The Colorado Springs Fire Department responded to the rescue operation at 7:43 p.m. Monday after a park ranger at Garden of the Gods reported the trapped man, according to agency public information officer Ashley Franco.

Franco said the rescue team found the man about 75 feet up on a rock without climbing gear or protective equipment, which is against park regulations. Safety gear, permits and proper climbing equipment are , she said.

A posted on social media by the fire department showed crews working in the dark to rescue the man.

The rescue took just over an hour as the Colorado Springs crew set up a rope system, climbed up the rock and rappelled down to the man to harness him in and bring him to the ground, Franco said. No injuries were reported.

“We urge everyone visiting our beautiful parks to know the park rules and have the appropriate permits and equipment,” Franco said. “We encourage everyone to visit, but ask that they do so safely and know and understand all rules and regulations for recreating in our parks.”

On Dec. 31, he must vacate the beside Buffalo Bill’s Grave atop Lookout Mountain, which his family ran for 48 years. Denver Parks and Recreation has decided to shutter the 103-year-old building and leave it vacant in 2025. In doing so, the city will put an end to his family’s 68-year run as concessionaires at various Colorado tourist spots.

“It����ap going to feel horrible,” said Carle, 70. “Of the organizations I’ve worked with, I’ve liked them all, but my heart lies with Denver Mountain Parks. There are friendships I’ve had for my whole life. My first job was in Denver Parks, right here at Buffalo Bill’s. I got my second career, doing food and beverage at Red Rocks. I’ve had the best life.”

Carle also is losing his home. He has lived upstairs above the gift shop since 1993. When it closes, he plans to buy an RV and park it at Grand Lake, where his company owns three gift shops.

Carle and his family have been through this before. Denver Parks and Recreation closed the 98-year-old Echo Lake Lodge, at the base of Mount Blue Sky, in 2022 because of a septic system failure and it remains vacant. In September of 2023, Carle was notified that the Lookout Mountain operation would meet the same fate at the end of his contract with the city.

Denver’s system of mountain parks includes 4,000 acres, 22 parks and 24 conservation areas located in the foothills outside of the city limits.

“The Pahaska Teepee building is over 100 years old and has significant limitations on its structural and mechanical systems that need to be addressed to facilitate continued use and preservation,” wrote Happy Haynes, then the executive director of Denver Parks and Recreation, in the official letter notifying Carle of the city’s intentions.

“Beginning in 2025, DPR will implement an interim operations period that will include a thorough condition assessment of the historic facility, operational changes that reduce pressure on mechanical systems … and expanded programming that acknowledges and celebrates the diverse heritage associated with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and the city and county of Denver.”

Deterioration in its “operational uses”

The Buffalo Bill Museum, in an adjacent building that opened in 1979 and is staffed by city employees, will remain open. An email from The Denver Post to Haynes’ successor, Jolon Clark, was forwarded to Stephanie Figueroa, spokeswoman for Denver Parks and Recreation.

“The Pahaska Teepee has seen a lot of deterioration in its operational uses — the plumbing, septic system, things like that,” Figueroa said in an interview.

“We need full, unobstructed access into the building in order to look at all of that and see how much it can hold. It����ap been an untouched septic system pretty much since it was built,” she continued. “It����ap very old. We are working with a historic preservation architect to conduct these assessments and better understand maintenance needs, opportunities and limitations.”

Carle says the septic system seems to be working fine and has shown no signs of failing the way the one at Echo Lake did. He doesn’t understand why the building has to be vacant to evaluate it.

“This is manageable with portable (toilets),” Carle said. “It����ap crazy to think that you have to vacate these buildings to look into a sewer problem. … They just want us out.”

Carle’s nephew, Dustin Day, worked at the fudge counter when he was 8 and began washing dishes at 10. Now he’s the father of an 8-month-old son.

“He’s not going to get to have these experiences that I had growing up, working in these places,” Day said about his grand-nephew. “He’s not going to get to serve fudge here. He’s not going to be able to sell a cinnamon roll up at Echo Lake. I grew up exploring around Echo Lake. If I wasn’t working, I was walking around the lake, fishing, being a kid. It was a great upbringing. He’s not going to get to have these experiences that helped shape me. That����ap kind of tough.”

A five-generation legacy

Pahaska was a Native American name for William “Buffalo Bill” Cody, one of the most colorful figures of the Old West — and one of the most controversial these days.

