Author: R. Scott Rappold
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Free entry to national parks Sept. 28
National parks and monuments around the country will waive entry fees Saturday in celebration of National Public Lands Day. At Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, rangers will lead a 1-mile walk, delving into the area’s natural and cultural history, at 11 a.m.. Rangers will give talks at the outdoor amphitheater at 1:30 and 4 p.m.,…
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Storms took heavy toll on Springs parks, trails
The sun was back out in Colorado Springs Tuesday , but many parks and trails remained closed to hikers with cabin fever from a week of wet weather. North Cheyenne Canon, one of the city’s most-beloved parks, is closed indefinitely, because two sections of road the size of football fields caved in when Cheyenne Creek…
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Uncover the secrets of Mesa Verde
MESA VERDE NATIONAL PARK- We’ve hiked down a steep trail, climbed up a ladder with dizzying exposure and squeezed through an 18-inch crevasse to reach this place known as Balcony House. Here, more than 900 years ago, a people who had been dwelling on the top of the mesa for centuries began to build homes…
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Where mountain-biking and backpacking meet
For mountain biker Kevin League, getting out and enjoying Colorado had long been about one thing: speed. Until one day it wasn’t. Maybe it was becoming a new father. Maybe it was the introspection that comes with riding hard and fast toward a 40th birthday. He found himself less concerned about blazing through the mountains…
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COLORADO TO DO LIST: Elk hikes, Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument
R. Scott Rappold’s pick Elk hikes, Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument In late summer and early autumn, the hills come alive with the eerie bugling of the male elk jostling for harems. One of the best places in the region to witness the spectacle is Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, where rangers lead hikes in…
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Deadly flooding strikes up, down Front Range
President Barack Obama on Thursday approved federal disaster assistance for El Paso, Boulder and Larimer counties, where flooding killed three people – including a man in Colorado Springs – and wrought devastation up and down the Front Range. While some northern Colorado communities continued to be ravaged by high water Thursday night, the region was…
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Big hopes for trail projects along Fountain, Monument creeks
It’s a familiar experience for unwitting cyclists in Colorado Springs. Riding along the Shooks Run Trail, a paved path just east of downtown, can seem like a great way to link up with the Pikes Peak Greenway for a long loop around the city center. Instead, you’re spilled out into a weed-choked, junk-strewn lot and…
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Seeing Colorado’s fall colors at their peak not an exact science
It’s a question Sky Stephens gets a lot this time a year. “When are the aspens going to peak?” “I tell people, ‘I have to reach for my magic eight-ball,’” said Stephens, a scientist with the Colorado State Forest Service. “It usually likes to say something like, ‘Answer unclear.’” That’s how tough it is, even…
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A 700-mile free beer run
We drove 350 miles across southern Colorado, over two mountain passes, through the vast San Luis Valley and into Durango to find my favorite kind of beer. Free beer. Actually, we were on a vacation in the San Juan Mountains, Colorado’s largest range, where every little valley town seems to have a great brewery. That’s…
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Elk bugling is the soundtrack of autumn
The mercury might still be in the 80s here in town, but autumn is on the way, and that means the hills will soon be alive with the eerie bugling of the male elk jostling for harems, also known as “the rut.” In Rocky Mountain National Park, visitors line highways by the thousands to experience…