Could CPW add 8,800 acres to 13 state parks without spending a dollar? It’s possible

Sneak Peek of the Week

As Wyoming proposes an $80 million auction, some are asking the State Land Board to transfer land to state parks

Hikers explore the bluffs along the Arkansas Point trail March 5, 2022 at Lake Pueblo State Park. About 350 acres inside the 10,000-acre park is owned by the Colorado State Land Board. (Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun)

What if Colorado Parks and Wildlife, with a stroke of a pen, could add 8,800 acres to 13 state parks without spending a dollar?

That’s possible as CPW and the Colorado State Land Board negotiate a management deal for 8,817 land board acres inside 13 of the state’s most popular acres. Those acres benefit state parks and CPW has managed the assorted parcels for many years. The most recent 10-year management contract expires next year and several insiders are urging the land board to transfer the land to state parks.

A transfer could prevent what’s unfolding in Wyoming, where the director of the Office of State Lands and Investment is recommending an auction of 640 state-owned acres inside Grand Teton National Park with bids starting at a whopping $80 million.

“We are very much excited to permanently conserve lands inside the state park without spending any money and this contract negotiation is a good opportunity to do that,” said Gabriel Otero, a Colorado Parks and Wildlife commissioner whose work with the The Wilderness Society and the Next 100 Colorado coalition has focused on making Colorado’s outdoors more diverse and inclusive.

The State Land Board does not want to transfer the land and prefers to reach a new interagency management agreement with CPW. The land is already part of state park operations so an exchange of ownership would have no impact on public access, land board spokeswoman Kristin Kemp said.

And Colorado laws governing how the state land board can sell land are more strict than those for other state agencies, Kemp said.

“That means that ownership by CPW puts the lands at possible risk of future disposition to a private owner whereas the parcels are far less likely to be sold under the Constitutional terms of trust land,” she said in an email.

But the land board does sell land. And the huge numbers in the Wyoming plan could sway appointed land board commissioners tasked with making money for schools.

There is no plan to sell the Colorado land. But if a board of commissioners was purely focused on making money, auctioning 640 acres inside Golden Gate Canyon State Park or 470 acres inside Roxborough State Park or 619 acres inside Staunton State Park would be an unprecedented windfall. (The land is held in two trusts that benefit state parks, so the money from a sale would go to parks, not schools.)

“Politically it seems unlikely, but legally, the State Land Board can sell those lands and they are only going to get more valuable. So after another 10-year extension, the interest will only grow from developers eyeing that land,” said Matt Samelson, an attorney with Western Environmental Law Partners who serves on the Public School Capital Construction Assistance Board that distributes Building Excellent Schools Today funding from trust lands to construct and renovate Colorado schools. “Why kick the can down the road when those lands will become even more valuable as the Front Range grows?”

>> Click over to The Sun on Friday to read this story

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In Their Words

New owners, same mission at Montanya

Karen Hoskin, center, CEO and co-founder of Montanya Distillers in Crested Butte, bottles the limited edition Valentia rum on Nov. 19, 2019. Her company is certified B Corp, which means it values social impact along with making a profit. Valentia, which was made and bottled by women, is a tribute to women in the distilling industry. (Handout)

Four years ago, Karen Hoskin notched a milestone for her Montanya Distillers, the first high-altitude craft rum distillery in the country. From a nondescript building in an industrial park south of Crested Butte, her team of all-women distillers celebrated Valentia, a first-ever rum crafted, distilled, bottled and marketed entirely by women.

“It lets us show the many opportunities we have provided for women,” Hoskin told reporter Nancy Lofholm in 2019.

Hoskin marked another mile post this week as she sold her company to two of her veteran employees — both women who served as head distillers — and a branding boss from Texas.

“It’s an amazing feeling. They are so capable and they have so much institutional knowledge of the company,” said Hoskin, a worldwide pioneer for women craft distillers.

Hoskin and her husband, Brice, created Montanya in 2008 in Silverton. They moved their family to Crested Butte and Montanya thrived as an internationally lionized rum. Their bar on historic Elk Avenue remains one of Crested Butte’s most popular spots.

On the last day of February 2020, a couple weeks before the world turned upside down, Hoskin bought that building on Elk. Then she shut down her operation for three months, huddling during the early days of a ground-shifting global pandemic.

“I was sure we were in end times. Then we reopened into the hardest labor environment I have ever worked in and we were the busiest we have ever been because everyone wanted to come to Crested Butte,” Hoskin said.

The post-pandemic landscape in all Colorado mountain towns is evolving. A labor crisis has challenged small business owners as home prices soar. Investment by wealthy outsiders is further roiling mountain town main streets. Billionaire financier Mark Walker has bought many buildings in downtown Crested Butte. Denver developer and long-time Crested Butte resident Jeff Hermanson is renovating several Elk Avenue restaurants.

Amid all this change it seems like every week a long-time business owner in a mountain town announces they are leaving. The 25-year creators of Silverton Mountain ski area have sold. Legendary lodges are getting plowed to make room for luxury hotels.

Bars are shutting down. Pizzerias are selling. Gear shops are closing.

The Montanya sale, however, is not sad news. The new owners — head distiller Megan Campbell, former head distiller Renée Newton and Sean Richards, a Houston-based brand strategist — are well acquainted with the Crested Butte community. Hoskin called them “one of the most diverse and powerhouse owner teams in craft-spirits history.”

Newton, who has spent a decade working with Hoskin, is planning to expand Montanya’s embrace of the quirky CB culture.