A blowup of The Denver Post front page from June 3, 1917, on display at the museum, describes Cody’s burial day. “Buffalo Bill is laid at last rest,” the headline blares. “25,000 journey to Lookout Mountain top to pay final tribute at rock hewn shrine of ‘Col. W.F Cody, nation’s beloved hero.”

A sub-headline notes: “Thousands of vehicles surge over mountain road to final resting place of frontiersman on lofty peak of Rockies standing sentinel over sweeping prairies and scenes of birth of wonderful west.”

But Cody’s legacy has long been called into question by people who feel that he did more damage than good, both as a marksman credited with killing more than 4,000 bison in the late 1800s, and as a showman and actor . Local groups have said in the past that the museum on Lookout Mountain glorifies that history.

In recent months, Carle removed rubber tomahawks he was selling “to avoid any criticism and hard feelings with Denver Parks,” although he says no one from the city told him to do so. “We sanitized it, trying to think how they think. Having grown up here and being surrounded by cowboys and Indians my whole life, it just doesn’t hit me that any of our items are insensitive.”

The Carle family’s legacy as concessionaires dates back even further than Cody’s burial, however, to 1893. That’s when Carle’s great-grandparents printed souvenir newspapers with the names of visiting tourists at Mountainview on the Pikes Peak cog railway, halfway up the mountain, where there was a water station for the train.

Carle’s grandmother, Helen Stewart, sold those newspapers on the trains and later became a Western Union telegraph operator at the summit of the mountain. In the1920s, she and her husband, Orrie Stewart, took over operation of the Summit House. After he died in 1939, she managed it — a single mother with three daughters during the depression.

Business was good after World War II, and she added the old Hidden Inn at Garden of the Gods in 1948. In 1956 she picked up the Buffalo Bill concession on Lookout Mountain and the Crest House atop what is now called Mount Blue Sky (then called Mount Evans). The family added the Red Rocks Trading Post in 1963 and the Echo Lake Lodge in 1965. Red Rocks Amphitheatre was added to the company’s Trading Post lease in 1994. Carle secured its first liquor license in 1998.

The first big setback came on Labor Day in 1979 when the Crest House burned down following an explosion caused by a propane delivery man. Carle was living up there at 14,260 feet. His father and mother, who were on top of Pikes Peak at the time, saw black smoke rising from the top of then-Mount Evans and rushed to the scene. By the time they got there, the fire was out and the Crest House was a pile of rubble. No one was hurt.

“I’m 22 maybe, and my humor wasn’t good,” Carle recalled. “My dad rolls down his window and he hands me a bag of marshmallows.”

Over the years, concession contracts were not renewed for various reasons. When the septic tank system failed at Echo Lake, it was the beginning of the end there. Carle’s last day was Nov. 4, 2022. The building remains closed.

Since then, according to Figueroa, the city has made a number of repairs that include replacing a 75-year-old propane tank, installing new heating units and conducting architectural and mechanical assessments. She said the city hopes to replace the septic system next summer.

Final days on Lookout Mountain

The Pahaska gift shop is crammed with T-shirts, books, coffee mugs, key chains and Native American jewelry. There are posters of Native American chiefs and one of Gen. George Custer, who was killed in the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876.

Beginning Sunday, Dec. 15, items in the gift shop will be on sale for half price.

Thousands of Buffalo Bill visitors have signed a petition urging the city to keep the gift shop and café open, leaving comments such as “Keep it open,” “Please stay” and “Will miss greatly.”

Carle said copies of the petition have been sent to Parks and Rec officials, the mayor’s office, the city council and Gov. Jared Polis. None responded, he added.

Plenty of memories will remain, though. His grandmother put in the knotty pine paneling and wood floors. Carle shoveled snow off the roof perhaps 100 times over 30 years to keep it from collapsing.

“You feel like you belong here,” Carle said. “You feel like you’ve earned it. You know you’ve saved it, either from fire or collapse. I don’t think I could fill an 8×10 envelope with letters of complaint. I could fill a wheelbarrow from people thanking us for the little things we do. The roof’s not leaking, the building is warm, the toilets are flushing.

“You don’t need to shut this thing down to think about the future.”

Outdoor recreation advocates fear that’s precisely what is happening to the majestic 14,107-foot peak that soars above Colorado Springs, along with the surrounding Pike National Forest.

“We’re trashing America’s Mountain,” says Susan Davies, executive director of the Trails and Open Space Coalition of the Pikes Peak region.

