The Bureau of Land Management Rocky Mountain District Fire and Aviation Management Unit will conduct pile burns in nine locations this winter on Royal Gorge Field Office-managed lands in Chaffee, Fremont and Custer counties.
Searchers continued to comb Clear Creek Reservoir Sunday looking for a boy who went missing after the canoe he and a friend were in capsized Saturday.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife recently signed a partnership agreement with the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics to help educate people on how to recreate responsibly to conserve Colorado’s natural resources.
CPW is the first state agency in the U.S. that oversees parks, fish and wildlife to partner with Leave No Trace and advocate for both public land and wildlife conservation.
On Nov. 3, Coloradans voted to pass Proposition #114 - The Restoration of Gray Wolves, a measure directing the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission to develop a plan to reintroduce gray wolves west of the Continental Divide. With this decision, the planning process for reintroduction will begin.
As Colorado Parks and Wildlife opens Fishers Peak State Park for a limited “sneak peek” recreation opportunity, the agency continues to look ahead for future state park opportunities. Demand for accessible outdoor spaces remains high in the state, and CPW invites Coloradans to share their ideas for properties or partnerships that may become the next Colorado state park.
With county sales tax revenues posting stronger collections than expected during the pandemic, the Chaffee Common Ground Citizens Advisory Committee will consider whether to recommend additional funding for strengthening forest health and reducing wildfire danger.
Salida Ranger District of the U.S. Forest Service announced the last day to purchase fuelwood permits is Nov. 13.
The new, motorized singletrack trail in the Four Mile Travel Management Area, DudBobs, is open, but it took a team effort during the last several years to complete.
Chaffee County Search & Rescue–North is seeking to recruit new volunteers as the busy summer season closes.
Homeowners in the Chalk Creek drainage created more than 160 piles of slash in preparation for the Chaffee Chips neighborhood fire mitigation event taking place this weekend.
Chaffee County Sheriff John Spezze issued stage 2 fire restrictions for unincorporated Chaffee County effective Monday morning.
The Bureau of Land Management has enacted Stage 2 Fire Restrictions for lands throughout Southern Colorado, including those in Chaffee County.
The announcement came on a windswept fall afternoon one day after the Cameron Peak Fire north of Rocky Mountain National Park grew to become the largest wildfire in state history, breaking a record that had been set just 48 days prior when the Pine Gulch Fire north of Grand Junction grew larger than the 2002 Hayman Fire.
OpenSnow.com’s Joel Gratz speaks in Salida, says ‘odds are stacked in favor’ of an average winter
Denny Arter was a member of the Greater Arkansas River Nature Association before she even moved to Chaffee County back in 2002.
elevateHER, voted as Buena Vista’s favorite non-profit in 2019 by our readers, works to give young women the opportunity to get outdoors and learn skills that will help them seek employment in the recreation industry.
When the Leadville 100 was cancelled this year due to COVID-19, 22-year-old Annie Hughes, a Buena Vista High School graduate who lives in Leadville and had been training for the ultramarathon, did the sensible thing and decided that she would run a course that was even longer and higher.
The Greater Arkansas River Nature Association kicked off its annual fundraiser on Saturday, National Public Lands Day, honoring some of it’s volunteers while raising money to support its mission. The fundraiser, along with the organization’s Environmental Hero Awards, are being held online this year.
Season pass holders will be able to ski any day they want to this season at Monarch, but people buying single-day lift tickets will need to plan ahead.
Monarch Mountain’s 2020-2021 operating plan includes wearing masks on chairlifts, limited capacity indoors and a push to get people to purchase lift tickets ahead of time, among other changes to address the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife received 3,644 bear reports from April 1 through Aug. 31, down slightly from the 3,855 during the same timeframe the previous year.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife will be conducting mandatory chronic wasting disease testing during the 2020 hunting season in specific Game Management Units as part of efforts to control the spread with its Colorado Chronic Wasting Disease Response Plan.
Heavy July rains washed out parts of the Rainbow Trail, which was then closed to wheeled traffic.
The U.S. Forest Service, San Isabel National Forest, Salida Ranger District, announced Thursday it has reopened a section between roads 101 (Bear Creek) and 108 (Methodist Mountain) to all uses.
“The seasons are out of whack!” writes roving photographer William Helms. This photo was taken Saturday, Sept. 12, from the Collegiate Peaks Overlook off U.S. 24/285 near Johnson Village. The mountains look like winter after our recent snowfall, while the vegetation and trees in the valley…
A full-day volunteer event will take place on Friday, Sept. 18 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. to revegetate an area in the Fourmile Travel Management Area to prevent further erosion and damage to trails, including Bacon Bits and Midland singletrack trails.
