Heard Around the West

THE WESTCouch potatoes, rejoice: Pretty soon, you won’t have to actually set foot on a trail through the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone national parks. Instead, you’ll be able to enjoy an online “virtual hiking expedition,” compliments of the energy-bar maker Nature Valley. The company hired crews with 360-degree cameras to hike 100 miles through each […]

CALIFORNIA A black bear in Lake Tahoe broke into a Toyota Prius parked at a cabin and then “went into a rampage” when he realized he was trapped inside it, reports the Contra Costa Times. The animal kicked, bit and tore at the seats and the steering wheel, and finally managed to shift the car […]

THE NATION “Wear a condom now, save the spotted owl,” reads one of the labels on a condom distributed by the Center for Biological Diversity, the feisty and litigious conservation nonprofit that has offices throughout the West. While other environmental groups dodge the sticky issue of over-population, the center — run by Kierán Suckling — […]

IDAHOYou might call it a minor movement, but “reshoring” — a new word that means bringing offshore jobs back home — is buoying some residents of rural Idaho. About 12 years ago, Buck Knives sent up to half its production to China, thinking it would save money. Unfortunately, many customers were steamed by that decision. […]

WYOMING Marvin Bass, a Florida man who hadn’t taken a vacation in five years, didn’t get to enjoy his visit to Yellowstone National Park as planned. He was driving a borrowed 42-foot motor home up 8,431-foot-high Teton Pass when he realized how much it was laboring on the 10 percent grade. So Bass parked the […]

ARIZONA Raffle prizes run the gamut, but in Tucson recently, one particular offering seemed oddly off-kilter, to say the least. To raise money for the Pima County Republicans, party members aimed to sell 125 raffle tickets for $10 each, with the lucky winner receiving a Glock pistol — “the same brand of gun used in […]

OREGON    In the derring-do department, Doug Niblack certainly stands out: The surfer found himself standing on the back of a great white shark and lived to tell the tale. Niblack, who was surfing off the Oregon coast near Seaside, north of Portland, was paddling some 50 yards from shore when his board hit something that […]

CALIFORNIA Everybody agrees: The 47-year-old, silt-choked Matilija Dam in Southern California needs to come down. Since 1998, Ventura County officials have discussed all the ways this might happen, though nothing ever has. Apparently fed up, unknown monkey-wrenchers recently spray-painted a giant scissors and a dotted line indicating where to cut on the face of the […]

MONTANA There’s a new way for cops to enjoy their jobs while still looking out for bad guys. In Billings, Mont., Police Chief Rich St. John said that all of his officers who tried out two-wheeled Segways on their beats found the vehicles “fun,” though the men pictured in the Billings Gazette story looked just […]

WYOMING With the cutting of a ceremonial barbed wire fence, the Heart Mountain Interpretive Learning Center near Cody, Wyo., officially opened Aug. 20. It was a dramatic moment for the more than 250 Japanese Americans who were present: All had been imprisoned there during World War II. A crowd of nearly 1,200 other people joined […]

WYOMING Some people say that the most thrilling thing about any Western Independence Day parade comes toward the end, when the old-time stagecoaches and horse-and-buggy outfits take over. But there’s always the possibility that the animals will get spooked, run amok and end up stomping on people. That almost happened in Cody, Wyo., July 3, […]

WYOMING There’s sad news about Buford, Wyo., a blip of a place halfway between Cheyenne and Laramie that’s home to one Don Sammons. He serves as the town’s “everything” man since he is its only resident. But after 20 years of running Buford’s trading post, liquor store, hardware and grocery store and — what really […]

WASHINGTON Size mattered not a whit during a backyard encounter in the town of Kirkland, in northwest Washington, that pitted a “yapping teacup poodle” against a 200-pound black bear, reports The Week magazine. The tiny dog acted so ferocious that the bear climbed a tree, leaped into an adjoining yard and hightailed it back to […]

WASHINGTON You have to hand it to the 12,000-to-15,000 people who traipse every summer to some national forest — usually in the West — where they live for a week as reunited friends who call themselves the Rainbow Family of Living Light. They’ve had 40 years of practice, so they’ve learned how to avoid leaving […]

COLORADO On hot summer days at the Aspen Airport, private planes from all over the world crowd the tarmac. For some reason, the pilot of an eight-seater Citation X decided that the afternoon of July 1 was the perfect time to gun the engines and do a high-powered “gauge test.” Unfortunately, the pilot failed to […]

IDAHO Jeffrey John Shaw was not what you’d call a “natural” rancher when he moved to Marsing, Idaho, population 890, in the mid-1990s. He had a thick Boston accent, knew beans about cattle, and wore bib overalls and straw hats that were a little over-the-top country, says a neighbor. But he gained the trust of […]

THE WEST A tourist from North Carolina received a chastening lesson during a guided fishing trip on the Colorado River. Trenton Austin Ganey’s group had stopped at a beach below Glen Canyon dam, leaving Ganey, 29, free to hike up to a petroglyph known as the “Descending Sheep Panel.” Alone there, Ganey scratched “TRENT” in […]

WYOMING At 23, Kathleen Vernon is definitely young for her job as Albany County coroner in southeastern Wyoming, but she seems born to do the work. Her mother was a homicide detective in California, her father was a special agent for the BLM, and “the walls of her childhood home were decorated with framed pictures […]