USFS/courtesy photo
Backpackers will have to pay for overnight visits to the most popular places in the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness starting next summer under a plan eyed by the White River National Forest.
The U.S. Forest Service unveiled a proposal Thursday to implement a reservation and permit system with a fee of $12 per person per night for the Four Pass Loop, the Capitol Lake area and Geneva Lake starting next year. It would also start charging the $12 fee at Conundrum Hot Springs, which already requires a reservation and permit.
The fee would be for overnight visits only and would be in place from May 1 through Oct. 31. Permits would be required through recreation.gov, which currently charges an additional $6 processing fee. No fee is being contemplated for day trippers in the wilderness area.
James Surls, “Spot On.” Courtesy image
The internationally renowned sculptor and artist James Surls, based in the Roaring Fork Valley, will open a new exhibition in his home community.
His “Complete Fragments” opens Friday at the Art Base in Basalt. The show features 30 new drawings by the artist, who calls them “sketches of psychological being.”
The exhibition will be on view through Sept. 27.
The gallery selected the pieces from a series of 56 vignettes that Surls completed during a 20-day water fast earlier this year. Surls attended a health retreat in Santa Rosa, California, this spring, and during this rigorous health reset, rather than feeling depleted, he described feeling invigorated and found himself inspired.
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Chelsea Self / Post Independent
Rex and Jo Coffman couldn’t imagine their 141 acres of land east of Carbondale being anything but a working ranch and riverfront nature preserve. So they made sure of it.
The Coffmans, now both 90 years old, have been working with the Aspen Valley Land Trust in recent years on a plan to keep the ranch in agriculture well beyond their own years.
That vision is about to become reality Aug. 31, when the AVLT is set to close on the purchase of the property with the goal of maintaining it as a working ranch, while also serving as an outdoors, agricultural and science learning center accessible to the public.
Steve Mundinger
At the tender age of 6, Maria Tarajano-Rodman joined her parents in a life-changing move from Cuba to the United States. Many years later, she knows what it means to pack up and leave your homeland for better opportunities somewhere else.
At the age of 10, she was the neighborhood babysitter. By 14 she was cleaning offices at night, and she worked through her college years at the University of Florida, where she received a full-ride, four-year scholarship. She was an active participant in her parents’ dream of buying and owning their own home.
Five months ago and more than 50 years after setting foot in the U.S., she accepted a job in the Roaring Fork Valley leading a nonprofit devoted to supporting immigrants.