Increasing population, untrained newcomers to outdoor recreation and blatant disregard for the natural environment are causing resource damage, advocates say, spoiling the experience for those who recreate responsibly. As a result, some are proposing that Colorado Parks and Wildlife take over management on the mountain, which currently involves multiple agencies. Discussions are only in preliminary stages, but CPW isn’t opposed to the idea.

“There are, potentially, multiple benefits,” said Frank McGee, southeast region manager for CPW. “In addition to increased or better developed recreational amenities, if we can do a better job of concentrating recreational uses, there’s also an opportunity to reduce impacts on natural resources.”

Among advocates for recreation on Pikes Peak and in the surrounding forest, there is widespread alarm that something must be done.

“Many of us have been convinced for some time that the forest is just broken,” Davies says. “It����ap so large, it����ap so loved, the population is growing so fast. We are also seeing a level of brazenness that we didn’t see before. People drive up and dump a refrigerator. People drive up and dump a stolen car. People are shooting up trees. I hear and see these things. It����ap not that they think they can do it; they know they can get away with it. They’re spoiling my forest.”

Ryan Nehl, supervisor of the Pike and San Isabel National Forest, said the level of irresponsible behavior on the mountain is alarming.

“We do a lot of clean-up on the mountain,” Nehl said. “I was just at our facility and we had over a dozen abandoned RVs that we had collected and were disposing of. It����ap a very costly, sometimes dangerous, activity when you come across things like that in the forest. Our law enforcement agents are highly professional and very good at what they do, but the scale of the problem — we could use some assistance. If the state could provide some assistance in that manner, I would be overjoyed.”

Similar behavior has occurred in popular recreation areas across Colorado in recent years, especially since the pandemic which brought out an influx of nature neophytes. But Pikes Peak has unique pressures. It is the only Colorado fourteener located on the outskirts of a metropolitan area — Colorado Springs being Colorado’s second-largest city — and one of the few that is a drive-to tourist destination. Nearly 24 million visited the area in 2022.

The summit is only 12 miles from downtown Colorado Springs, as the crow flies. Hiking to the summit — a 7,400-foot ascent via Barr Trail — or driving up via the Pikes Peak Highway are major attractions. So are the Manitou and Pikes Peak Cog Railway and the Manitou Incline. The nearby Garden of the Gods also attracts millions of people annually.

“Trash and dumping is probably one of the biggest challenges we started seeing, dumping on our public lands like never before,” said Becky Leinweber, executive director of the Pikes Peak Outdoor Recreation Alliance. “It����ap so many tons and tons of dumping of materials. In addition to that, we’re seeing a lot of conflicts between users. With more people comes more interactions, and people not enjoying the experience as much. We’ve got people hiking while other people are running, you’ve got motorized (users) on some of the multi-use trails as well.

“The experience isn’t as great as it used to be,” Leinweber added. “A lot of people end up going off-trail, or off-system trails, creating their own (trails), so we’re seeing more resource damage that way. Bathrooms, if they’re open and maintained, are getting overwhelmed. We truly don’t have enough infrastructure to support all of this use we’ve seen seeing.”

Pikes Peak and surrounding slopes are under multiple jurisdictions, which complicates the problem. Among them are the Pike National Forest, the City of Colorado Springs, Colorado Springs Utilities and others. The city manages the toll gate, the Pikes Peak Highway, the summit and pullouts along the road.

“The area that is managed by the city of Colorado Springs is not the area that is experiencing those problems, because it is managed by a toll gate,” said Britt Haley, director of the city’s department of parks, recreation and cultural services. “Obviously nobody is paying that toll and then dumping a refrigerator off the side of the highway. In the Pike and San Isabel forest, there are a lot of issues that we think additional coordination and support would be able to help manage.”

Leinweber’s group is looking hard for solutions. The Pikes Peak Outdoor Recreation Alliance is a partnership comprised of government agencies, outdoor businesses and non-profits including CPW, the forest service, Colorado Springs, El Paso County, the Outdoor Recreation Industry Office of state government, the Bureau of Land Management and the Colorado Outdoor Partnership. PPORA began working on the issues facing the region in 2017.

“Even at that time, we were seeing quite a bit of growth, and what we were hearing from our land managers was that they were seeing changes, not just the numbers of people using our public lands, but the impacts and their level of education, just people knowing how to be out there,” Leinweber said. “They were seeing a lot of irresponsible use, some user conflicts, way back then. We started leaning in on, how do we work together to tackle these issues?”

