❄️ Aspen is snow farming

Good morning, Stoke Crew. I've officially lost count of how many times I've said "we should do that this weekend" this week. It's only Wednesday. Let's get into it! Here is the news to keep you STOKED, Yeeewww, Cheers, and Love - Tyler

In today's report

• ⛰️ New trail up Pikes Peak
• ❄️ Aspen is snow farming
• 🚵 Red Bull Rampage wants to change locations
• 🦬 Yellowstone's bison plan is stuck in court

Local Stokelight

🥾 Pikes Peak & Aspen

⛰️ A new route up Pikes Peak is slowly taking shape, one rock at a time. Crews with a Colorado Springs trail nonprofit are back on the backside of the peak this summer, chipping away at a reroute of the Devils Playground Trail they broke ground on in 2019. The plan swaps a badly eroded stretch for a more durable line, and this dry year is making the job harder.

• The full reroute runs about 4 miles, trending south of the blown-out hillside before it ties back into the old trail below the Pikes Peak Highway. Roughly 3 miles are already in the ground, built by hand with timber steps and rock walls, no machinery.
• The dry winter dried up the water source at the crew's high camp, so they're now sleeping near the trailhead and hiking about 2 ½ miles each way to the worksite every day.
• It's not the only fourteener seeing dirt work. The Colorado Fourteeners Initiative expects to finish a 3-mile rebuild on Mount Shavano this summer, and crews are back on the Decalibron loop on Mount Democrat after a land buy opened old mining claims to the public.

Why It Matters: 14ers take a beating. A million boots a year on a fall-line trail is how you get four-foot ruts and dead alpine tundra that takes decades to grow back. This is the unglamorous work that keeps our most-loved peaks from loving themselves to death, and almost none of it happens without volunteers. So, thank you volunteers and non profits that help with all of this!

❄️ Aspen is banking snow for next winter like a squirrel hoarding acorns. After one of its leanest winters that forced Buttermilk to close early, the resort has become the first in Colorado to try Snow Secure, a Finnish system that keeps piles of snow alive through summer under thick insulated blankets. The goal: guarantee terrain-park coverage, no matter what early season conditions do.

• The covered piles hold roughly 3.5 million gallons of snow-water equivalent, mostly machine-made from last winter. Officials hope to keep about 80% of it into fall.
• The pitch is water and energy. Colorado ski areas burn through roughly 1.2 billion gallons a year making snow; storing some now means blowing less in the fall, when narrow cold windows already make early snowmaking a gamble.
• Aspen isn't alone. Sun Peaks in B.C. stored a mound last year, kept about 80%, opened its race venue on time, and tripled its stored snow this spring.

Why It Matters: Water is the real story. Snowmaking is one of the thirstiest things a resort does, and every acre-foot saved is one less fight in an over-allocated basin. If storing snow means blowing less of it, that's a rare win where skiing and the river both come out ahead.

Mountain Briefing

🏜️ Home turf, fast bikes, new blood

🚵 Red Bull Rampage wants to go home. For its 25th anniversary, event organizer H5 Events has filed a permit application with the BLM to run the freeride contest back on the raw desert ground near Virgin, Utah, where the whole thing started in 2001. If it clears, riders would be dropping into the same sandstone ridges that launched big-mountain freeride.

• The original site off Kolob Terrace Road, just west of Zion, hosted Rampage from 2001 to 2004 before organizers went hunting for terrain where they could add wooden features. The event landed on Utah Trust Lands in 2008 and moved again in 2016.
• Back then it was natural lines only, no giant build-outs. The contrast is the whole appeal: today's field throwing backflips and 360s off cliffs that the first crews rode on 40-pound bikes with crap geometry.
• The BLM is taking public comment through July 12, and dates aren't locked, though Rampage almost always runs in October. Most of the event village would sit on adjacent private land.

Why It Matters: Rampage has drifted toward heavily built, dig-crew-sculpted lines over the years. Going back to pure natural terrain is a statement about what the event is supposed to be: not who can build the biggest wooden step-down, but who can read raw rock and find a way down. That's the soul of freeride.

🏆 The DH World Cup rolls into La Thuile, Italy, July 3-5 for round 5 on the steepest track of the season. The subplot: Gloria Scarsi and the €100,000 Gates prize, paid to the first rider to win an elite World Cup downhill on a belt-drive gearbox bike. She's podiumed repeatedly, and a win cashes the check that's gone unclaimed for years. Nina Hoffmann, who won here last year, plus Vali Höll and Jackson Goldstone headline the favorites.

⛷️ Marcel Hirscher keeps building a women's team. Van Deer-Red Bull Sports just signed three young Austrians, Hannah Fedrizzi, Hannah Embacher, and Romy Sykora, a month after American Paula Moltzan became the brand's first female racer. All three come off Austria's C-squad development team and haven't started a World Cup yet. Hirscher built the label around men's stars when it launched in 2022, so this is a fast, deliberate turn toward the women's side.

Environment

⚖️ Yellowstone's bison plan hits a wall

🦬 Yellowstone's bison plan is stuck. A federal judge in Montana heard arguments this week over whether to pause the lawsuits tangling up the park's 2024 bison management plan, which would let the herd range from 3,500 to 6,000 animals, more than the older plan allowed. No ruling came down, and one could take up to 18 months.

• The fight is a two-front one. Montana sued over fears that bison spread brucellosis to nearby cattle, a disease that can cause cows to lose their calves, and argued the feds sidestepped environmental law and didn't consult the state. Conservation groups sued separately, saying the review was too thin. The cases got merged.
• The Park Service wants a timeout to run a fuller environmental study, which it says it can finish by October 2027. Montana is fine with the pause. The conservation groups aren't, warning it just resets the clock and invites a fresh round of suits later.
• It's not a clean two-sided fight. Some conservation groups back the park's plan, and three tribes have stepped in supporting it, arguing they're co-stewards of the herd.

Why It Matters: Yellowstone's bison are the last continuously wild herd in the country, and how many the park keeps is decided in courtrooms, not just biology. This case is a snapshot of how tangled public-wildlife management gets when a state, the feds, ranchers, tribes, and conservationists all pull in different directions.

🏛️ Georgia may get its first national park. Rep. Austin Scott introduced a bill on June 24 to redesignate Ocmulgee Mounds, an ancient site near Macon, from a national historical park to a full national park, and it faces a House subcommittee on July 1. People have lived on the roughly 3,300-acre site for over 12,000 years; it's the Muscogee (Creek) Nation's ancestral homeland. The bill also protects sacred sites and returns about 134 acres to the Tribe in trust. It'd be the country's first new park since 2020.

What else is going on

• Yampa River closed July 1 after flows dropped below 85 cfs, suspending commercial operations and urging voluntary recreational closure until conditions improve to protect aquatic life.
• Mesa County SAR pulled 123 rafters and some dogs from Ruby-Horsethief Canyon using Union Pacific rail trucks during 12-hour mission as Snyder Fire exploded to 28,000 acres.

🔥 The STOKE VOTE

📚 Trailhead Trivia

Which U.S. state has the most national parks?

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Answer!

California, with 9!