Jane Koerner

Book Review–Desert Rims to Mountains High

by

Desert Rims to Mountains High By Richard F. Fleck 224 pages, Graphic Arts Center Publishing Company 2013 ISBN-13: 9780871089687 Reviewed by Jane Koerner Richard Francis Fleck’s Breaking Through the Clouds, published in 2004 by Pruett, covered a lifetime of outdoor exploration on two continents. In his recently published, renamed revision, Desert Rims to Mountains High, …

Read more

Protecting Pennsylvania Mountain

by

by Jane Koerner Pennsylvania Mountain may be too modest in contour and elevation to compete with the fourteeners of international renown, but the biologists don’t complain. While hundreds of hikers elbow their way up the highest peaks of the Mosquito Range, the scientists inspect their decades-old tundra plots relatively undisturbed. On the ridge below their …

Read more

The Curious Crystal Ball Inside Mount Princeton

by

By Jane Koerner

The logistical and technical challenges seemed daunting at times. A drilling site had to be found that met all the specifications of the geologists, who had to take into account the tectonic forces that continually shape Mount Princeton and the rest of the Sawatch Range. Permits had to be obtained from the U.S. Forest Service to fix the washed-out sections of the access road so the heavy equipment could be hauled up by truck. Even after the improvements the road proved too rough and narrow for one truck, which had to be retrieved from the edge of a cliff.

Read more

Frontier Justice

by

By Jane Koerner

The lonesome straightaway on Highway 24 lured me into complacency. For miles I had been defending my lightweight Honda Civic against the crush of bumper-to-bumper traffic and the shock of worn pavement. There is no vision like tunnel vision. I looked away from the gun sight of my windshield for some psychic relief, toward the white halo of clouds adorning Pikes Peak. Dead ahead at the next curve, a long line of red brake lights was blinking. I was oblivious, so it’s a good thing I’ve got the quickest foot in the Rocky Mountain West. In the bloody aftermath of a chain-reaction accident, I’d be outgunned and defenseless when the mob of disgruntled drivers hunted me down.

Read more

The Ultimate Horror: Car Camping

by

Essay by Jane Koerner

Outdoors – August 1994 – Colorado Central Magazin

I’ve been in a flood and three tornadoes. I nearly drowned in a lake when I was six, and I crashed my Dad’s car onto the front page of the Kansas City Star in college. Since moving to Colorado so I could be closer to the mountains I love to climb, I’ve bounced 40 feet down gravel and collided with a tree. I’ve turned upside down on a rappel off a mountaintop and contemplated destiny 2,000 feet beneath my bare head. But nothing terrified me half as much as car camping.

Read more