After hours of deliberation, Colorado Parks and Wildlife commissioners on Thursday night voted to limit hunters to killing two individuals per day from each of the 17 furbearer species in the state. Until now, state regulations have not imposed a limit on the number of furbearers hunters could take in a day.

The commission , which is stricter than the options presented by Colorado Parks and Wildlife staff. Agency staff members told commissioners that they did not believe a daily trapping limit — called a bag limit — was necessary because there was no evidence that trapping levels were high enough to impact the species’ population.

But after the commission asked the staff to present potential limits, CPW put forth two possible alternatives.

During the discussion, commissioners noted that it was unlikely that a bag limit would change the number of animals killed or trappers’ behavior, as most trappers take only a few animals per year.

Instead, they said, the conversation was necessary to address what some might see as a regulatory loophole that allowed unlimited trapping, while balancing the needs of trappers themselves.

“All of this comes down to values,” Commissioner Becky Niemiec said. “There is no biological reason for a high bag limit, and there is no biological reason for a low bag limit. It’s about whose values do we uphold?”

The changes to furbearer trapping come amid a broader conversation about hunting in the state, including an ongoing rulemaking process about a potential ban on the sale of fur from hunted furbearers. Wildlife advocacy groups in recent years have pursued several restrictions, including a failed attempt to ban mountain lion and bobcat hunting through a ballot initiative.

The trend has prompted that would ask voters in November to enshrine the right to hunt and fish in the state constitution and better protect those practices from further challenges.

Coloradans who spoke in opposition to bag limits at the commission’s meeting Thursday said they didn’t understand the need for a regulation they saw as needless. If the commission needed to adopt a bag limit, they urged it to select one of the options presented by CPW staff.

“I don’t know why we continue to consider very radical changes to systems and science that has worked for decades in our state,” said Reece Melton, the natural resources director for Rio Blanco County in northwest Colorado.

Commissioners at their March meeting requested that CPW staff compile information about the rules regulating how many furbearers could be hunted on a single day. The wildlife agency lists 17 species as huntable furbearers: badgers, bobcats, beavers, coyotes, gray foxes, swift foxes, red foxes, mink, muskrats, opossums, pine martens, ring-tailed cats, striped skunks, western spotted skunks, raccoons, long-tailed weasels and short-tailed weasels.

CPW staff members on said Thursday that their preferred option was a daily limit of 15 animals of each species per hunter. They also presented a stricter option, which would allow a daily bag limit of eight for some species and four for others.

Agency staff said CPW had never imposed a bag limit on furbearers because its leaders never saw it as necessary.

The number of animals hunted each year is small compared to the species’ overall populations, and CPW is not concerned about hunting impacting species’ populations, said Matt Eckert, the deputy assistant director for the agency’s Terrestrial Branch.

“Annual harvest estimates, even without a bag limit, have been low — and far below the sustainable level,” he said, noting that disease, habitat changes, weather and car collisions play a much larger role in species’ population sizes.

A 1996 change in hunting regulations that banned the use of all traps — except for live traps — greatly reduced furbearer hunters’ success, reducing the need for a limit on daily take, Eckert said.

For example, CPW estimates that at least 53,000 beavers live in Colorado. On average, hunters trap and kill about 1,300 beavers every year — far less than the 10,600 kills CPW considers the maximum limit for the species’ sustainability.

CPW tracks more precise data on bobcat trapping, since the state requires hunters to report every bobcat they kill. Between 2022 and 2024, hunters killed an average of 968 bobcats annually — far less than the 3,521 that CPW considers the upper limit of hunting. The agency estimates that more than 20,700 bobcats live in Colorado.

Most trappers kill very few animals every year — an average of two or less, according to CPW data about six species.

A few trappers, however, are killing dozens of animals every year. One hunter killed 128 beavers one year and another harvested 63 gray foxes, data shows.

Several commissioners expressed concerns about those trappers and the impacts they could have on their hunting grounds, especially as wild animals weather drought and climate change.

