Columns

There’s such a thing as trail etiquette

The uppermost switchback on the Bright Angel Trail in Grand Canyon National Park is eight feet wide. Yet the last…

Bright Angel Trail, NPS/Ty Karlovetz

Too many tourists follow a leader

A spectacular picture recently appeared on social media of a young lady in Arizona. She was poised on the edge…

spencer backman, via unsplash

Boondoggle on the Colorado River

You’d think the Earth shook recently when the three states of California, Arizona and Nevada announced they’d reached a deal…

Glen Canyon Dam, Courtesy Bureau of Reclamation

Atmospheric rivers endanger the West

Moab, Utah, gets just eight inches of rain per year, yet rainwater flooded John Weisheit’s basement last summer. Extremes are…

Glen Canyon Dam under construction 1960-63, courtesy USBR

Business as usual for the Colorado River

It seemed inevitable that the dwindling Colorado River would be divvied up by the federal Bureau of Reclamation. On June…

Winterhaven, CA, Imperial Dam, where 90% of the Colorado River is desilted and sent to numerous irrigation districts in CA and AZ. Courtesy of Bureau of Reclamation

Never hike without this perfect accompaniment

I have long been known to have pet peeves about the debris hikers drop along trails, but one piece of…

Buster babes with a bandana collar

How do you you-know-what in the woods

Poop talk makes everybody fidget and giggle uncomfortably. We like our poop to disappear. We want shiny white porcelain toilets…

Don’t blame the Upper Basin states

But the Bureau of Reclamation has regularly and faithfully released to the Lower Basin, from Powell Reservoir, the Colorado River Compact and Mexican Treaty allotments –- 8.23 million acre-feet only dropping a little below those allotments half a dozen times since Powell began to fill in the 1960s.

Bryan Egner US Dept. of energy Glen Canyon Dam 2018

A community of river guides copes with loss

The Grand Canyon boating community — devoted to each other and to the Colorado River — was shocked to learn…

Let’s redefine those bucket lists

What did we learn this summer and fall? We learned that people who’d been cooped up, thanks to COVID-19, flocked…

Hands off the rocks

Hikers are flooding our public lands, so I ask the question: Why can’t people just leave the poor rocks alone?…

You can explore the West and escape the crowds

Here’s the dilemma: You want to explore the West’s huge treasure of public land, but you don’t want to be…

Lake Serene Washington, Photo by Jamie Coupaud, courtesy of Unsplash