PPORA is pursuing solutions through a process it calls the Outdoor Pikes Peak Initiative, consulting stakeholders, conducting public listening sessions, surveys and outreach.

“We now have some draft strategies and action items that will be coming to the public in the next couple of months, when we have our next round of public listening sessions,” Leinweber said. “We took all the feedback we got from the public, from planning, from the alternative models, from listening to stakeholders and industry, and we broke into smaller focus groups to lean into some of these things. One model really did rise to the top as something that needed greater consideration and exploration.”

That was the example of the Arkansas Headwaters Recreation Area, a massive swath of land that extends nearly 150 miles along the Arkansas River from Leadville to Pueblo Reservor through Buena Vista, Salida, Cañon City and Florence. Most of the land belongs to the BLM or U.S. Forest Service, but CPW manages it.

Some see that as a possible model to solve the mounting problems on Pikes Peak, but they stress they are far from making decisions.

“We’re nowhere near that,” Leinweber said. “It has been, ‘Hah, this is an interesting thought; what would that look like in our area?’ What considerations would we need to think about to holistically manage that, similar to Arkansas Headwaters Recreation Area, where the user experience is consistent across the landscape? How can (CPW’s) involvement support our other land managers? How can what they do add resources to our other land managers that they can’t tap into right now?”

The Arkansas Headwaters is not an “equitable comparison,” Nehl said.

“We’ve got some differences of scale,” Nehl said. “The Arkansas Headwaters is a narrow band along the river corridor. We’re talking on a scale of over 200,000 acres for the Pikes Peak massif.”

Furthermore, Nehl said, to enter into an agreement with another agency to manage recreation on forest land would require revisions to the official forest plan, likely involving a lengthy process that includes an environmental impact study and public engagement.

“We manage on behalf of the American people, not just a localized area,” Nehl said. “We certainly take into account local interests and work with local partners. But a change of this scale would best be done through a forest plan revision process. That’s the guiding document we use for making substantive changes on the landscape.”

Native American voices need to be involved, Nehl added.

“There is a significant amount of tribal interest in that mountain,” Nehl said. “It is a sacred site, and we need to have those tribal voices in the room when we are having these discussions.”

The process already has been long, and much is left to do, but there is urgency among those trying to save Pikes Peak.

“Whatever solution we end up with, we need to move forward, and we need to move forward fast,” Leinweber said. “The problems are only growing, and the growth of people coming is not going to change. Planning for that is the smart way to go.”

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, The Adventurist, to get outdoors news sent straight to your inbox.

Theatrical shows, including the opening night of “Shrek the Musical,” which is running in Denver through Sunday, and the opening night of a film festival have also been affected.

Denver arts, culture and museum snow closures for Thursday, March 14

• Denver Art Museum, 100 W. 14th Ave., Denver
• Denver Botanic Gardens, both York Street and Chatfield Farms
• Denver Museum of Nature & Science, 2001 Colorado Blvd., Denver
• Denver Zoo, 2300 Steele St., Denver
• Swallow Hill Music, all programming, 71 E. Yale Ave., Denver
• All city of Denver public libraries and recreation centers
• Garden of the Gods Visitor and Nature Center, Colorado Springs
• Rocky Mountain National Park. Major portions are closed, including the Beaver Meadows and Fall River visitor centers, Trail Ridge Road, Bear Lake Road and Wild Basin Road.

Denver concerts, festival postponements/cancellations for Thursday, March 14

• • All shows from Denver Center for the Performing Arts, at the Denver Performing Arts Complex, have been cancelled ( for updates, refund options)
  • Opening night of Colorado Dragon Boat Film Festival, Sie FilmCenter, postponed to Sunday, March 17
  • Cirque du Soleil’s “Crystal” at Ball Arena has been cancelled
  • Jessica Kirson at the Paramount Theatre, postponed until Aug. 22, 2024

This story will be updated. Have a closure to report? Email us!��

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, In The Know, to get entertainment news sent straight to your inbox.

Denton County Sheriff’s Office deputies arrested Rendon Dietzmann, 32, who also goes by Gixxer Brah on YouTube, at a residence in Justin, Texas, north of Dallas on a warrant out of El Paso County, Colorado, Denton County Sheriff’s spokesperson Captain Orlando Hinojosa confirmed to the Denver Post.

show Dietzmann was arrested on an assault charge.

Hinojosa said he did not know the details surrounding Dietzmann’s arrest and directed any questions to the agency that obtained the arrest warrant.

