Thursday, November 19th at 7 p.m.

Penrose Library, Carnegie Reading Room, 20 N. Cascade Ave.

Top members of the Colorado Springs Park staff and TOSC will brief the public on the proposed budget-cuts and how those will negatively impact the city’s parks, trails and open space – and offer sustainable solutions.

There will also be an opportunity to find out how volunteers can step in and help minimize the damage.

Everyone is invited.

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Last weekend I checked out the recently opened - Line downhill jump course at Red Rock Canyon. It is a series of four or five dirt table tops arranged on a hill next to the free ride skills park. I was there without my bike, so I did not give it a try, but a half-dozen high school kids were doing laps while I was there and generally having a great time — good to see. From there I wandered off on an off-trail expedition that took my backpack-bound 6-month-old son and I along the spine of the sandstone fin that runs south from the quarry. It was very cool. It would be a good place to bivouac on a starry night.

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Hikers will be allowed to use existing trails in White Acres as soon as the city closes the deal this December.

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In short, the owners are going through the steps to annex the property into the city so it can be developed more densely, but people familiar with the process told me it is unlikely it will happen.

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Photo courtesy Stewart Green.

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(AP) — Drilling leases on and near the border of Utah’s scenic national parks have been pulled from an auction block.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced its decision late Tuesday after negotiations with National Park Service officials who objected to noise, lights and air pollution near Arches National Park, Dinosaur National Monument and Canyonlands National Park, all in Utah.

Some of those parcels were within 1.3 miles of Delicate Archthe signature landmark at Arches near Moab, Utah, and the emblem on Utah’s license plates.

“I don’t know why we’re that desperate to compromise the extraordinary values of the national parks. Any industrialization of areas adjacent to park creates irreparable damage,” said Dave Nimkin, a regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association.

The BLM, he said, “would burn the Rembrandts to heat the castles.”

Hundreds of thousands of acres throughout Utah will still be auctioned off Dec. 19 for oil and gas drilling.

In all, the Park Service objected to 93 parcels where drilling could drown out the sounds of wind, water and wildlife for visitors, possibly contaminate nearby springs and worsen ozone levels, Mike Snyder, the Denver-based regional Park Service director, wrote Monday in a protest letter to the bureau.

BLM maps showed the agency will remove 34 parcels from the December auction, including those bunched along park boundaries.

That was little more than a third of what the Park Service wanted eliminated.

Snyder, however, showed no disappointment. “Working with Selma Sierra, the BLM Utah state director, has resulted in the kind of resource protection that Americans want and deserve for their national parks,” he said in a joint statement.

Snyder couldn’t be reached for comment late Tuesday.

The BLM left some drilling parcels — including parts of three tracts near Arches park — on the auction list which critics say could still ruin park views.

“I don’t know why we’re that desperate to compromise the extraordinary values of the national parks. Any industrialization of areas adjacent to park creates irreparable damage,” said Dave Nimkin, a regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association.

The BLM, he said, “would burn the Rembrandts to heat the castles.”

Other leases include parcels on high cliffs along whitewater sections of Desolation Canyon, an area explored by John Wesley Powell in 1896, and plateaus populated by big game atop Nine Mile Canyon, home to thousands of ancient rock art panels.

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Backpacking Light magazine will be online only soon due to rising costs and industry-wide declines in  advertising and subscription revenues.

The company’s President, Ryan Jordan, cites the current economic recession as a major factor in this decision. “Printing, transportation, and fulfillment cost increases over the past few years make publishing a print magazine of our size at an affordable price impossible without advertising,” Jordan said. “Now that advertisers are moving more of their ad dollars online, the ability to produce a high-quality, short run, niche publication requires substantial costs. It’s not fair to our long-time customers, including our gear shop and online subscribers, to divert their dollars to unprofitable projects.”

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newly placed barriers on Dillon Dam Road, according

to a public safety notice issued today at a meeting

the utility had requested.