Commissioners on Friday heard CPW staff present on the implications of from hunted furbearers. A wildlife advocacy group, the Center for Biological Diversity, last year submitted a petition asking the commission to ban the practice.

Although CPW staff recommended denying the petition and maintaining the status quo, the commissioners in March rejected that recommendation. They are expected to decide whether to implement a ban at their September meeting.

Colorado’s world-class elk herd is in trouble! The Bureau of Land Management.

Many sportsmen understand the West Slope is the Serengeti of the West. We have more elk in Congressional District 3 than most of the elk states combined. Also, up until the oil and gas explosion drilling in 2003-2010 we had the largest mule deer population in the nation.

BLM is proposing gas and oil leases on the Roan Plateau of 126,744 acres. This is in the heart of the finest and most critical elk habitat in Colorado. The West Slope elk herd is over 250,000 animals, and this is its major range. The towns of Meeker, Maybell and Craig depend on fall hunting for important economics and recreation.

Elk range near Dinosaur National Monument is also open for oil and gas drilling.

Dinosaur National Monument, where a 156,000-acre lease sale will take place in mid-June. Included in a June 16 lease sale by the Bureau of Land Management encompass elk, pronghorn and mule deer migration corridors that extend into southern Wyoming. Many sit in Moffat County, which bills itself as the “Elk Hunting Capital of the World,” and relies on hunting in part for its economic stability.

Contact the BLM office before July 8th. No drilling on the Road!

Jerry Mallett, Salida

Philosophy and morality are a foundation of America

Re: “Philosophy exam a right of passage for teenagers,” June 21, news story.

Many thanks for headlining the article in last Sunday’s paper about the philosophy course required by all high schools in France. Philosophy literally means “love of wisdom” and involves the systematic study of basic questions about human nature, knowledge, and values, as well as the best ways to organize society. Our self-educated Founding Fathers drew heavily on their knowledge of philosophy, from the works of Plato and Aristotle up through the Enlightenment writings of Locke, Hume, Montesquieu, and Adam Smith, in creating our democratic republic and Constitution. They also repeatedly emphasized the critical importance of creating educational systems designed primarily to produce good citizens by cultivating intellectual and moral character, rather than providing a path to personal wealth.

An educated electorate, motivated by civic virtue, was considered essential to the survival of the republic, as ignorance would make people vulnerable to demagoguery and corruption. As the article states, the year-long French course requires students to think seriously about important universal issues, such as the nature of work, freedom, justice, truth, and happiness. Sadly, in this country, philosophy is often seen as an esoteric subject, with little relevance to everyday life. Most high schools and colleges provide little exposure to philosophy, and philosophy majors have represented less than half of one percent of college majors over the past 10 years.

As an increasing number of people are getting their information from social media or highly biased news commentators, what an important difference it could make if our schools were able to help us think more seriously about the important life issues addressed by philosophers and learn from the wisdom of the past! Perhaps we would all be able to better discern what really matters and engage in more informed and respectful discussions about core life issues and a democratic republic that works for everyone.

Karen Timmons, Westminster

NBA’s foul problem will haunt the Nuggets

Re: “Want Jokic to sign an extension? You’ll have to break up the core,” June 30 sports story.

I don’t claim the game of Basketball is getting more like hockey; it clearly is.

Tactical fouling seemed in the forefront this last season, using grunt defenders to viciously pester and foul where they think they can get away with it. The reffing can’t keep up. Scratching and tripping and pinpoint joint-disruption are considered ticky-tacky and unworthy of delaying the game. Hooray. All I see is Jokic throwing in the towel because it’s all so stupid and degrading. Europe calls sooner than we realize.

I wish you’d see it this way and talk about it more. In the meantime, I favor David Roddy as a defender and an in-kind response to the Lu Dorts in the league, a lot like enforcers in hockey. He may be short by NBA standards, but so was Barkley. He sure played well in the few games they let him in.

I don’t believe the Nuggets will win another title, nor do I care if they don’t. I just want to watch Jokic as a Nugget while I still can. And Murray and Gordon and Braun and my Dear Watson.

