Quotes
“A man says a lot of things in summer he doesn't mean in winter.” ~ Patricia Briggs,
“In the winter she curls up around a good book and dreams away the cold.”~ Ben Aaronovitch
“A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.” ~ Carl Reiner
Colorado Ski History
Skiing has been used in military training and combat (10th Mountain Division, trained near Leadville in World War II.) Now it is a form of recreation, and a competitive sport.
In the mining days some of earliest skiers were the mailmen. These hardy individuals lashed on eleven-foot wooden boards, and traveled from one mining camp to the next. A second group to take up skiing as a form of transportation in winter was preachers who skied over high mountain passes once a week to hold services in mining camps.
John Lewis Dyer crossed the Mosquito Mountains every week carrying the mail along with his religious fervor from Alma to Leadville and back. In the winter this meant crossing the 13,185 ft Mosquito Pass in the snow.
Dyer preached in the mining camps during the early silver boom of the 1860s. Since preaching didn’t pay the bills and Father Dyer was traveling from camp to camp anyways, he took on a second job as a backcountry ski touring mailman. Using a combination of snowshoes and Norwegian style wooden skies, Dyer became a fixture in the history of Colorado’s mountains.
Shortly after World War II, skiing took off with old mining towns, like Breckenridge and Aspen building ski hills, and completely new towns sprung up around the ski hills like Vail. .From long boards to short "fat" skis, telemark skiing to alpine skiing, ski jumping to slalom racing, skiing is more popular than ever before. And here in the Colorado high country, it lives on, not just as a sport, but as a thriving way of life.
Two Miles High and Six Feet Under
Set in Leadville, in the winter of 1894, the novel naturally involves some ski scenes, also snowshoes, and an avalanche, too. Check it out on Amazon or Kindle; additionally at better bookstores.
Gunnison Sage Grouse
The population of Gunnison Sage Grouse is decreasing at an astounding rate to the lowest numbers since tracking began in 1996. There are now approximately 2,700 in southwest Colorado and in Utah. A high point was 5,800 in 2007.
The decline could be from natural cycles, drought, and exceptionally harsh winter weather for two years, 2018 and 2019. The Western Watersheds Project does not agree. They are suing Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service alleging that federal agencies have failed to do enough to protect the grouse. They allow grazing on public land, Over grazing is ruining the Gunninson Sage Grouse habitat. Suggestions involve changing the grazing season so that it does not interfere with grouse breeding season, or take the cattle off the public land completely.
“A man says a lot of things in summer he doesn't mean in winter.” ~ Patricia Briggs,
“In the winter she curls up around a good book and dreams away the cold.”~ Ben Aaronovitch
“A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.” ~ Carl Reiner
Colorado Ski History
Skiing has been used in military training and combat (10th Mountain Division, trained near Leadville in World War II.) Now it is a form of recreation, and a competitive sport.
In the mining days some of earliest skiers were the mailmen. These hardy individuals lashed on eleven-foot wooden boards, and traveled from one mining camp to the next. A second group to take up skiing as a form of transportation in winter was preachers who skied over high mountain passes once a week to hold services in mining camps.
John Lewis Dyer crossed the Mosquito Mountains every week carrying the mail along with his religious fervor from Alma to Leadville and back. In the winter this meant crossing the 13,185 ft Mosquito Pass in the snow.
Dyer preached in the mining camps during the early silver boom of the 1860s. Since preaching didn’t pay the bills and Father Dyer was traveling from camp to camp anyways, he took on a second job as a backcountry ski touring mailman. Using a combination of snowshoes and Norwegian style wooden skies, Dyer became a fixture in the history of Colorado’s mountains.
Shortly after World War II, skiing took off with old mining towns, like Breckenridge and Aspen building ski hills, and completely new towns sprung up around the ski hills like Vail. .From long boards to short "fat" skis, telemark skiing to alpine skiing, ski jumping to slalom racing, skiing is more popular than ever before. And here in the Colorado high country, it lives on, not just as a sport, but as a thriving way of life.
Two Miles High and Six Feet Under
Set in Leadville, in the winter of 1894, the novel naturally involves some ski scenes, also snowshoes, and an avalanche, too. Check it out on Amazon or Kindle; additionally at better bookstores.
Gunnison Sage Grouse
The population of Gunnison Sage Grouse is decreasing at an astounding rate to the lowest numbers since tracking began in 1996. There are now approximately 2,700 in southwest Colorado and in Utah. A high point was 5,800 in 2007.
The decline could be from natural cycles, drought, and exceptionally harsh winter weather for two years, 2018 and 2019. The Western Watersheds Project does not agree. They are suing Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service alleging that federal agencies have failed to do enough to protect the grouse. They allow grazing on public land, Over grazing is ruining the Gunninson Sage Grouse habitat. Suggestions involve changing the grazing season so that it does not interfere with grouse breeding season, or take the cattle off the public land completely.
Comparing Gunnison Sage Grouse to Greater Sage Grouse convinced researchers that the Gunnison Grouse was not only smaller but they had different courtship behavior and certain genetic differences, enough that they were two similar, but different species
Last Words
So if your cow doesn’t produce milk, is it a milk dud or an udder failure?