Dietzmann was wanted by the Colorado State Patrol on suspicion of reckless endangerment, reckless driving, menacing and other charges and is charged in El Paso County Court after a since-deleted YouTube video from September showed him going over 150 mph on I-25 at Garden of the Gods Road, squeezing through small gaps between vehicles and weaving between lanes and the highway shoulder.

A spokesperson for the Colorado State Patrol said they were looking into the arrest but could not immediately confirm the arrest originated from their agency’s warrant.

The El Paso County Sheriff’s Office would handle any extradition of Dietzmann, spokesperson Sgt. Marc Miller said explaining why El Paso County was listed in the arrest record, but they were not the agency who issued the arrest warrant.

Online Colorado court records confirm Dietzmann was detained Wednesday on a warrant connected to the speeding charges.

Dietzmann posts YouTube videos under the username Gixxer Brah of himself driving various motorcycles at high speeds on highways across the U.S., frequently speeding through small gaps in traffic, between lanes and on shoulders, according to the Colorado State Patrol.

Dietzmann was identified through an investigation coordinated with the Dallas Police Department and El Paso County District Attorney’s Office. An arrest warrant was issued Dec. 5, according to court records. The Colorado State Patrol sent out a news release about the case on Jan. 24.

Sign up to get crime news sent straight to your inbox each day.

“This year the yuccas flowered like I really have never seen them,” said Alex Crochet, horticulturist for the city of Colorado Springs. “Now the cactus are following suit. It����ap very evident that this rain was really great for these plants to get them started. Now, down here, we have had 90-degree days back to back, and that heat is just making these really hot-loving plants bloom like crazy.”

One of the places where this is unfolding spectacularly is the in Colorado Springs.

“The Garden of the Gods is especially rich in flowering shrubs and flowering cacti,” Crochet said. “You’ll find the same type of opuntia (prickly pear cactus) have 10 different variations in color, ranging from sunset orange to a buttery yellow to pink. It’s really cool to see all of these different flowers en masse. You’ll see a lot of really good cacti there.”

Also notable is the blooming cholla cactus, which proliferates south of Colorado Springs in Pueblo County. Maggie Gaddis, executive director of the Colorado Native Plant Society, found them in all their glory on a recent trip to the Tunnel Drive trail near Cañon City.

“The cholla are roughly four to five feet tall, and each specimen has at least 200 blooms,” Gaddis said. “They are these magenta flowers, and it’s super gorgeous.”

Evidently the local bee population is enjoying the exceptional cacti bloom, too.

“I see the majority of pollinators in those cacti flowers,” Crochet said. “There’s something about all those little stamens in those flowers, the nectar must be just so great to our native bees, but I am seeing tons of pollinators.”

Gaddis recently went on a bike ride from Golden to Morrison and was stunned by what she saw along the way.

“There were just endless penstemons and blue flax,” Gaddis said. “I recall there being very robust hairy golden aster, which is a yellow flower. That����ap usually a plant that����ap triggered by the monsoon (in midsummer), and the spring-fed blooms are still happening. It����ap very weird that we have our asters and our goldenrods and our rabbitbrush starting to bud at the same time as our spring ephemerals. I was just blown away. It was really a sea of purple. Both the blue flax and the penstemons are purple, and the hairy golden aster is yellow.”

Crochet is predicting an “incredible” season for sunflowers across Colorado.

“I am seeing three- to four-foot sunflowers everywhere, and they’re not blooming yet,” Crochet said. “The sunflowers this year may rival the best years I can ever think of, as far as blooms are concerned.”

While much of the alpine vegetation zone remains under snow, wildflower blooms are going off in the montane zone which is situated at 8,000 feet to 10,000 feet in elevation. The Betty Ford Alpine Gardens in Vail, at 8,200 feet, seems to be at its peak.

“We’re having an absolutely fantastic bloom,” said education director Nanette Kuich. “Everything is blooming, and everything seems to be very compressed because we had such a cool, rainy spring. Generally, the flowers spread themselves out more over the season, but because of the cool spring, everything is just abundant and blooming very close together. It����ap unbelievable right now.”

Based on a recent report from Emily Griffoul, a colleague who is a conservation scientist for the Betty Ford gardens, Kuich said any place that isn’t still under snow is blooming.

“She’s seen more abundant flowers in some species than she’s ever seen,” Kuich said. “I think it is the perfect time to go hiking.”

Crochet highlighted the importance of staying on existing trails while going on wildflower hikes.