Geof Erdahl, Evergreen

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remains binding law. It guarantees Ute hunting, fishing, and gathering rights off-reservation in Colorado and reflects a negotiated commitment that has never been abrogated by Congress.

Colorado recently enacted legislation granting free access to state parks for members of two of our sister signatory Tribes, while excluding the Ute Indian Tribe — descendants of bands that occupied what is today the state of Colorado from time immemorial. Most of the mountainous regions in Colorado are our ancestral homelands.

The governor essentially signed a law last year erasing us from Colorado history. It is a national disgrace, violating those guarantees and erasing the Ute Indian Tribe’s enduring history and presence on the very lands at issue.

The statute recognizes only the Southern Ute Indian Tribe and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and provides enrolled members of those Tribes free entrance to state parks. Yet the state’s enactment and enforcement of this statute ignore the Ute Indian Tribe and its history in the state, despite the reality that most lands covered by the statute fall within our ancestral homelands. When the Tribe asked to be included, state leaders offered reassurances — and then fell silent.

The Tribe delivered a formal letter requesting inclusion, warning that the bill, as drafted, would perpetuate the erasure of the Tribe and proposing amendments, but after an initial  acknowledgment from a bill sponsor, the Tribe never received a substantive response, and the bill passed without addressing its discriminatory impact. This exposes Polis’s failure as a leader.

This erasure is indefensible in light of the Brunot Agreement¶¶Ňőap text and history. All bands of our Tribe signed the Brunot Agreement of 1874, the same as the bands that now comprise the Southern Ute Indian Tribe and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe.

Congress ratified the Brunot Agreement on April 29, 1874. The Agreement has never been abrogated by Congress, nor has Congress expressed an explicit intent to do so. Its operative guarantee is unequivocal: “The United States shall permit the Ute Indians to hunt upon said lands so long as the game lasts and the Indians are at peace with the white people”.

Those rights run with the Ute people as signatories — every band. Because the Ute Indian Tribe signed the Brunot Agreement, we retain the same Brunot rights as the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute, and the state’s contrary treatment discriminates among signatories.

Colorado itself recognizes these off-reservation Brunot rights — but selectively. The legislative declaration of acknowledges that, pursuant to the Brunot Agreement, the Southern Ute Indian Tribe and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe retain hunting, fishing, and gathering rights outside their reservations, including in areas that now encompass state parks.

The governor cannot lawfully elevate those Brunot rights for some Ute signatories while denying the same rights to others. The Agreement¶¶Ňőap legitimacy does not turn on which bands were later forced across an arbitrary state line.

This moment is inseparable from a longer history of genocide committed against my people. The Ute people are the oldest continuous residents of what is now Colorado, a fact even the recent bill acknowledges.

Yet after treaty upon treaty, removal supplanted recognition. In the wake of 19th-century treaties, federal and state actions culminated in the forcible relocation of most of Colorado’s Utes, and by June 1880, Congress required our Tribe to abandon its homelands and relocate to far smaller reservations in Utah, with removal executed at gunpoint the following year.

This was all against the backdrop of a concerted effort to drive us from our homelands. The rallying cry of the times, one perpetuated by newspapers and government agencies, was “The Utes Must Go!” Such coerced displacement did not — and could not — extinguish rights guaranteed by a still-valid agreement.

Indeed, in 1962 the Indian Claims Commission found the consideration paid under the Brunot Agreement so inadequate as to be unconscionable. The moral and legal imperative today is to honor, not erase, the rights that survived that injustice.

The stakes are legal, cultural, and spiritual. Hunting, gathering, and ceremonies connected to the Brunot lands are integral to Ute religious and cultural life, with the Ute people historically returning to familiar hunting and gathering areas year after year. To exclude the Ute Indian Tribe from access and recognition where those rights and practices endure compounds historical harm and repudiates the very text of the Agreement the State purports to respect.

Gov. Polis should correct course immediately, or he should step down as governor. Recognize the Ute Indian Tribe’s status as a Brunot signatory; acknowledge its equal off-reservation rights; and ensure state policies, including park access and resource management, respect those rights on the same footing afforded to the other Ute tribes.

