We’re back! Following a two-week hiatus, the High Country News staff is back on the job, looking a little sunnier, and feeling refreshed. Temperatures on Colorado’s Western Slope have been rocketing over the 100-degree mark every afternoon, so it’s good to be back under the swamp cooler. Visitors Truckloads of HCN subscribers have ducked in […]
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Posted inAugust 4, 2003: Pipe Dreams
A brave new world of water
Talk about turning over public resources — timber, minerals, land — to the cold hand of capitalism, and environmentalists get pretty uncomfortable. If nothing else, California’s electricity crisis has taught us to be wary of corporations with the power to manipulate the supply of essential resources. So it’s not surprising that when a private company […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2003: Pipe Dreams
Pipe Dreams
LINCOLN COUNTY, NEVADA — Out here in a rock-strewn, desolate sweep of creosote bush and blackbrush called the Tule Desert, there’s a patch of land bulldozed clear of vegetation. Standing in the middle of it is a well called PW-1. It doesn’t look like much; just a 32-inch-diameter steel pipe, painted black and sticking out […]
Posted inWotr
Everyone needs a place apart
Some years back, Marypat and I bought 20 acres of land in central Montana, two hours from our home in Bozeman. An unremarkable spot–a sandstone bluff, an intermittent creek, ponderosa pines, views of distant peaks. Beyond an outhouse and a campfire ring, we have done nothing to develop the place. We go there as often […]
Posted inWotr
Wartime does not always bring out our best
It is quiet here at midweek, the silence of Owens Valley in California broken occasionally by the croak of ravens and the throb of a car or truck passing on Highway 395. Infrequently, one of those vehicles slows and follows the dirt driveway leading into this place of sorrow and remembrance. There is little here […]
Posted inWotr
When did we become outdoor wimps needing so much stuff?
When I read that the Outdoor Industry Association threatened to move its biannual gear show out of Salt Lake City as a protest against Utah’s wilderness policies, I was taken aback. Not by the announcement, but by the reported magnitude of the show: 15,000 visitors spending $24 million in the region to pore over high-tech […]
Posted inWotr
Camping out with faux fire can be just dandy
While last year’s fires were torching Western lives, homes and trees, their accompanying fire bans were torching something else: the West’s camping plans. “I don’t want to camp without a campfire,” my wife informed me last season, while smoke from the Hayman Fire settled over Denver. Her feelings echoed those of thousands of Western campers […]
Posted inWotr
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, no, it’s a senator on a Harley
One my favorite things about living in the West is driving the winding, two lane roads, if you can survive the sluggish RVs, washouts, rock slides and icy patches. Now, there’s a new traffic hazard — senators on Harleys. Even if you don’t live near the mountains, you know our famous roads from automobile commercials […]
Posted inWotr
Peace and quiet count in Glacier National Park
Last summer, while backpacking with friends in Glacier National Park, Mont., a familiar “whup, whup, whup” filled the air. The helicopter dropped over Kipp Peak towards us, its make and color belonging to a local — and booming — helicopter-tour company. Our solitude was disrupted; helicopter noise drowned out nature’s sounds. Despite being closer to […]
Posted inWotr
Don’t blame prairie dogs, they’re doing the best they can
First it was the plague, now it’s monkey pox. It seems like prairie dogs take it in the shorts every time a certain primate brings a new disease to this continent. What primate you ask? Well, the variety that includes you and me. In recent weeks I’ve been gritting my teeth every time I heard […]
Posted inWotr
Hanging loose in Wyoming’s bear country
My friend Fred says that what he enjoys most about camping in the wild is watching people hang their food. Though you’re miles from a television, it’s far funnier than anything Hollywood could invent. And on a recent trip with some friends, Fred and I demonstrated the truth of his theory. The concept is simple: […]
Posted inJuly 7, 2003: Invasion of the rock jocks
Westerners must be fire-starters as well as firefighters
There is no better guide to fire in the West than Stephen Pyne, who spent 15 years fighting fires on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and has written 16 books on fire. The 32 essays in his most recent book, Smokechasing, are a mixed, uncoordinated group, but so brilliant and thoughtful that they […]
Posted inJuly 7, 2003: Invasion of the rock jocks
Log on for fire news
Get ready for this summer’s fire season by checking out a new Web site at Northern Arizona University. Launched May 1, “Forest Fire and the American Southwest” is “a one-stop-shopping site for information about forest fire in the Southwest,” says John Grahame, designer of the Web site. “There is a lot of fear about the […]
Posted inJuly 7, 2003: Invasion of the rock jocks
Report brandishes cold facts about U.S. energy
A new report by the Rocky Mountain Institute suggests that we wean ourselves from foreign oil, not by drilling in Alaska or the Rocky Mountains, but by using less of it. Titled U.S. Energy Security Facts, the report says energy efficiency saved Americans about $365 billion in 2000. Those savings are our nation’s biggest and […]
Posted inJuly 7, 2003: Invasion of the rock jocks
Lori Piestewa’s real lesson
l Recently, High Country News and other papers ran rather long stories about Lori Piestewa, a Hopi lady in the armed forces who was killed over in Iraq (HCN, 5/26/03: The tangled messages of a servicewoman killed in combat). I doubt that many of the Hopis thought very highly of her joining the military. The […]
Posted inJuly 7, 2003: Invasion of the rock jocks
Pesticides and frogs – it’s worse than we thought
The article on frogs and pesticides is useful, but incomplete (HCN, 5/26/03: Agriculture exacts a price in the High Sierra). At a recent Rachel Carson Council seminar in Baltimore, Md., two researchers presented their findings. Tyrone Hayes of Berkeley, Calif., found, in both laboratory and field tests, that very low levels of atrazine, a pesticide […]
Posted inJuly 7, 2003: Invasion of the rock jocks
Pesticides killing frogs? Poppycock.
In his article, “Agriculture exacts a price in the High Sierra,” Cosmo Garvin has indicted California’s Central Valley agriculture for the decline of frogs in the Sierra Nevada (HCN, 5/26/03: Agriculture exacts a price in the High Sierra). Despite the fact that pesticide residues found in mountain frogs are far below lethal levels, the argument […]
Posted inJuly 7, 2003: Invasion of the rock jocks
Hood River dam’s days are numbered
PacifiCorp agreed in June to remove the Powerdale Dam on the Hood River in 2010, after reaching a settlement with state and federal agencies, the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation, local stakeholders and environmentalists. The 80-year-old dam was due for a new federal operating license in 2000, which would have required expensive new […]
Posted inJuly 7, 2003: Invasion of the rock jocks
War on fire takes a toll on fish
One fish kill stretched five miles down Washington’s Omak Creek, and wiped out more than 10,000 trout and steelhead. Another fish kill hit five miles of Colorado’s Mancos River. Others hit several Oregon streams. The cause? Fire retardants dropped by airplanes, as federal agencies battled wildfires during the past three years. The plume of chemicals […]
Posted inJuly 7, 2003: Invasion of the rock jocks
Demolish the dam, sayeth the Lord
Champagne corks popped recently in the office of the Clark Fork Coalition, a Montana environmental group. On April 15, the Environmental Protection Agency sided with the Clark Fork River, calling for the removal of the Milltown Dam and its toxic reservoir, just east of Missoula. “We’re thrilled,” says Tracy Stone-Manning, director of the coalition. “This […]