“With the volume of flowers we have, it really tempts people to go off trail and stomp around,” Crochet said. “A lot of these plants that we have are really tiny. Some of these ball cactus start out at the size of an eraser on a pencil. So as tempting as it may be to go off trail a little bit to look at the flowers, it would be really important to encourage people to stay on trail, and respect the flowers that are blooming, so we don’t crush them. And, to not pull flowers off of things, because our pollinators are relying on that.”

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, The Adventurist, to get outdoors news sent straight to your inbox.

We’re sharing six of our favorite horse riding adventures in Colorado, from afternoon trail rides to multi-day pack trips that culminate with stories around a campfire.

Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve

Unless you have a horse of your own, being a guest of Zapata Ranch may be your only ticket to ride in Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve — and it����ap an experience like no other. As you make your way into the park, you’re greeted by the towering sand dunes that have intrigued everyone from astronauts orbiting Earth to sandboarders looking for something to shred after the snow melts.

“As you ride, you’ll feel the sand shifting beneath your horse’s hooves, and you’ll be completely immersed in the beauty and serenity of the natural landscape around you,” ranch manager Kate Matheson says.

During the ride you’ll be accompanied by an experienced guide who can dish out facts about the landscape, ecology and wildlife in the national park. Double occupancy rates at Zapata Ranch start at $325 per night.

Rocky Mountain National Park

Rocky Mountain National Park is not just Colorado’s most popular park; it was also the fourth-most-visited national park in the country in 2022, drawing more than 4.3 million people. Break away from the crowds by exploring the Grand County side of the park and booking a one-hour ($75) or two-hour ($115) trail ride with Winding River Resort.

The beginner-friendly rides deliver postcard-perfect park views – colorful wildflowers, gentle streams, thick evergreens, snow-capped peaks. The resort also offers pony rides for pint-sized equestrians.

After the trail ride, downtown Grand Lake offers all kinds of “mountain town in the summer” classics — fudge shops, miniature golf and a boardwalk along the shores of Colorado’s deepest natural lake. 

Garden of the Gods Park

From rock formations that resemble a pair of kissing camels to Balanced Rock, which looks like Mother Nature’s precarious rendition of Jenga, and earthy-orange serrated sandstone fins that slice into the sky, there’s much to marvel at while exploring this city park in Colorado Springs.

Take it all in on horseback while also learning about the park’s history and wildlife during a wrangler-led ride with Academy Stables. A fun fact: The rock formations were shaped 230 million years ago, long before horses made it to North America. Rides cost $95 for an hour and $155 for two hours.

Brown’s Creek Falls

Mt. Princeton Hot Springs Stables offers several excursions on horseback, including a sunset ride and an adventure ride that meanders through piñon pines and a canyon before ascending to a mesa. But the most popular option is the six-hour Waterfall Trail Ride that delivers you to a cascading waterfall in the San Isabel National Forest. You’ll probably spot wildflowers, too, and riders have a chance to get off their horses for a short hike. The Waterfall Trail Ride costs $185.

C Lazy U in Granby

Horses are at the heart of this all-inclusive luxury ranch in Grand County, something guests are reminded of should they wake at dawn to witness the thunderous herd of 200 horses triumphantly returning from their overnight at pasture. The beloved tradition is known as the “jingle.”

C Lazy U guests can embark on daily trail rides and brush up on their horsemanship with instruction sessions led by accomplished equestrians. Back at the ranch, slink into a therapeutic copper tub at the spa for a Cowboy Soak to relieve sore muscles. Many guests return to the ranch each summer to reunite with horses they’ve ridden and bonded with in previous years. Summer cabin rates start at $693 per night, per person.

Multi-day trip from Mancos

Looking for a longer adventure imbued with cowboy culture? Rimrock Outfitters, which is located in Mancos between Durango and Mesa Verde National Park, offers multi-day trips.

The Mountain Trip can be as short as an overnight ($350 per person) or as long as three nights ($1,200), and take you through wildflower fields, past Golconda, an abandoned mining town, and traversing the switchbacks of Box Canyon Trail. The outfitter provides tents and cots as well as campfire meals, like steaks grilled over a bed of coals and fruit cobblers best enjoyed with cowboy songs.

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, In The Know, to get entertainment news sent straight to your inbox.

Colorado Springs police on Friday confirmed they’re investigating the latest vandalism which, on April 27, targeted two new etched rock entryway signs.