At a minimum, the administration should commit to formal consultation and amend current policies to include the Ute Indian Tribe wherever Brunot rights are implicated. Anything less continues the unlawful and discriminatory distinction the state has drawn among coequal treaty signatories.

Colorado can choose to lead — from acknowledgment to action. Honoring the Brunot Agreement across all Ute signatories is not only a legal necessity; it is a long-overdue step toward justice and reconciliation on the Ute homeland.

Shaun Chapoose is the chairman of the Ute Indian Tribe Business Committee. The Ute Indian Tribe resides on the Uintah and Ouray Reservation in northeastern Utah. Three bands of Utes comprise the Ute Indian Tribe: the Whiteriver Band, the Uncompahgre Band, and the Uintah Band. The Tribe has a membership of more than 3,000 people.

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The Chaffe County Sheriff’s Office said Kaden Sites’ body was found in the wilderness near Tabaguache Creek about 1.5 miles from where his truck was left. The sheriff’s office said on a Facebook post that his body was recovered by the Chaffee County Search and Rescue, the Chaffee County Coroner’s Office and the sheriff’s office.

Site’s family was notified. The cause of his death is under investigation. The sheriff’s office said foul play is not suspected.

“Our hearts go out to the Sites family and friends this evening. Chaffee County has lost a wonderful member of our community which has left a void in our hearts,” Chaffee County Sheriff Andy Rohrich said in a statement.

He thanked everyone who joined the effort to find Sites.

Dozens of first responders searched the mountains when Sites, who went turkey hunting the afternoon of April 15, didn’t return for an appointment. His family found his truck near the Blanks Cabin Trailhead. The sheriff’s office said his phone was inside with the battery drained.

Search teams from across the state looked for Sites. People used dog teams, drones, helicopters, airplanes as well as searching the area by foot.

went hunting for turkeys on Mount Shavano at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday and had planned to return to town for an appointment at 3:45 p.m., the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office said in a post on Facebook.

When he did not show up for the appointment, his family found his truck near the Blanks Cabin Trailhead. His phone was inside with the battery drained, sheriff’s officials said.

Search teams from across the state responded to begin looking for Sites, including dog teams, drones, helicopters, airplanes and crews on foot.

There were 80 people out searching for Sites as of Saturday morning, including more drone teams and mules, the sheriff’s office said.

In a statement, Sheriff Andy Rohrich asked community members to avoid the area and not to search for Sites independently after several people went to the area Friday and slowed down search crews.

“We appreciate all the community’s support and willingness to jump in and help, but we do not want our team’s attention on anything other than finding Kaden,” Rohrich said.

Sites is described as white, 6-foot-2 and 160 pounds with light brown hair, a goatee and mustache. He was last seen wearing a green hoodie, ripped khaki pants and hiking boots. He was carrying a shotgun and binocular pack but no other equipment. He also may have put on a , or camouflage, suit.

The amount of money set aside each year to pay ranchers for impacts to their livestock from the controversial program isn’t keeping up with the size of damage claims.

Eight claims from 2025 already total more than $724,000 — and more claims are expected to be approved next month. With only about $400,000 remaining in the Wolf Depredation Compensation Fund, Colorado Parks and Wildlife will use other funding sources to compensate ranchers.

Last year’s claims, combined with those from 2024, bring the total payments made to ranchers to more than $1.3 million — outstripping the $875,000 allocated to the program so far.

Although CPW spokesman Travis Duncan says the agency has the money to pay for future claims, the continued high cost of claims has prompted fears outside the agency about the long-term solvency of the program.

“This is a voter-mandated program and it is written in (the law) that losses must be compensated,” said Erin Karney Spaur, executive vice president of the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. “You’re pretty much robbing Peter to pay Paul. What other programs are you robbing from to pay for the depredation program?”

At the same time, wildlife advocates have submitted a plan to to tighten the rules about who can be paid from the fund. The proposed changes would require the use of nonlethal mitigation measures and require a higher burden of proof that a wolf caused damage.

