Joe Purtell

Acres of barren Boulder soil are headed to rehab (and that might just help fight climate change)

Walking toward the western edge of his farm, Marcus McCauley pauses to roll a cigarette, lighting up before jumping the fence dividing his property west of Longmont from the neighboring farm. A coyote walks across the far end of the 120 acres, traversing a patchwork landscape of exposed dirt and low greenery, pocked with prairie dog holes.

“A lot of the green you see is bindweed,” McCauley says, pointing away from his farm. “You have to look a little closer to get the full story.”

In 2016, a fierce windstorm blew the topsoil — the normally fertile ground where food is grown — off the neighboring property and onto McCauley’s farm, setting back production on his land by weeks and driving away his honey bees. The dust came from one of at least 1,000 acres of land owned by the City of Boulder that is in such poor condition that it cannot be leased to farmers because nothing will grow there….

The Instagram Account Calling Out Harassers in Climbing

Shortly after Nikki Smith turned her personal Instagram into a public page, she began receiving a new kind of message—unwanted and unsolicited sexual advances from men emboldened by the anonymity of the internet. Smith is a multidiscipline climber and photographer, comfortable in ice boots or rock shoes, scaling frozen waterfalls, or running it out above traditional gear, but the harassment got to her in a different way.

As a trans woman, Smith felt the harassment was worse. “There’s a whole group of guys who search for hashtags and trans women’s accounts,” she says. “So it’s the type of stuff women get all the time, and my trans identity is mixed in with that, too.” Tired of taking abuse alone, Smith spoke out, first as a part of a slideshow about coming out as trans at a cleanup event called Yosemite Facelift, then on Instagram itself. A rush of messages showed her she was far from alone....

To help students improve inside the classroom, Manitou Springs Middle School is taking them outside

On a brisk winter day in Manitou Springs, a group of sixth-graders romp around the Flying Pig Farm. Pikes Peak, dusted with snow, demands at least a glance, but the kids are interested in something smaller.

“I want to feed the goats!” three students announce in near unison. Barak Ben-Amots, a Manitou Springs Middle School teacher, passes out food. “Who can tell us our two priorities with the animals?” he asks. Gretchen Beckman, 12, responds as her hand shoots up: “To keep them safe and to make them feel safe.”

When people die in the outdoors, help for their loved ones is scarce. The climbing community aims to change that.

Death and injury are a part of climbing, much more so than most other sports. A group of Coloradans think it’s time to learn how to talk about it.

For the climbers pushing boundaries in the sport, death is all too familiar.

In 2017, top alpinist Ueli Steck fell to his death while acclimating for an ambitious ascent in the Himalayas. Six months later, Rocky Mountain National Park climbing ranger and accomplished speed climber Quinn Brett took a 100-foot fall on El Capitan and became paralyzed from the waist down…

Study: Nevada's 15 rural counties are struggling to provide public defenders

Nevada's rural counties are struggling to provide constitutional legal defense for people who cannot afford to pay for an attorney, according to a new state-commissioned study. 

An August report from the nonpartisan Sixth Amendment Center is the latest in a series of studies that have found critical problems with Nevada's system for providing a constitutional defense for people who cannot afford lawyers.

Nevada was first found deficient following a similar report in 1999…

Why did Reid's PAC buy Britney Spears tickets? New report details Congress' 'slush fund'

Across party aisles, some of Congress' biggest names have one thing in common: They have leadership PACs — and they like to spend big in Las Vegas.

That's according to a new report by the non-partisan groups Campaign Legal Center and Issue One. The government watchdog groups found of the $160 million spent by leadership PACs in 2016, only $74 million — less than half — went to campaign contributions, their intended purpose...

Climbing gyms are hot, but longtime climbers worry gym rats aren’t learning basic real-world safety

Long before Marcus Garcia had scaled the frozen faces of some of the largest mountains on Earth, he was an 18-year-old kid in a Dallas climbing gym. A fit athlete with little adventure climbing experience, Garcia was approached by an experienced climber who offered to take him on a trip to Eldorado Canyon, near Boulder. 

With that trip, Jimmy Forester, a climber known for tackling routes where a mistake could result in serious injury, took Garcia on as a protégé, showing him how to safely climb multi-pitch routes, flowing up steep faces, rope length by rope length…

Lutes and language: How Colorado’s Tibetan families fight to retain their culture from half a world away

In a classroom unused by Boulder’s Naropa University on Sundays, 11 teenagers sit in a semicircle playing Tibetan lutes in unison. The teacher, not much older than some of her students, paces the room. “Sit straight,” she says. “Slow down. You’re speeding up.”

The students begin again, playing faster and faster as the melody progresses. A kid with dark glasses keeps going after the others stop, then looks around. “We have to play it four times,” he says, lute perched on athletic shorts. “That was four times!” the class responds…