“An amenity-based economy doesn’t have to be a poor economy”

Call it tourism tied in with a second-home or lifestyle economy. Use the phrase “amenity-based economy.” Everyone understands that people coming to the area to enjoy themselves is an economic driver in Gunnison County, especially in the Upper East River Valley. But now the most extensive study ever done confirms that understanding. Read More »

Ten names to choose from

Gunnison County is taking another small step toward a big environmental goal as it sets up interviews with applicants for a Carbon Policy Task Force. The Board of County Commissioners hopes that new panel will put together a policy for controlling some local sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Read More »

Touts business experience
    
A local Republican has announced his plans to run for the Colorado House District 61 seat currently held by Gunnison’s Kathleen Curry. Luke Korkowski of Mt. Crested Butte said he is running on a platform centered on fiscal responsibility and economic growth. Read More »

HCCA seems to not trust mining company motives…

The town of Crested Butte has sent a letter to the Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety stating several concerns with a proposal filed last month by the potential developers of the Mount Emmons molybdenum mine. Read More »

“I feel this whole process has been disingenuous”

If the Gunnison Board of County Commissioners was looking for community consensus on the Hidden Gems Wilderness Campaign, they didn’t get it from a public comment period on Tuesday, January 26. Read More »

Carbon neutrality, directing growth next on docket

It was a final look back at a big year for the Gunnison County Planning Commission Friday, December 18, and an opportunity to set the groundwork for some pretty big undertakings in 2010. Read More »

Trying to create a countywide policy won’t be easy

Carbon neutrality, or the idea of keeping net carbon emissions to zero, could soon be part of Gunnison County’s official lexicon. The Gunnison Board of County Commissioners will be looking for a team of people to develop a countywide policy to take on the often-contentious topic early next year. Read More »

When I’m at a loss for words and answers, I like to defer to people much wiser than me. So it was when Mike Bowen was killed in an avalanche last December 17 on the Slate River side of Mt. Emmons in an area known as the “Happy Chutes.”

Bowen was a good friend, and we spent many picture-perfect days riding in the local backcountry. Though he wasn’t the best backcountry partner in the “procedural sense,” there were few other people I’d rather spend a day in the mountains with. Bowen’s number one rule? Whoever gets to the top first gets first tracks. And he pretty much always topped out first. But even if he didn’t, he’d drop in while the rest of us weenies were discussing the best way down, and laugh over his shoulder as he was blinded by face shot after face shot.

When asked to read at Bowen’s memorial service last January, I panicked, and immediately started rummaging through the writings of George Sibley, a longtime Gunnison Valley resident and writer who’s gleaned more “wisdom” about Crested Butte and mountain life than most of us combined. I chose to read an excerpt from Sibley’s book Dragons in Paradise, which summed up the sense of community that felt so vibrant at the time. His words reminded me why I live in Crested Butte, and why losing Bowen, part of my extended mountain family, bowled me over like a CDOT plow truck.

It captured the essence of why we’re all here, in this together, for better or worse. That spirit can’t be captured by bumper-sticker slogans, political rhetoric, or acts of community separation. I digress… Sibley says it much better below:

“It wasn’t ‘love of my fellow man’ that drove me to a mountain town, but I have found here a higher proportion of fellow spirits than I’ve found before or since anywhere else—fellows (of both sexes) with a yearning to be at least something other, if not something better, than the society we grew up in expected of us. There were enough of us here—discovered, uncovered to each other in subtle and oblique ways—so that we could probably agree that while, yes, it wasn’t love of fellow man that brought us to mountain towns, it was interest in fellow spirits that keeps us here, as well as interest in the mountains themselves.”

When Bowen was reported missing, it was “fellow spirits” who went looking for him in the mountains, and put themselves at risk in the face of high avalanche danger and harsh winter weather. In the aftermath, I interviewed search and rescue volunteers around the country while researching for a Backcountry Magazine story, trying to understand what drove them to such lengths, without earning pay or prestige.

One simple theme recurred time and time again: “It could be one of our own.”

And more often than not in Crested Butte, it is. Out here, at the end of the road, we need each other more than we’d like to admit. That might be the greatest lesson we can learn from Bowen. Well, that and never turn your back to a man on a mission for first tracks.…

30-day review unlikely to yield an appeal

An administrative law judge has rejected a bid by local clean water advocates to require a bond from the operator of the wastewater treatment plant on Mt. Emmons. Read More »

New vehicles will be street legal

The electric shuttles used by Crested Butte Mountain Resort to transport visitors between the parking lot and the base area were a hit last winter, and the resort is hoping to expand on that success by taking the shuttles along a different route that ends even closer to the ski hill. There’s just one catch. Read More »