“It¶¶Ňőap not a slush fund,” said Ryan Sedgeley, the southern Rockies representative for the Endangered Species Coalition, one of the organizations pursuing changes to the program.

But livestock groups fear that the proposed changes, if adopted, will make it even more difficult for ranchers to be made whole from the wide range of impacts wolves can have on their operations.

“These producers are (already) not getting 100% whole or compensated for all of those losses,” Spaur said.

CPW officials dipped into other pots of money outside of the depredation fund to pay for the claims approved so far and plan to continue to do so.

“Funding for the approved, but not yet paid, claims will be determined upon payment and are currently anticipated to be split between the Wolf Depredation Compensation Fund and non-license revenue in the Wildlife Cash Fund,” Duncan wrote in an email to The Denver Post.

The imbalance in the compensation program has also caught the attention of federal officials, who in recent months have questioned the state’s wolf reintroduction effort. New leadership at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under the Trump administration took an adversarial stance on the program and stopped the release of more wolves planned for this past winter.

The federal agency on April 6 issued a request for comments on how CPW is handling the reintroduction program. The state wildlife agency is able to manage the federally protected species through an agreement with the federal agency.

— which remains open until June 5 — federal officials asked for information about the compensation program.

“Over the past few years, many wolf-livestock depredation events have been verified in Colorado and the total number of verified depredations and associated claims has vastly exceeded the funds currently available under Colorado’s existing livestock compensation scheme,” the notice states.

State law requires ‘fair compensation’

Since CPW began the reintroduction of wolves in Colorado in 2023, the canines have killed or injured 76 head of livestock and two working dogs, .

Wildlife officials released 25 wolves in the state over two winters after voters in 2020 mandated the reintroduction of the native species. After a number of deaths, the state now has 18 collared wolves, plus others without collars and an unknown number of pups across four established packs.

requires that the wildlife agency “pay fair compensation to owners of livestock for any losses of livestock caused by gray wolves.” State lawmakers in 2023 to pay for the claims and tasked the CPW Commission with creating a claims process.

While crafting the law, lawmakers worried there would be too much money left over in the Wolf Depredation Compensation Fund after all claims had been made. They created rules mandating the use of any leftover money.

But the problem has been the opposite, and CPW has instead scrounged to find other sources of money to pay the claims.

So far, CPW has paid $490,422 to producers from the compensation fund, $25,581 from the general fund, $6,315 from federal grant money, and $141,656 from wildlife cash funds not derived from hunting and fishing license sales, Duncan said.

The CPW Commission makes the final decision on all wolf depredation claims totaling more than $20,000. The volunteer commission, whose members are appointed by the governor, has drawn criticism from ranchers and wildlife advocates alike for perceived unfairness in the process.

“Part of the issue now is CPW is the judge, the jury and the executor,” said Tim Ritschard, the president of the Middle Park Stockgrowers Association.

Petition for change

A coalition of 19 wildlife organizations is pursuing a citizens’ petition to tighten the program’s rules.

The group — which includes the Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center, Roaring Fork Audubon and WildEarth Guardians — filed the petition on Feb. 6. The CPW Commission will decide whether to approve the changes, but a hearing on the petition has not yet been scheduled.

“The current wolf compensation program is so broad that it now covers claims beyond its intended purpose of reimbursing livestock owners for actual, verified wolf-caused losses,” the petition states. “This lack of clarity places stress on both ranchers and wildlife managers and could jeopardize the compensation fund’s long-term economic viability.”

The coalition is pushing for two major changes.

First, if the petition is approved, ranchers would be required to use nonlethal methods to ward off wolves from their herds after a depredation occurs. If CPW officials can prove that a rancher did not use such methods after the first depredation, his or her compensation claim should be denied, the petition states.

Under current regulations, ranchers remain eligible for compensation — though less of it — even if they do not prove they made efforts to mitigate conflict.

