We start early, as the eastern sun kisses the top of the Flatirons. The air is cool, but the crystalline Colorado sky hints at the heat to come. The valleys are still lush despite the summer. The spring rains lingered late this year, and the trail is still moist. We know we’ll see wildlife on our hike, but we’re not getting an early start in hopes of finding Bambi. Today we’re hunting wildflowers, and Boulder’s grand traverse, the Mesa Trail, promises to serve up a bounty.]]> Before setting off in August 2011 to float for 31 days down the longest undammed river in the lower 48, filmmaker Hunter Weeks had spent just a little time rafting the Arkansas. It had been 10 years since he’d caught a fish.]]> Yoga as play is something Hall takes seriously. Which seems all the more incongruous in that he%uFFFDs teaching it in one of the United States%uFFFD oldest and most respected Ashtanga studios, the Yoga Workshop founded in Boulder by master teacher Richard Freeman in 1987.]]> One of the great mysteries of Colorado skiing is how a ski area that racked up more snow than anywhere else in the state, was an hour and 15 minutes from downtown Denver and which had some of the steepest terrain in the country managed to go out of business.]]> It's a surface that has played a substantial role in her life. She spent a good chunk of her childhood laboring on the family's apple farm in Plymouth, Mich. When she wasn't mowing fields, picking apples or pruning her share of the orchard's 15,000 trees, odds were good she was turning laps on an old dirt bike.]]> Late last year a proposal to tie together Solitude and The Canyons ski resorts raised a fairly huge dustup in the normally quietly pro-business politics of Utah. When most of Utah’s congressional delegation began their push in Washington to bypass state and federal impact studies, as well as local input, local politicians in Salt Lake City and County pushed back hard, not least because Big and Little Cottonwood canyon waters are all that prevent the most populated portion of the state from returning to a desiccated husk.]]> The Girls’ Wilderness Program believes in using time in the woods to help girls develop confidence and build interpersonal and personal skills.]]> Maybe you know AscenDance from the television show America’s Got Talent. Or maybe from their 2009 appearance at Boulder’s Aerial Dance Festival. Or maybe you’re getting to know them as a new neighbor on Arapahoe Avenue. The AscenDance Project moves an art form into a sports arena by blending dance and climbing — the dancers cling to holds on a climbing wall while executing their choreography. And its founder and artistic director, Isabel Von Rittberg, has officially moved to Boulder, bringing the AscenDance company to a new studio here.]]> Ramping up for a live stage tour in May, the star of Discovery Channel’s “Man vs. Wild” sat down with BACKPACKER's Anthony Cerretani to discuss what it takes to design durable gear, his favorite luxury item and the survival advice he gives his kids.]]> After communications with a camp on the North Side of Everest, Alan Arnette has upped the fatalities for the 2012 season to 11. The climbing blogger recently conducted a phone interview with Jamie McGuinness of Project Himalaya. The details of the two confirmed deaths, and one presumed death, are listed below.]]> It's a cold, misty morning in western Colorado. The hypnotic silence, embellished by waves of rolling icefog, is broken by the grinding growl of the customized dog transport vehicle emerging through the haze.]]> Today our expedition took a new turn. Poor conditions on the West Ridge—in particular the Hornbein Couloir—have made that climbing route unsafe. The West Ridge leg of the climb has been officially called off.]]> Moguls are a sneaky lot. When bumps are soft and troughs are clean, they turn mere mortals into undulating gods (thus the term “hero bumps”). But when the light is flat and the mounds are diamondhard lumps of ice, moguls become the harbingers of faceplants and the first step in funding your reconstructive knee surgeon’s vacation to Acapulco. It turns out they have another trick up their snowy sleeves: they like to move uphill.]]> What defines a flow trail? Let’s think back to the halcyon days of a kid’s summer, dripping popsicles, scabbed knees and all. Remember the big hill in your neighborhood where the local tough guys and girls built milk-crate jumps and effortlessly aired in banana-seat high style?]]> Europe's first backcountry huts were ugly, practical things, hastily made by shepherds who sought shelter from harsh mountain storms. With the onset of winter, the flocks would be brought to lower elevations and the mountain shelters would be all but forgotten for the season.]]> In an apparent case of first impression nationwide, Mountain Creek Resort, Inc. has sued its insurance carrier, Everest Indemnity Insurance Company, in an attempt to force the insurer to pay a claim under a weather insurance policy underwritten by the company. Although this lawsuit appears to be the first of its kind anywhere in the United States, the lack of case law is hardly surprising given the way in which weather insurance policies for ski resorts are drafted. In essence, weather insurance is business interruption insurance with a twist. It is designed to protect a ski resort against weather so bad that it would almost certainly prevent the resort from opening in time for the Christmas holiday. Unfortunately for skiers across the country, that was exactly the type of unprecedentedly warm “winter” weather that hit much of the country last December.]]> Earlier this month we drove our vintage Airstream to Marfa, Texas, for its maiden voyage. We knew zilch about driving or camping with a travel trailer before we left, so it was trial-by-fire from the get-go. Despite a few train wrecks along the way, we survived and learned some things for next time—a good thing, because now that we know how much fun Airstream camping can be, there will most definitely be a next time (Chaco Canyon, Crested Butte!).]]> The plunge from 71,581 feet was a success. Next up: 120,000 feet.]]>