By Hal Walter One snowy morning this fall, at the school-bus stop, another parent commented on the weather, asking, “You think this means we’re going to get some actual snow this winter?” I thought about this briefly and then recalled that the previous fall it had snowed a couple times early, then basically stopped for …
By Martha Quillen ‘Twas some weeks before Christmas and all through our state, The people were trying to temper their hate. Then one night I pulled on warm mittens and stockings And headed downtown for some last-minute shopping, And there in the shadows, near where I had parked, A couple of council members stood in …
By John Mattingly Real snow has large flakes, is evenly distributed in the base, and isn’t as light or fluffy as the virtual snow from a snow-making machine. Virtual snow lacks a complex crystalline structure, as it is already “old snow” at creation, being like real snow that has been trafficked enough to crush the …
By Mike Rosso The Leadville Mineral Belt Trail (MBT) is a great example of a positive outcome from an EPA Superfund Site. The scenic, paved 11.6-mile loop trail winds safely through the city and the surrounding historic mining district. It was conceived of in 1994, a result of a community effort to help identify natural …
By Brian Rill David Tipton’s Memento is a touching tribute to the golden melodies of popular culture. The soothing sounds of a solo stick master rat-at-at-tating his steel strings offers a sweet relief to even the most stressed-out customer. Tipton, the original gangster of elevator music, makes a strikingly appealing and broad, sweeping declaration of …
By Peter Anderson Trip Advisor Snowflake Museum, Monarch Crest, Colorado Date of Review: 12-15-2068 Reviewer: Fern the Flatlander We had heard about the Snowflake Museum from friends in Kansas City and decided to make a pilgrimage for the holidays. The kids of course had never seen snow, though they had heard the occasional story. Our …
By Lynda La Rocca “It’s what you fail to imagine that kills you.” This quote, from Michael Lewis’s new book “The Fifth Risk,” refers to the dangers facing America under the Trump administration, specifically those posed by incompetent and unqualified government leaders. But it also applies to the residents of the southern Lake County hamlet …
By Forrest Whitman The usual gossip in the lounge car on the westbound California Zephyr (#5) moved to the topic of snow. It seemed most everyone had been snowbound or at least delayed by snow. I was in the mood for a good, long trip to share the holidays with my family from Thailand in …
By Jan MacKell Collins At 10,846 feet in elevation, Marshall Pass remains among one of Colorado’s precarious roads. The pass, located in the Sawatch Range between Salida and Gunnison, was discovered by Lieutenant William Marshall in 1873 as he was making a mad dash in search of a Denver dentist for a bad toothache. But …
By Leslie Jorgensen and Dena Zocher The purity of untracked snow. The silence and majesty of the backcountry in winter. The joy and adventure of experiencing nature on its own terms. These things and more are luring growing numbers of skiers in Colorado to venture outside the groomed, mechanized boundaries of ski areas. But behind …
By John Cameron Emblazoned with the familiar cross on their jackets and packs full of gear, patrollers are able to respond to most any situation on the ski hill. The level of emergency response would not be what it is today without the foresight of one man who built an army that would lead to …
By Mike Rosso For this combined January/February issue, I thought we’d engage in a little wishful thinking. As of this writing (Dec. 29), the Upper Arkansas River Basin is at 108 percent of average snowpack, the Gunnison Basin is at 90 percent and the Upper Rio Grande Basin is at 66 percent of average. My …
Artist Leslie Jorgensen didn’t grow up in Colorado, but after she took a job at The Denver Post in 1989, she never looked back. “I grew up in Florida, and when I moved here it was the first time I had ever seen snow,” she says. “I loved it and I knew I wanted to …
By George Sibley This snow issue of Colorado Central sends me back almost forty years to some personal discoveries about how best to live with the stuff. Growing up in America in the Age of the Automobile, it had not really occurred to me that the winter in snowy places had different levels on which …
By Daniel Smith No matter where you’ve lived, we’ve all heard the “big snowstorm” stories. Often it comes handed down as a verbal history, from older relatives or from boxed old photographs showing snowbanks as high as … well, you name it. “As high as second-story windows” is one claim I remember from my youth. …
By Tina Mitchell Deep snowpack in Colorado’s snowy, high-altitude coniferous forests chases most humans to lower altitudes during the winter. (At least during a good winter.) Yet the wildlife denizens of the deep snows – Canada lynx and snowshoe hares – continue their delicate dance unabated. Lynx feed primarily on snowshoe hares. More so than …
By Virginia McConnell Simmons Trains had first reached Durango in 1881, and the railroad was learning quickly that the difficulties of operating the San Juan Extension across the mountains between Alamosa and Durango happened so often that the word wreck was taboo. There were snow slides, rock slides, washouts and derailments, and winter weather was …