The Summit County Sheriff’s Office called for

immediate removal of the barriers and said

the county could issue criminal fire code

charges if the road is still closed tomorrow afternoon,

according to a statement from Lake Dillon Fire-Rescue.

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The Hardrock 100 ended this morning at 6 a.m.  several runners made the cut-off by only minutes.  Both runners from Manitou Springs made it considerably before the cut-off.  Neal Taylor, the caretaker of Barr Camp,  finished 17th at 5:18 Saturday.  I ran with him for the last 17 miles and it was some of the most spectacular stuff I’ve ever seen, both in terms of scenery and the audacity of the course’s climbs and drops.

Jon Teisher finished much later, at 12:55 a.m. His crew quickly provided him with a PBR and a cigar. I’m pretty sure he was too tired to enjoy that cigar.

Here are some photos from Neal tackling the last 16 miles.

Climbing to Buffalo Boy Ridge, 13,100… 

 The other side of the ridge, looking out at the Weminuche Wilderness…

After droping down to 10,400 feet, starting a climb back to 13,000 feet. The trail essentially goes up the waterfall.

At 13,000 feet on Little Giant, ready for the 4,000-foot plunge to the finish line… 

Running into Silverton, 36 hours after the start…

Jon Teisher, a.k.a. JT, a.k.a Brownie, a.k.a. the man, observing cocktail hour seconds after finishing just before 1 a.m… 

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Just before dawn on Saturday Kyle Skaggs did what few runners thought possible. He finished the grueling Hardrock 100 Endurance Run in under 24 hours, setting a new record with a time of 23 hours, 23 minutes, 30 seconds. See results and video of finish here. “This is the performance of the year in ultra-running. Someone’s going to have to walk on water to top this” said his friend and fellow runner Nate McDowell.
Hardrock is considered the toughest running race in the country. In a 100-mile loop of trails and mining roads through the San Juan Mountains, it climbs 32,962 feet over 11 mountain passes and one 14,000-foot summit. The course is fraught with creek crossings and steep snow fields. Historically, only about half of runners who enter finish.
Skaggs, 23, beat the course record by two hours, 45 minutes.
“That was a solid record and he just shattered it,” said race organizer Dale Garland. “I can’t say what a big deal this is. I honestly didn’t think what he achieved was possible.”
The race started Friday at 6 a.m. Skaggs, who is from Glenwood, New Mexico, trotted in to Silverton Saturday after running all night, and kissed a two-ton granite boulder that acts as the finish line of the race. He leaned against the rock for several seconds, smiling in near exhaustion.
“What can we get for you?” a bystander asked.
“I think I just want to sit down,” he said with a broad grin.
Skaggs has been living in Silverton and running up to 160 miles per week to prepare for the race. He went out at a pace few thought was maintainable, leaving the rest of the pack in the dust. Almost every runner coming into aid stations along the course asked when Skaggs came through. On hearing he was hours ahead, they invariably said, “how did he look?” and race volunteers always seemed to say “really strong.”
“I only had one really rough patch where I hadn’t been eating enough,” Skaggs said, “but most of the race I felt really good.”
He walked several steep climbs, but never stopped. His record may be a turning point in the sport of ultra-running, which has long been dominated by older runners. Young runners were said to lack the stamina.
“Kyle and I are sort of changing that,” said Colorado Springs resident and Skaggs’ good friend Tony Krupicka, 24. Krupika won the Leadville 100 in 2007 by three and a half hours. The have their eyes on other records in the years to come. Skaggs may run the Pikes Peak Marathon this summer.
Hardrock organizers think Skaggs record will stand for years.
Skaggs sat in a dazed glow at the finish line. He pulled of his shoes, which were stripped of most of their soles by a single run, and brushed some of the bigger grit off of his scraped and dusty shins.
“Man, my quads are going to be trashed,” he said.”I might not run tomorrow.”

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