Travel & Outdoors

Not everyone “enjoys” the outdoors and when it comes to pitching a tent, slapping on bug spray and going three days without a shower, even fewer sign on for the adventure of packing into backcountry. Sometimes roughing it simply means a queen instead of a king and no walk-in closet but, that shouldn’t exclude the West’s perhaps less-adventurous from experiencing the outdoors.

Try these five woodsy destinations within reach of a top-tier restaurant and plush (non-inflatable) mattresses.

National Park News

Most of Bandelier National Monument is slated to remain closed “for the foreseeable future” because of wildfire damage, according to the National Park Service.

About half of the New Mexico park, home to ancestral pueblo remains dating back to 1150, was destroyed by the Las Conchas Fire, the park’s web page reports. Because officials expect seasonal thunderstorms, the rest of the park will stay closed because of flash flooding danger. Frijoles Canyon, which includes the visitor center, is considered one of the most hazardous locations. The visitor center is closed.

Trail Work

Pull, don’t push! When you’re working in the Bob Marshall Wilderness with a crosscut saw, this is the rule.

For five days in July, “Pull, don’t push!” became my mantra. Without the whine of the chainsaw or the stench of two-cycle engines to burn your nostrils, it is the sing of the blade, powered by two people, that makes trail crew work possible in Montana’s largest wilderness complex that said no to roads, vehicles and motorized anything in the late 1960s, largely thanks to one man, Robert Marshall.

Six of my friends and I signed up with the Bob Marshall Wilderness Foundation (BMWF) for one of their many volunteer trail crew projects. Our goal was to free a section of downed telephone line on the Historic Phone Line along the South Fork of the Flathead River in the 1.5 million acre complex. For 15 years the BMWF has placed volunteers deep within one of the country’s largest and most remote wildernesses to help maintain and preserve the many trails, cabins and artifacts that encompass a place affectionately referred to as “the Bob.”

National Park News

In a rare occurrence among grizzly bears, Grand Teton National Park biologists have reported that two sows—a mother and her five-year-old daughter—have exchanged a cub.

The two female grizzlies have occupied overlapping home ranges since both emerged from hibernation with newborn cubs this past spring. The adoption or fostering of cubs between two female bears is rare, but not unprecedented, according to a blogpost filed by public affairs officer Jackie Skaggs. This behavior was documented in an article written by Mark A. Haroldson, Kerry A. Gunther and Travis Wyman in a Yellowstone Science 2008 publication.

Adventure Journal Post

In Yellowstone National Park, the extirpation of wolves led to a flourishing elk population, which then overgrazed trees. Reductions in numbers of lions and leopards in parts of Africa has led to a rise of olive baboons, increasing contact with humans and the spread of intestinal parasites in humans and baboons. The decimation of sharks in the Chesapeake Bay has led to a proliferation of cow-nosed rays, which have over-consumed oysters.

“People who live in North America know it’s hard to grow a garden because deer will eat it,” said Ellen K. Pikitch, a co-author of the report and a professor at Stony Brook University in New York. “The lack of wolf populations throughout North America has led to an expansion of the deer population.

As Wyoming’s college rodeo coaches converge on the National High School Finals in Gillette this week, they will be recruiting top student athletes who waver between going to college and turning pro right out of high school.

The most ambitious competitors will want to ride on the college and Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association circuits at the same time. And many of those may follow some of Wyoming’s top young cowboys to Texas, where the pro rodeo season is longer and richer than in the Northern Rockies

“I do hear kids say they want to go to Texas and pro rodeo,” said Dan Mortensen, a world champion saddle-bronc rider and the interim head rodeo coach at Northwest College in Powell. “I know it’s really tempting to head off to the pros. The ones who are winning in college are probably good enough to win pro rodeos, too.”

Case in point: JR Vezain of Cowley, who won last month’s College National Finals Rodeo bareback competition. With $29,000 in winnings, he is a top contender for rookie of the year on the PRCA circuit.

“I never wanted to go to college,” said Vezain, the 2009 national high school bareback champion, as he stripped several yards of tape from his forearms after riding last month for Vernon College at the CNFR in Casper.

High Country News Post

Despite their reputation as hangouts for brawny hook and bullet types, fly-fishing shops--particularly the fly-tying sections--have always been a tad swishy.  No matter how you slice it, scores of straight-faced men poking through purple Krystal Flash and pearl Flashabou or inquiring about the next shipment of pink chenille isn’t exactly manly.

But a recent women’s hairstyle trend has upped fly-fishing’s “fabulous” factor another notch: rooster feather hair extensions. According a recent NPR story, the trend originated at western music festivals like Burning Man and Sasquatch, but has since spread to various pop celebrities, most visibly, “American Idol” judge and Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler.

And while some fly tiers decry the increased competition--and higher prices--for their materials, a few fly shop owners are happy to see a boom in business.

Adventure Journal Post

Politicians generally don’t level shotgun blasts at sitting presidents of their own party, but in June that’s exactly what former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt did. He brought to the bully pulpit of a former Cabinet member a broadside against President Obama for a lack of leadership on environmental and climate change issues, calling the current Congress the most radical in history and Obama’s failure to engage it “appeasement”. From within the highest levels of the Democratic party, he expressed the frustration with Obama that so many environmentally oriented people have felt, to some a betrayal, to other discouragement and the sense that what might be perhaps the one and only opportunity to tackle the issues of climate change and environmental degradation before it’s too late is slipping away. If not Obama, then who?

Babbitt’s remarks were covered moderately widely in the press, but it did not spark a debate and the response from the establishment was muted, to say the least. It’s true that Obama has made some positive moves, but most reasonably conscious observers can see that the challenges to the global environment are orders of magnitude greater than what we’ve dealt with previously, and Babbit’s speech, along with Al Gore’s powerful and frightening call to action in a recent Rolling Stone, is a much deserved, well needed, and overdue alarm from a voice that carries more weight than most.

Here is his speech, in its entirety.

New West Feature

In the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, grizzly bear management faces a major constraint – all the best habitat for grizzly bears is already occupied, even over-occupied.

Or is it?

“I call it the ‘too many fish in a bucket’ scenario,” said Mark Bruscino, the veteran bear manager for the Wyoming Game & Fish Department. Fish, meaning bears, keep jumping out of the best habitat, he said, landing in rural habitats where they can get in trouble with people.

It doesn’t always work to scoop up the fish and put it back in the bucket – not when the fish/bear becomes habituated to human food sources or gets pushed around by bigger, badder bears and keeps jumping out of the bucket, said Bruscino.

High Country News Post

When nearly 42,000 of gallons of crude oil rushed down the Yellowstone River July 1, the Environmental Protection Agency said its first concern was human health.

Individuals and communities downstream of the spill who have long used it as a clean drinking water source must now await results as the agency tests their wells for oil-related pollutants. Information regarding the safety of these wells has been slow to surface as the agency scrambles to assess water quality after the spill.

Officials in Custer County, three counties down from the spill site, said they received late notice of the spill and risk to water treatment plants. (They didn’t find out until the morning after.) But as soon as they became aware of it, municipalities and irrigation districts closed their water intakes. According to Reuters, public water supplies to Billings and Lockwood, Mont. were reopened soon after the spill and a preventative closing of their water pipes, because officials deemed them safe.

Three days after the spill, water tests conducted in five locations on the Yellowstone River between Laurel, Mont., and Miles City, Mont., found that petroleum chemical levels had not exceeded drinking water standards.