Envision Chaffee County is hosting a resident and visitor survey to identify perceptions about outdoor recreation in Chaffee County. Go to http://bit.ly/CRS-2020 to take the 10-minute, online survey.
Jon MacManus was doing a 500-piece puzzle in Lake City Sunday night. Looking at all of the pieces scattered on the table helped him put his recent feat in perspective.
Like all search and rescue units, the Park County Search and Rescue team wins some, and loses some.
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Envision Chaffee County is hosting a resident and visitor survey to identify perceptions about outdoor recreation in Chaffee County. Go to http://bit.ly/CRS-2020 to take the 10-minute, online survey.
Jon MacManus was doing a 500-piece puzzle in Lake City Sunday night. Looking at all of the pieces scattered on the table helped him put his recent feat in perspective.
Like all search and rescue units, the Park County Search and Rescue team wins some, and loses some.
Buena Vista’s shoulder-season celebration 14erFest will not be held this year due to “too many uncertainties to juggle,” according to a Facebook post on the event’s page.
The Monarch Pass Forest and Watershed Health Project has entered a new phase, and Miller Timber Services has begun work to remove beetle-kill trees on the steep slopes south of U.S. 50 using cut-to-length (CTL) logging equipment.
Envision Chaffee County is hosting a resident and visitor survey to identify perceptions about outdoor recreation in Chaffee County.
Great Sand Dunes National Park officials announced the closure of 100 yards surrounding Upper and Lower Sand Creek lakes and 100 yards on both sides of Sand Creek from where it exits each of the lakes and extends 5 miles downstream.
Chaffee County Search & Rescue-North conducted three missions last weekend to assist hikers who had injured themselves hiking in the Sawatch Range.
Bureau of Land Management public affairs specialist Brant Porter announced the reintroduction of a Stage 1 Fire ban on BLM-managed lands in Lake, Chaffee, and Fremont counties Wednesday afternoon.
That announcement was quickly followed by a similar Stage 2 fire ban for unincorporated Chaffee County by Chaffee County Sheriff John Spezze.
For the first time since the 1960’s, boaters are able to travel down the entirety of the upper Arkansas River from its origin south of Leadville past Buena Vista and beyond without the need to portage.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis issued a statewide ban on open fires in response to major wildfires burning in the state, Colorado Public Radio and 9News in Denver reported Tuesday.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife biologist Lance Carpenter and wildlife pathologist Karen Fox have initiated a study looking into a disease outbreak in mountain goats on the summit of Mount Evans.
Chalk Creek drainage will the target of fire mitigion work this fall. A Zoom Information Session takes place on Wednesday, Aug. 12.
Roaming adventurer William Helms captured these wildflowers Sunday evening a little before sunset on Cottonwood Pass above Found Lake and the Lost Lake trail.
The body of a Nathrop man who had been missing for 5 days after going hiking alone in the area of the Three Apostles was found last Wednesday, Chaffee County Sheriff John Spezze reported.
In response to recent and forecasted precipitation across the western Front Range, the Bureau of Land Management’s Royal Gorge Field Office is lifting fire restrictions on BLM-managed lands in three counties in central Colorado. Fire restrictions will be lifted on BLM lands in Lake, Chaffee, and Fremont counties effective July 30.
Chaffee County Search and Rescue North, with assistance from CCSAR-South, REACH air medical services and Western Mountain Rescue, is searching for a missing Nathrop hiker in the area around the Three Apostles in the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness Area.
CCSAR-N was dispatched Saturday to search for Terry Pann, 60, who was believed to have been hiking alone in the vicinity of the Three Apostles, having taken off from the Lake Ann trailhead near the ghost town of Winfield.
The Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service announced an amended management plan for the Browns Canyon National Monument Monday. The approved plan will guide the agencies’ oversight of recreation activities within the monument, while allowing for infrastructure that will help protect monument resources in anticipation of increased visitation and recreational use.
The Colorado Parks and Wildlife commission voted unanimously to raise fees on river outfitter licenses at its meeting last week.
CPW boating safety manager Grant Brown said the fees have never been increased before and have been the same since 1995.
The 12,126 foot high parking area at the summit of Cottonwood Pass was well attended midday Saturday, with a steady stream of vehicles passing in both directions between Buena Vista and Gunnison County, as well as hikers trekking up the ridge north along the Continental Divide Trail.
