News

Here are the folks who came out on top in the various Mountain Fair competitions, according to Carbondale Arts and Independence Run and Hike. See their respective websites for full results.

The Roaring Fork Outdoor Volunteers (RFOV) organization is working on new hiking, biking and equestrian trails in the Crown area off Prince Creek Road near Carbondale, and the group is inviting participation from anyone in the area who has an interest in improving the trails in that area.
According to the RFOV website, the work projects began on the evening of July 25 and are to continue every Tuesday evening through Aug. 15, from about 4 p.m. until dusk.

On the street, William S. Morrow looks like a Harley guy-meets-Christmas elf playing hooky from the North Pole. His chest-length silver beard is smooth and clean, blending in with the long curtain of clean, silky hair hanging from under a welder’s cap. The eyes shining from the shade of a visor hold a lifetime of self-amusement.
“William” is too formal for this guy. He goes by “Bill.”
“I was always a daydreamer. I barely got out of high school, graduating with maybe a low-C, high-D average. People knew I was smart; I was just bored,” he laughs.
Thus, the “Insane-A-Cycle .”

If you took woodshop in high school, you may have made a cutting board or candle holder or maybe a blanket chest — but probably not a river worthy boat.
That’s precisely the challenge Roaring Fork High Schoolers Wes Engstrom and Nick Penzel took on more than a year ago. The pair have been river buddies since freshmen year, when they took their first unsupervised excursion down the Crystal together.

While the leading economic nations of the world have their G-20 group to work on global economic issues, Carbondale has it’s own informal “group of 20,” an assembly of individuals that essentially puts together the annual Carbondale Mountain Fair, as described by Gazebo stage manager Jeff Britt. To introduce readers to some of the “folks behind the fair” The Sun is profiling three of the more prominent managers or supervisors who for years have been in charge of key parts of the overall celebration, but who may not be that well known to the general public.

July 28, 1977: Television enthusiasts in Basalt and El Jebel were looking forward to the completion of a 34-mile cable line connected to a microwave receiver on Floyd Crawford’s silo. Service was slated to begin in mid September with five Denver channels, a Sacramento-based movie station and KREX out of Grand Junction.

Nicholas Ameral, who pleaded guilty to robbery charges related to an armed stick-up at the Cowen Center convenience store in north Carbondale earlier this year, was sentenced on July 25 to six years in prison followed by five years of mandatory parole.
According to Deputy District Attorney Zachary Parsons, Ameral might have faced up to 32 years in prison had he gone to trial on multiple counts of armed robbery and other charges.
Ameral, 19, and his cousin, Benjamin Weeks, also 19, were arrested last February and charged with robbing the convenience store at gunpoint, after the two led police on a two-day chase through the backcountry near Basalt.

Although the original plan had been to winnow down a list of applicants for an open trustee seat, the Carbondale Board of Trustees on July 25 opted instead to interview all six of the people who had submitted applications to fill out the term recently vacated by former Trustee Katrina Byars. The interviews are to take place at the regular meeting on Aug. 8, and the trustees agreed they might go ahead that same night and appoint a new face to the town board. Byars resigned her trustee position earlier this year due to difficulty in finding affordable housing in Carbondale for herself and her two children.

This year’s theme for the 46th annual Carbondale Mountain Fair (July 28-30) in Sopris Park is water — the need for it in clean, potable form; the predicted scarcity of it if things go on as they have been; and the challenge to people to prevent that eventuality. The idea for the theme, said Carbondale Arts Executive Director Amy Kimberly, came partly from her experiences at the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation last year, when countless Roaring Fork Valley residents traveled to the border lands of North and South Dakota to help the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Sioux tribal members of that region, known as “water protectors,” fend off efforts to build an oil pipeline through their lands and underneath the Missouri River that provides them with water.

Rocky Mountain Columbines (Aquilegia caerulea) were blooming in profusion on the Flat Tops a couple of weeks back, but luckily nobody seemed to be picking ’em. As the state flower, they’re protected with a possible fine for pulling one up by the roots or taking more than 25 stems from public land. It’s a good thing, too, as there was once quite a craze for them akin to the Dutch tulip mania in the 1600s.