The second proposed change would heighten the burden of proof needed for ranchers to claim indirect losses from wolves, such as decreased calf weights and lower conception rates. The change would require ranchers to prove by a preponderance of evidence that wolves caused the negative changes and to rule out other potential causes, like weather, disease or drought.

Colorado’s wolf depredation compensation program is the broadest in the country, Sedgeley said. It is one of only four states that compensate for indirect losses.

Payments for indirect losses have made up the bulk of payments from the depredation fund. For example, one rancher’s claim paid in 2025 totaled about $387,000: $15,000 for livestock killed or injured by wolves, $178,000 for reduced calf weights, $90,000 for decreased conception rates, $100,000 for missing calves and $3,500 for missing sheep.

Those first claims set a precedent for payments that could render the program unsustainable in the long term, Sedgeley said.

“Those first claims set the standard,” he said. “And that¶¶Ňőap that there are no standards.”

Ranchers disagree.

Ranchers are having to hire lawyers — at their own expense — to navigate the claims process, Ritschard said.

Already, they have to compile data to show their herds change to seek indirect loss compensation, said Spaur, from the cattlemen’s association.

The claims process has become smoother as ranchers have learned how the system works and CPW has provided better guidance, she said.

“It’d be a real shame, as we’re going through this period, to raise the bar on compensation and raise it so high that it¶¶Ňőap almost unachievable to get compensation,” she said.

Sedgeley said the petition seeks to bring parts of the wolf compensation program in line with the , like bears, elk and mountain lions. In that process, the claimant must prove the damage was caused by the species and also has a duty to mitigate the harm experienced.

Claims approved under that program — which covers nine species — totaled $602,787 in the 2024 fiscal year, . That year, mountain lions and bears killed or injured more than 1,000 head of livestock, the report shows. Landowners are not compensated for indirect losses from those species.

“Why don’t we talk about the elk and the black bears in the same way?” Sedgeley said. “They kill so much more livestock and cause so much more damage than the wolves. It boggles my mind.”

Colorado Parks and Wildlife offers hunting licenses for 10 big game species: elk, mule deer, white-tailed deer, Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep, desert bighorn sheep, mountain goats, moose, pronghorn, black bears and mountain lions.

Hunters have until 8 p.m. Tuesday, April 7, to apply for Parks and Wildlife’s primary draw application. Corrections to submitted applications can be made until this deadline.

Colorado’s big game draw uses a preference point system to determine who gets limited licenses for hunting. Hunters can apply for up to four hunt choices per species. If a hunter doesn’t nab a license in the primary draw, they can apply in the secondary draw, with applications open starting June 18.

Last year, the Parks and Wildlife Commission rolled out new season structures for big game hunting from 2025 to 2029 and will implement a new draw system in 2028. Additionally, there are a few new big game hunting changes for 2026.

Read the full story from our partner at .

State wildlife officials started investigating in November 2024 after a hunter reported finding a buck that appeared to be poached on the base, the agency said in a news release Tuesday.

When a CPW officer arrived in the area, they found a partially processed buck that had been abandoned with “select cuts of meat removed and the antlers cut off,” state officials said.

The officer found a doe 100 yards away that was also partially processed and abandoned, and both locations showed signs of illegal poaching, CPW leaders said in a news release.

The investigating wildlife officer found evidence to identify a vehicle connected to the case and later found related pictures on social media of Army Sgt. Jacob Curtis Keyser and Staff Sgt. Juan Salcedo.

Investigators also executed search warrants that uncovered evidence of poaching and trespassing in Keyser’s vehicle and on his phone.

A third soldier, whom state officials did not name, was fined $900 for disposing of Keyser’s poached venison right before Keyser was interviewed by a state wildlife investigator.

Keyser was charged with 30 wildlife violations and was fined $19,005 and 180 suspension points, state officials said. He must also surrender his hunting rifle, which will be destroyed by Colorado Parks and Wildlife.

Salcedo was charged with 15 violations and was fined $8,817 and 65 suspension points.

People who are convicted of wildlife crimes and accumulate 20 or more suspension points over a five-year period are subject to , according to the agency.