“This time they really carved in deep, adding pockmarks ….. It is frustrating. We see this routinely, not just in vandalism but in comments on social media,” said Bret Tennis, administrator of this 1,338-acre park for 17 years. “Some people just have a problem with the ‘s.’ Their shared thought is that there is only one god and that it is blasphemous to use the ‘s’ ”

A 1909 charter that gave the Garden of the Gods to the city for public use specified that it always must be named the Garden of the Gods. Heavily promoted by state and local tourism officials, the park now receives more than 4 million visitors a year, many of them driving through in cars except on four days a year designated to be “motorless.” This has led to traffic jams, air pollution and noise that hurts wildlife, which in relatively quiet times includes owls and bighorn sheep.

No suspects have been identified, Colorado Springs police spokesman Robert Tornabene said Friday. One of the rocks signs defaced in April had just been installed following road work at the main entrance to the park by a Visitor and Nature Center.

Replacing damaged signs drains funds that otherwise might be devoted to efforts to minimize impacts, officials said, such as experimenting with electric shuttle buses and other possibilities for reducing traffic and noise.

City officials on Friday appealed to the public for help identifying vandals.

“People from all over the world come to Garden of the Gods and want to take their photo by the famous sandstone entrance sign, a signature feature of this internationally acclaimed park,” city cultural services manager Matt Mayberry said. “Our parks department works hard to preserve our natural and cultural resources for everyone to enjoy. We are disappointed and disheartened by the vandalism.”

Anybody with information is asked to contact the police investigators at 719-444-7000.

Sign up to get crime news sent straight to your inbox each day.

Saturday. Join more than 300 other foodies and wine lovers at the 2nd annual Big Stir Festival, where thirty-plus tasting tables will offer samples from culinary industry folks who are members of the Colorado chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier (as well as the award winners). In addition to sampling there will be educational seminars on subjects like cheesemaking 101, women winemakers and organic spirits, as well as readings and signings with authors.

The Big Stir honors “women making an impact in Colorado’s food, beverage and hospitality industries by championing philanthropy, diversity, sustainability and education,” according to festival organizers. Proceeds go toward supporting more women in the industry. The April 29 event runs from 2 to 5 p.m. at the Tivoli Center Turnhalle Room on the Auraria Campus in Denver. Tickets, $65, are available at eventbrite.com. More information at . — Jonathan Shikes

People Power

Saturday. Motorless Mornings, a blissful program at Garden of the Gods Visitor & Nature Center, returns for the season today from 5 a.m. to noon. The once-a-month special event closes the park to motor vehicle traffic so that people can enjoy its beauty in other ways. “Without cars, the park’s winding roadways beckon to cyclists and joggers, skaters and dog walkers, offering the chance for a wide variety of user groups to join together, slow down and enjoy,” parks officials say.

Visitors can park their vehicles at the visitor center, 1805 30th St. in Colorado Springs, or the Garden of the Gods Trading Post, 324 Beckers Lane in Manitou Springs, or the overflow parking lot at Rock Ledge Ranch Historic Site, at 30th Street and Gateway Road. There will be designated slow zones and one-way traffic during Motorless Mornings. Park entrance is free. — Jonathan Shikes

Get a handle on it

Saturday-Sunday. A unique opportunity for Front Range cyclists will take place this weekend when The Pro’s Closet, a Boulder County bike refurbishment company, hosts a new event called the Great Spring Breakaway at its brand new headquarters and warehouse.

The Pro’s Closet is North America’s largest retailer of certified pre-owned bikes. TPC buys, refurbishes and resells high-end bikes online at a massive facility in Louisville. The plant also includes a retail outlet and a vintage bicycle museum.

The Great Spring Breakaway will include seasonal product sales, a vendor expo, product demos, free bike washes, food trucks and factory tours. TPC typically refurbishes 50 to 150 bikes a day. The festival runs Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the factory in an industrial park at 1900 Taylor Avenue in Louisville. More information at . — John Meyer

Celebrating Dia del Niño

Sunday.���ճ����Dia del Niño celebrations at Front Range museums culminate on Sunday, April 30, to mark the return of the Mexican holiday. The Mexican Culture Center has again paired with the area’s biggest institutions to offer free admission and multilingual crafts, dancing, music, food and more for all kids.

