This month the Colorado Division of Wildlife released a two-year-old bull moose in a remote area south of Gunnison. The moose was transplanted from Utah where there is an abundance.
The DOW plans to release up to 30 moose on the north edge of the La Garita Wilderness  to supplement the small population in the area now. There are about 1,800 moose in Colorado. Since the late 1970s the DOW has transplanted moose in North Park, in the upper Rio Grande Drainage and on the Grand Mesa.

The DOW wants to hear from anyone who spots one of these moose in the area. People who see a moose are asked to record as much information about the sighting as possible: location, type of habitat, ear tag numbers, number of animals, if the animal has a radio collar, time of day, date, pictures and any other relevant information. Report any sightings to the DOW office in Gunnison at (970)641-7061, or send an e-mail to Brandon.Diamond@state.co.us.

The BLM announced today it will give $15.4 million clean-up contract to and Idaho company to clean up a tiny corner of the Roan Plateau. The company will have to tidy up  a 300,000 cubic yard oil shale pile left from the old Anvil Points oil shale research site.
Meanwhile, the area all around Anvil Points is being drilled like a rotten tooth, making a whole new mess as literally hundreds of drill pads are installed to extract natural gas. Say what you like about our need for domestic fossil fuels, if managers wanted to conserve a small corner of the Roan, seems like it would have made more sense, saved more money and conserved more  resources to just deny a drill pad or two.

As many know, the Forest Service and the Trust for Public Land have worked out a new route through Silver Pick Basin on the way to Wilson Peak that skirts private property.  The route is projected to be open in the summer of 2009.  The planned reroute is below.

silverpick.pdf

Red means stop.  14ers.com has a cool map dynamically tied to its checklist statistic page that automatically updates which peaks are the most popular. 

Red is crowded.

Yellow is moderately crowded.

Blue is not crowded.

Green is rarely climbed.  

Not that, looking at the map, it’s a huge surprise. The closer it is to Denver, the more it gets hammered. The harder it is, the less it gets hiked. 

After years of wrangling, the Forest Service has come up with a final draft of what will be Colorado’s road-less areas. The map of proposed road-less areas is here.  For the executive summary, click here. Citizens now have 90 days to comment.  You can comment at COComments@fsroadless.org

The gutters are installed along the road at the summit of Pikes Peak, the section of road  is staked and graded, waiting for a layer of asphalt, but according to today’s Gazette, that asphalt isn’t coming until next year. Good news for runners who don’t want to wait to drive to the summit. But it means more waiting later.

Plans call for the Pikes Peak Highway to be entirely paved by 2012 at a cost of $20 million. It’s a court-ordered project spurred by a suit brought by the Sierra Club in 1997, saying the city-managed road  violating environmental regulations by allowing gravel from the road to roll down the mountain into drainages that host endangered trout.  Anyway, the price of asphalt has nearly doubled in the last few years, and the high-quality stuff you need to pave above treeline is in short supply, so the city is now saying it won’t even start paving until next year. Even before the asphalt shortage, it looked doubtful that the project would finish on time.  The temperature up there is often below the 40 degrees needed to lay asphalt. In past years the road crew has been able to lay less than a mile of asphalt per summer.  There are still about 8 miles to go.

Unfortunately, it may be a sign of successful reintroduction that Lynx are numerous enough now that they are exploring new terrain in Colorado, including the state’s highways. One was hit Friday in Frisco. Even though a vet arrived on the scene almost immediately, the animal died.

According to the Summit Daily News, 13 lynx have been killed by collisions with cars, and another 13 have been illegally shot since the Colorado Division of Wildlife started re-introducing the cats from Alaska and Canada.

“It’s sad, but there’s some good news,” Tanya Shenk, lead biologist for the state re-introduction program, told the Summit Daily. “It’s evidence some of our missing animals are out there and doing well,” Shenk said, explaining that the cat, released in the San Juans in 2003, hadn’t been spotted since June 2004 after its transmitting collar probably malfunctioned.

I was screwing around on Google Earth when I noticed something odd.  The map shows a road going to the top of Cameron’s cone where there definitely isn’t any.  Then I noticed something even odder.  The road is called Coffee Pot Road.  This lead me to cook up the following conspiracy theory.  Somehow, the Saturday Knights, a well-connected, century-old gentleman’s hiking club, which just happens to have an old, rusty coffee pot as its symbol, has managed to infiltrate Google and use it for its own crazy schemes.

It is also possible that the group, which is entirely old men, most of whom may not be too familiar with Google, pulled off this coup years ago by slipping false information to the U.S.G.S.  

 Developing….

It’s raining in downtown Colorado Springs for the first time in about a month!  

In 2004 I wrote an article about how droughts had sucked down the water level of Lake Powell reservoir to historic lows. There was much hand-wringing in the press that year about how, with water demands changing, Lake Powell would never be full again.  Well, a few awesome snow years in the Rockies washed away any of that talk. The Bureau of Reclamation estimates lake levels will climb this summer to 60 feet shy of full pool.  That should be welcoming for the army of houseboaters who vacation on the lake, right?  Yeah, but now they have a drain on their pockets.  A quick look today shows gas at Bull Frog Marina is $5.48 per gallon. 

On a 70-foot house boat with a 270 gallon tank, filling up there would run you  $1,480.  Figure a boat that big gets about 1 mpg, so you’ll have to fill up again. Then consider renting one of these instead.

A lot of folks are heading out of town this weekend, but if you’re sticking around, and want a good hike with a great view, here are a few of our favorites — and they won’t be crowded like the Barr Trail. Click the name for a link to the hike.

Mount Rosa (the hard way)

Mount Rosa (the easy way) 

Almagre Peak from the West (pictured)

Sentinel Point 

Cheyenne Mountain

She was looking for a commuter, but something with more style than the typical commuter and more rideable than the typical cruiser. She fell in love with the Schwinn Coffee. It has the cool old geometry of a 1960s Schwinn Collegiate, but with a sweet new 3-speed hub from Sram. It rides like a jewel.