Environmental activist Lopi LaRoe is a provocateur and with her help Smokey the Bear is, too. The Occupy Wall Street veteran has been using Smokey’s likeness in a series of anti-fracking parodies that have gone viral enough to attraction the attention of Uncle Sam: Last week LaRoe received a letter threatening her with jail time [...]
public lands
When Doug Tompkins first went to Argentina’s Perito Moreno National Park in 1992 to investigate the unclimbed south face of Cerro San Lorenzo, he and his climbing partners were blown away by the beauty and primeval rawness of the Lácteo River Valley — and shocked that it wasn’t part of the park. He vowed to [...]
If you’re speeding on a county road in Utah, does a Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management ranger have the legal right to stop and give you a ticket? The state of Utah says no, and it just passed a law formalizing its position. But don’t get excited, it’s not your back that Utah’s [...]
People who visit Oregon’s state parks have a surprising desire to stay in yurts. Eighteen state parks offer 96 “standard yurts” — equipped with futon sofas, bunk beds and electricity — plus another 88 that comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. The state describes them as “round, filled with comfy furniture, and pointy on [...]
Over two nights at the end of March, James Lucas scrubbed the chalk lightning bolt that has for 35 years marked the world-famous Yosemite boulder problem Midnight Lightning (before and after, above). The V8 problem in Camp 4 was first climbed by Ron Kauk in 1978, after he and John Bachar had worked on the [...]
As AJ reported earlier this week, the public lands wild horse and burro problem is a big deal. There are 37,000 animals running free on open range and another 37,000 being held in holding facilities. Storing and feeding the horses costs $43 million a year. And that doesn’t count the efforts to deal with the [...]
I grew up with a dozen horses on Colorado’s eastern plains. In winter I busted hay bales to feed them, and, under a star-strewn sky, chopped holes in iced-over water tanks so the animals could drink. I’ve always believed that the outside of a horse is good for the inside of a man. But not [...]
It was a long way from the crowds of the Boston Marathon, but officials in Arizona took the discovery of a homemade pipe bomb just as seriously: They closed parts of Apache Sitgreaves National Forest in the eastern part of the state for six hours while members of the Coconino County Sheriff’s Office, Flagstaff Police [...]
Big Bend National Park, Texas — The Rio Grande is slow and muddy along the Mexican border, at the base of Santa Elena Canyon, on a sunny November day. My roommate, Alex Brachman — like me, a fresh-out-of-college intern volunteering in Big Bend National Park — skips stones from bank to bank. The truck backs [...]
My archaeological quest began in an SUV near Blanding Elementary School, where screaming children played kickball with a potato-shaped P.E. teacher. Winsten Dan, my cattle dog, slept on the backseat as I thumbed my smartphone; I had downloaded an app that saves PDFs from Web pages so they’re accessible outside cell reception. I used it [...]
It was nearly 60 years ago when Katie Lee first floated into the red-rock labyrinth of Glen Canyon. But her memory of that place, which was long ago drowned by the creation of Glen Canyon Dam, hasn’t faded a bit. Lee sharply recalls a desert eden of soaring Wingate walls, ancient ruins, maidenhair fern, canyon [...]
Two of Joshua Tree National Park’s most popular hiking spots, Rattlesnake Canyon and Barker Dam, are now off-limits, thanks to emergency closure by the park because of a wave of graffiti attacks. Both of the areas were recently covered with spray-painted by individuals who posted their work on Facebook and other social sites, which then [...]
When the small town of Palisade, Colorado, looks south to the La Sal Mountains and Moab’s Whole Enchilada trail, it sees vertical-hungry cyclists paying $30 to $40 a pop for shuttles to the top trailhead, it sees Camelbak-toting tourists dropping bucks at coffee shops and filling beds in motels. It sees its own Palisade Plunge [...]
Back in 2005, the U.S. Forest Service avoided making the tough decision about where snowmobiles should and shouldn’t go, passing the buck onto local forests to decide, effectively exempting snowmobiles from restriction. Not only was that a bad idea, said a federal court judge recently, it was against the law. “The court finds the OSV [...]
The Daily Bike, May 24, 2013
Boy Scouts to Allow Gay Members
The Daily Bike: Mountain Bike Enduro World Series Kicks Off
Overlandia: Driving a 1936 Rolls Royce Across India
15 Seconds: Driving Indian Creek, Utah
The Man Who Skied Down Everest Climbs it at 80
National Avalanche Legend Doug Abromeit Passes Away
Smokey Is Fighting Fracking and the Feds Don’t Like It
Prickly, Beloved Mountain Gazette Print Version Shut Down
Historical Badass: Alpinist Alex Lowe
Volunteer Fired at Saguaro National Park for Reporting Graffiti
Sierra Club Joins Lawsuit Against Mountain Bike Park
Driver Busted After Bragging on Twitter About Hitting Cyclist
The Daily Bike: Les Granges du Galibier, Giro d’Italia 2013