Highlights on Sunday include the colorful performances at Denver Art Museum, with ballet, mariachi music and Indigenous dance (denverartmuseum.org), that are within walking distance of more activities at History Colorado Center, Clyfford Still Museum, Denver Public Library and The Center for Colorado Women’s History at the Byers-Evans House Museum. But there’s also bilingual fun at Denver Museum of Nature & Science and the Denver Zoo. And Denver Botanic Gardens. (It just keeps going). Check out times, locations and lineups at . — John Wenzel

The tragedy, and absurdity, of cancer

Sunday. Journalist, critic and author Juliet Wittman‘s new novel, “Again and Again,” was inspired by her experience with breast cancer, during which she was “annoyed by the ubiquitous pink ribbons and the Hallmark Card sentimentality” in media depictions. Most people with cancer she encountered were “scared, eccentric, often angry and just as often doubled up with laughter.

“Wittman, a longtime Westword theater critic and Colorado Book Award-winner, will read from the novel at The Tattered Cover Colfax on Monday, May 1, and Boulder Bookstore on Tuesday, May 2, and sign copies afterward. Boulder Bookstore tickets are $5; the Tattered Cover Colfax is free. tatteredcover.com or boulderbookstore.net — John Wenzel

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, In The Know, to get entertainment news sent straight to your inbox.

Worse is Denver did it: without advance notice, after Carle spent $300,000 for the upcoming season, and absent plans for 2023. After all, in five months in 2019, Carle’s concession generated $1.5 million, providing $120,000 for Denver. Now the Lodge, built in 1926, used in WWII for high-altitude military training, and anchor to Denver’s 616-acre Echo Lake Mountain Park, awaits an uncertain future without Carle.

The Carle family’s contribution to Front Range recreation is legendary, dating back over 130 years to when his great-grandparents started the business — today known as HW Stewart, Inc. — with a souvenir newspaper on Pikes Peak.  His grandmother became a Western Union Telegraph operator there where she met Carle’s grandfather doing photography; it was his mother who created their high-altitude donut recipe.

With his sister, the late Barb Day, Carle worked family concessions since childhood and lived atop Pikes Peak and Mount Evans and at Garden of the Gods, Red Rocks, Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave, Estes Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, and restaurants and shops in Grand Lake.  Barb Day and her cousins ​​made grandmother’s donuts atop Pikes Peak and Mount Evans for 30 years, and then for another 40 years, she made Echo Lake Lodge pies, part of Colorado’s tourist food lore.

Denver’s decision evokes one over 30 years ago by the U.S. Forest Service on Carle’s concession atop Mount Evans, reached via Colorado Highway 5 (the Mount Evans Scenic Byway), the highest paved road (14,140 feet) in North America, which was completed in 1930.

In the late 1930s, Colorado civic leaders advocated a visitors’ facility atop Mount Evans; construction began in 1940.  The “Crest House,” which famed Colorado architect Edwin A. Francis, inspired by “the moon, stars and heavens,” thought his best work, was completed in 1941 of native boulders and stone and deemed eligible for historic landmark status.

For nearly four decades, it served millions of tourists, its employees assisted hundreds of lost, stranded, injured, or ailing visitors to a summit where the atmospheric pressure is 60% that of sea-level. It was a vital communications center for the Alpine Rescue Team (ART), during which Crest House employees provided first aid to trauma victims.

In 1979, however, a propane fire destroyed the Crest House, then owned by the Forest Service.  Although the agency received over $500,000 in a settlement, it refused to rebuild.

I represented Carle and Clear Creek County in suing the Forest Service to demand it obey federal law and restore the Crest House. Idaho Springs, thousands of visitors, and the ART agreed.  ART’s plea was especially compelling, given its use of the Crest House to save lives.

Remarkably, federal lawyers told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Denver, “[T]here is no requirement or obligation for the Forest Service to ensure the presence of people on a relatively continuous basis at the summit of Mt. Evans for safety related purposes.”  Unfortunately, the Tenth Circuit agreed, which explains the boulder pile that greets visitors today.

Likewise, Denver, with its decision, ignored the life-saving support Carle, his late sister, and team provided ART, which given their 24-hour presence on Mount Evans, included round-the-clock availability, advising novice hikers of less-dangerous trails, driving to the summit to aid those with medical or car problems, and serving prolonged rescue operations.

Just as the Forest Service ignored Carle’s well-informed — his family has been serving tourists longer than any federal agency — pleas decades ago, so too did Denver last December when it said it wanted to go “a different direction.”

If the last 57 years is any indication, that direction is away from serving the recreational needs of Coloradoans and out-of-staters, despite assertions by federal and state officials that tourism is our future.

William Perry Pendley, a public-interest attorney for three decades, served in the administrations of presidents Reagan and Trump. 

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.