A lifejacket loaner station will be “up and running next week,” said Buena Vista Recreation director Earl Richmond.
The National High School Trail Championships and Beas Knees citizen’s race will return to Salida for a fourth annual event on July 25.
Adventure Unlimited, which has run overnight camps for families in the Christian Science faith in the Buena Vista area since 1955, is responding to COVID-19 by opening up its ranch to all local families for week-long day camps.
“Let’s just make sure everybody is being safe,” said Tappan Brown, AHRA river ranger supervisor. “We decided everybody in whitewater parks should be wearing one.”
Colorado is home to a large population of black bears, with numbers estimated at 17,000-20,000 in the state. As humans venture into Colorado’s great outdoors to spend quality time in nature, it is important to remember that bears and humans can and do live in harmony in our shared outdoor spaces when humans take proactive steps to avoid conflicts with bears.
Although official data on visitation won’t be available until the end of the year, observations of the seven campgrounds along the Upper Arkansas River managed by the Arkansas Headwaters Recreation Area show that private boating usage on the waterway exploded after COVID-19 restrictions were relaxed.
Rob White worked as park manager of the Arkansas Headwaters Recreation Area for 20 years before retiring last month. However, he said he enjoyed his position so much that it didn’t really feel like work.
“One of the nicest things of being park manager of the AHRA was the resources and the people,” White said. “Because of the resources and recreation the area provided, it was always a fun job because I got to be part of that experience. Going to work was something that I loved doing because I care about the resource and the people who use it.”
As Chaffee County and the rest of the country begin to open up after months of shutting down to slow the spread of COVID-19, Buena Vista businesses are beginning to see a welcome rebound.
A new motorized single-track trail is being built in the Fourmile Travel Management Area near Buena Vista.
More than 70 people stopped by the pump track in Buena Vista’s River Park last weekend to help out with a rehabilitation of the practice track before BV Rec installs new features.
Flows in the Arkansas River peaked a little early this year.
Encounters with wildlife are a common occurrence for travelers in the back country.
Envision Recreation in Balance Task Force members plan multiple projects in the coming months that address recreation impacts on public lands in Chaffee County.
The Buena Vista Chamber of Commerce will not hold Gold Rush Days this August, postponing the event until 2021 due to COVID-19.
The appearance of people on motorized personal watercraft on the Arkansas River took some Salidans by surprise May 24.
Buena Vista photographer Mike Wells took this photo on the afternoon of May 27 at the summit of Cottonwood Pass, the first day of 2020 that the road was open to Taylor Park Reservoir in Gunnison County.
After being severely damaged in an act of vandalism late last year, a structure used to provide privacy when changing in and out of river gear in the Buena Vista River Park has been restored.
At least 60 years ago, at about 6, I experienced a seminal landmark in my life. My parents owned a business back in Ohio where I grew up, they worked 6 days of the week and on Sunday there was church, so there wasn’t much time for family activities.
The Greater Arkansas River Nature Association is proud to announce Sage McGinnis of Buena Vista as the recipient of the 2020 Brett Beasley Memorial Scholarship, GARNA announced in a press release.
This week, the Colorado State Forest Service launched a new website for landowners, land managers and others to access data about Colorado’s forests.
The Buena Vista Recreation Department is opening back up, although its programming, rentals and events are postponed until “at least June 1.”
The long-established kiosk signs at Buena Vista’s popular Boathouse trailhead got a facelift last weekend as part of National Public Lands Day.
Memorial Day weekend is the traditional start of the summer season in Buena Vista, beginning with CKS PaddleFest, although this year’s PaddleFest isn’t so traditional.
The Buena Vista Chamber of Commerce is still looking forward to hosting its summer events, like the Old Time Fourth of July parade and festivities and August’s Gold Rush Days.
The trails in the Midland Area that have been approved by the Bureau of Land Management will be completed this summer or next, depending on the status of COVID-19 safety practices.
After months of hard work by Colorado Parks and Wildlife and the engagement of more than 40 conservation partners, a new status report on Colorado’s big game winter range and migration corridors has been released that will inform future efforts to protect this invaluable natural resource.
Is everyone enjoying themselves? Like so many, the past 45 days have been spent immersed in the new hobbies of weekly retail foraging, daily news data evaluation and my personal favorite, home improvement projects.
A valid Colorado hunting or fishing license will be required for everyone 18 or older attempting to access any state wildlife area or state trust land leased by Colorado Parks and Wildlife, beginning July 1.
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