“We are all here for different reasons but we all share the same ideals around being part of this really special place and this special community,” she said. “We are planning to give back and curate a safe place that celebrates that community.”

>> Click over to The Sun on Friday to read this story

Breaking Trail

A final chapter for the Uinta Basin Railway

One last gratuitous trainwreck shot to mark the derailment of the Uinta Basin Railway plan? A 105-car Union Pacific train moving coal eastbound through Glenwood Canyon derailed near the No Name and Grizzly Creek exits around noon on Feb. 16, 2004. (Ed Kosmicki, Special to The Colorado Sun)

You’ve read a lot about the Uinta Basin Railway in the past couple years. This could be the last item, at least for the next few years. The U.S. Court of Appeals in the U.S. District of Columbia this week denied an appeal by the railway’s backers, affirming the court’s decision in August to reject the 2021 approval of the railroad by the Surface Transportation Board.

That sends the controversial 88-mile railroad plan back to step one. The plan riled dozens of communities in Colorado that were expecting the new railroad to route 5 billion gallons a year of Uinta Basin crude through the state along the Colorado River. The Seven County Infrastructure Coalition that is pushing the new railroad as an economic engine to support Uinta Basin oil fields and central Utah communities will have to shepherd the plan through a new Environmental Impact Statement review by the Surface Transportation Board. The last review took nearly three years.

“Federal officials now have to go back to the drawing board and any science-based study will show they should scrap this dangerous oil train once and for all,” Wendy Park with the Center of Biological Diversity said in a statement. “It’s a financial boondoggle and a climate bomb that threatens Gulf Coast communities and the water source for 40 million people.”

The Guide

Fighting the funk that follows triumph

James Carlson trains in the foothills of Colorado Springs for his double Everesting event, when he climbed nearly 60,000 feet, or twice the elevation of Mount Everest. Carlson battled severe depression after succeeding in his event, even to the point where he didn’t want to get out of bed. (James Carlson, handout)

James Carlson knew there might be a funk after accomplishing a goal he had pursued for years. Still, the malaise was overwhelming.

After the Colorado Springs real estate broker and endurance runner climbed 60,000 vertical feet at Telluride ski area in a 59-hour push — a record-setting doubling of so-called Everesting, which is climbing the height of the world’s tallest mountain in a single go — he was understandably elated and weary. As the celebration faded, he found himself lost. The afterglow and kudos for the record-setting feat were fleeting. His goal was gone. Shadows engulfed him.

“I had prepared for the arrival fallacy,” Carlson told Colorado Sun freelancer Dan England. “But I hadn’t prepared for what to do next. I hadn’t even thought about it.”

The empty feeling after the finish line is real. Runners get a little dark after a marathon, especially their first. Olympians, most notably and publicly Michael Phelps, often say the emptiness is harder to endure than the grueling ascent to the grandest stage. They call it the marathon blues. The Olympic blues. Renowned ski mountaineer Hilaree Nelson noted her doldrums as “post-traumatic stoke” in the weeks after becoming the first person to ski from the summit of Lhotse in the Himalayas.

Many athletes are ill-prepared for the post-target torpor.

“There’s so much hype and then it’s over,” Jamie Shapiro, a professor of sport and performance psychology at the University of Denver. “It feels like a sense of loss, and we get sad when there’s a loss. I don’t think there’s a way you can prevent it completely.”

In some cases, athletes find a way to move on a few days or weeks after, say, a big race, but in other cases, the depression can reach clinical levels. This is especially true if the event is the pinnacle of their career.

>> Click over to The Sun next week to read Dan’s story

Breckenridge’s horned holiday celebrates Ullr and snow

Jake Nelson, left, of Brighton, and Timothy Womochil, of Colorado Springs, decorate their Viking hats Thursday at the Ready Paint Fire store before Ullr Fest on Breckenridge’s Main Street. (Hugh Carey, The Colorado Sun)

The horns are everywhere.

For 60 years Summit County locals have gathered in Breckenridge to celebrate Ullr, the Norse god of snow. They parade and dance on Main Street, hoping for a snowy winter. Nearly everyone is wearing a Viking-esque helmet with horns.

The horns have been a part of Breckenridge’s Ullr Fest for 60 years.

But they don’t have much to do with Ullr. Or Vikings. Or Norway.

“Apparently, Vikings did not wear horned helmets. It’s not necessarily a Norwegian thing at all,” said Leigh Girvin with Breckenridge History, noting that historians have traced the horned Viking helmets back to the earliest productions of Wagner’s The Valkyrie operas in Germany in the late 1800s. “Not that anyone cares at Ullr Fest.”

The horned, caped, furred and festive celebrants at the 60th annual Ullr Fest on Thursday lined their chins along what’s likely the world’s longest shot ski. It’s possible they set a world record for the most people slamming a shot-ski at one time. Go Breck!

The parade, the participants and all their horns-first regalia “immediately creates a sense of place and time,” Girvin said.

“You know you are in Breckenridge in winter at Ullr Fest,” she said. “It defines Breckenridge. Loving snow — you have to if you live at 9,600 feet in the Colorado Rockies. Loving winter sports, especially gliding over snow. Ullr was the best skier in the Norse pantheon, a lover of winter. Ullr Fest shows that Breckenridge is creative, resourceful, whimsical, up for a good time. And fun. A lot of fun.”

>> Click over to The Sun on Friday to see photographer Hugh Carey’s Ullr Fest photos

— j

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