that ski patrollers should not prioritize medical care for injured guests “and instead simply transport them off the mountain,” reads a Jan. 23 letter from the union seeking testimonies from anyone who has received care from Keystone ski patrollers who are required to be certified as emergency medical technicians.
Shannon Buhler, the vice president and general manager at Keystone, said in a Jan. 26 letter to employees that the patrol union was sharing “inaccurate information” about the negotiating session.
“Keystone resort is not questioning, nor have we ever questioned, the need or value for patrollers to have advanced medical care skills,” reads Buhler’s letter. “Keystone resort is not removing specialty team skills-based pay and individualized skills-based pay for patrollers. This is an important element of the patrol wage structure for the company, and there has been no discussion about taking it away.”
Jim Clarke is a regular Keystone skier with an Epic Local Pass. Last weekend he was skiing with his 12-year-old son heading down to the Outback chair on the backside of the ski area when he came across a group of skiers trying to roll over a man who was facedown on the Spillway cat track. Clarke, who was once a volunteer ski patroller at Washington’s Alpental ski area, quickly assessed the older skier, who was not breathing and had a weak pulse.
Clarke and another man began CPR as others called 911. Soon a team of ski patrollers arrived with an automated external defibrillator. One patroller cut away the man’s clothes. Another inserted a breathing tube down his trachea. Another began administering shocks with the defibrillator. A fourth patroller inserted an IV needle into the man’s arm to deliver medicine.
“It was four people knowing their shit and keeping this guy alive. It was an impressive sight,” Clarke said. “There is no way that guy would have survived had they not had those qualified people right there. I’m 100% sure of that.”
Clarke said he followed up with the skier’s family and the man, who was flown from the backside of Keystone to a hospital on an emergency helicopter, survived his cardiac incident.
“I can’t imagine that guy would have survived if it was about putting him in a toboggan and traversing the resort,” Clarke said. “At the end of the day, do you want to ski the backside of Keystone if the only chance for survival if something happens is holding on in a toboggan until you get to medical care, what, 6 miles away? I’m not sure I’d ski back there if that was my only option.”
>> Click over to The Sun on Friday to read this story
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Breaking Trail
Precourt Healing Center in Edwards is a new model for mental health care in Colorado
$200 million
Communitywide funding led by Vail Health to address mental health challenges in the Eagle River Valley
EDWARDS — In the last week of 2024, six residents suffering a mental health crisis in the Eagle River Valley needed transport to metro Denver for treatment.
“The need is here. That just shows how great it would be for us to have this for our community,” said Chris Lindley, who leads a nearly five-year effort to improve mental health in Colorado’s high country.
Lindley, officially the chief population health officer for Vail Health’s nascent behavioral health mission, is showing off a soon-to-open inpatient mental health crisis center in the middle of a valley where suicide ranks among the leading causes of death.
The 28-bed Precourt Healing Center is the culmination of a nearly $200 million effort to deliver mental health services to struggling residents. It’s a purpose-built psychiatric facility that breaks from traditional models, which usually involve minor tweaks to existing physical care hospitals. And Precourt is part of a community mental health campus, with outpatient care and a host of services that not only help people weather a crisis, but set them on a new path toward physical and mental stability.
That continuation of mental health care “is a huge problem we have today and it’s a problem all over the country,” Lindley said, describing how people can get stabilized at a psychiatric facility but then they are sent home without much attention. “We are going to be with them from the day they walk out of here. It’s actually the most dangerous time for anybody, those days after discharge. That’s when the most completed suicides actually happen.”
Breaking the mold of dated — and not always successful — mental health care begins in the 48,000-square-foot Precourt Healing Center. There are 28 rooms, with 14 for adults on one floor and 14 for adolescents on another.
The facility is big enough to help meet the needs of all of central Colorado’s mountain communities, not just Eagle County.
“We are going to be a resource for the entire state of Colorado,” Lindley said.
But don’t think Vail Health’s expanding community health mission is in response to an overall worsening of our mental health, Lindley said. Things are not getting worse as much as everyone is paying more attention.
Lindley said there is pent up demand for mental health care as more people gain insurance coverage for care. And the stigma around mental health care is fading as more people speak openly about the value of therapy.
“And finally, which I think is most important, is that people are now putting their behavioral health at the same level of their physical health,” Lindley said. “So no, I don’t think conditions in our valley are getting worse. I think they are actually getting better because people are using more services more often.”
>> Click over to The Sun next week to read this story
Busy ski trains bode well for passenger trains connecting Craig, Steamboat, Winter Park and Denver
29%
Increase in ski train ticket sales this winter after a price drop and increased capacity is sparking interest in passenger rail traffic connecting Denver and northwestern Colorado
The Sun’s Jen Brown recently rode the Amtrak Winter Park Express, watching fat snowflakes fall from the train window as she sipped a glass of wine after a long ski day. She wondered if maybe someday she could ski train to Steamboat.
Probably, though it will be a few years.
Colorado owns the Moffat Tunnel, a 6.2-mile bore beneath the Rocky Mountains that comes out at the Denver-owned Winter Park ski area. The tracks go well beyond Winter Park, passing through Fraser, Granby, Hot Sulphur Springs, Steamboat and all the way up to Craig.
State officials in December said a new and “historic” 25-year lease with Union Pacific would open the Moffat Tunnel to increased passenger traffic. Coal production is waning in northwest Colorado and soon will stop entirely. Freight trains through the tunnel have decreased to about six a day, down from 30.
That leaves room for Gov. Jared Polis’ big plans for passenger rail connecting
Denver with Craig. The ski train could stop not only at Winter Park but head all the way to Steamboat. Travelers could hop off in Granby or Hot Sulphur Springs for a weekend in the mountains. Commuters who live in Hayden or Craig could ride the rails to jobs in Steamboat.
“Passenger rail on this corridor will relieve traffic to one of Colorado’s iconic mountain communities and provide safe, reliable, affordable transportation options for tourists and skiers as well as workers traveling along the corridor,” Polis said in a Dec. 24 Facebook post.
The Colorado Department of Transportation is working out a proposed budget that includes construction of new train stations. The first phase includes sparking interest in the ski train to Winter Park. Which is working. With a drop in ticket prices this year, and an increase in operations to five days per week, ticket sales are up 29% over last year. The weekend trains are 90% full, while weekdays are running 40%-60% full.
Jen’s Ski Train Numbers
“Watching it snow out the train window while sipping wine instead of driving over Berthoud Pass and along I-70: Worth every dollar and every minute, just this once,” Jen writes.
>> Click over to The Sun next week to read Jen’s story
— j
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