State officials will hold a suspension hearing in the coming months to determine how long the soldiers will be barred from hunting and fishing, which could be up to a lifetime, nationwide ban through the Interstate Wildlife Violator Compact.

“Poaching is a serious, costly crime which harms legitimate sportspersons, wildlife viewers, small business owners and taxpayers,” district wildlife manager and investigating officer Demetria Wright said in a statement.

An apparent loophole in Title 33 of Colorado’s Revised Statutes makes it difficult for Colorado Parks and Wildlife to punish hunters who illegally hunt on county open spaces that are designated as “closed to hunting.”

In a recent legislative update for Pitkin County’s Board of County Commissioners, Levi Borst told commissioners that the loophole has become enough of a problem for neighboring Eagle County that they were seeking legislative changes to close the loophole.

“Apparently, they’ve got a huge problem with that, because somebody will illegally take an animal off of their open space, and they get fined by county code, and they just consider that a pay to play,” Borst told commissioners on Tuesday. “You pay the $500 fine or whatever it is, and you still keep the animal. There are no hunting license violations, and that¶¶Ňőap kind of the end of it.”

According to Eagle County’s Strategic Director of Communications Justin Patrick, there have been around eight instances per year of hunters hunting on county open spaces closed to hunting.

Read the full story from our partner at .

Saturday. Winter Park Resort’s sassy side, the Mary Jane base area, is marking its 50th anniversary this season with a celebration on Saturday, Jan. 10. It includes a kickoff party with celebratory first laps, a ski-down parade and a birthday toast with cake at The Jane’s base area. Festivities in town will include fireworks and a free concert by Big Gigantic, an EDM duo from Boulder.

The concert takes place at the outdoor Rendezvous Event Center, 78821 US Highway 40, in Winter Park. Visit for resort lift tickets and more information. — John Meyer

Josiah Hesse’s “On Fire”

Tuesday. Denver journalist and author Josiah Hesse, who’s written about topics ranging from cannabis in exercise to conservative politics, has a new book called “On Fire for God” that traces his personal history with evangelical Christianity while growing up in Mason City, Iowa. “One part ‘Educated,’ one part rebuttal to ‘Hillbilly Elegy,’ ‘On Fire for God’ explores the ways evangelical Christianity has preyed upon its followers while galvanizing them into the political force known today as the Christian right,” according to a statement.

Hesse will celebrate the incendiary tome’s Denver release with an all-ages event at the Tattered Cover Colfax from 6 to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 13, at 2526 E. Colfax Ave. in Denver. A $7.25 ticket is required and includes a signed hardcover copy of the book, or a $5 Tattered Cover gift certificate (in addition to event admission). Visit for tickets or for more details. — John Wenzel

A legend in the making

Friday-Saturday. Texas native Charley Crockett is a modern-day troubadour cut from the same cloth as Outlaw Country greats but also the poignant folk-rock of Bob Dylan and the raw Americana of Lucinda Williams. The tireless touring artist and songwriter finds his true calling on stage, typically performing more than 20 songs from his dozen-plus albums over the past decade, including “One Trick Pony” and “Alamosa.”

Crockett will headline RiNo’s Mission Ballroom on Friday, Jan. 9, and Saturday, Jan. 10. Tickets for the 16-and-up shows at 4242 Wynkoop St. in Denver are $78.84-$182.07 via . — John Wenzel

International Sportsmen’s Expo

Through Sunday. The massive International Sportsmen’s Expo returns to the Colorado Convention Center this weekend for all things hunting, fishing and traversing the land. New this year for the trade show: pontoon boats and an expanded RV section, along with the usual seminars and workshops features, a kid-friendly catch-and-release trout pond, live birds from the Raptor Education Foundation, and Stay the Trail’s RC off-road test track.

Tickets are $18 for ages 16 and up. Active military with ID and those 15 and under can get in for free. Noon-7 p.m. Friday; 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Saturday; and 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sunday. The event takes place at 700 14th St. in downtown Denver. Visit for tickets and more information. — John Wenzel