Daily Darwin

[{"type":"text","text":"Waddya mean grown men shouldn't use swingsets??"}]

Darwin 3 26 24

Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>Daily Darwin: Tuesday, March 26, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Waddya mean grown men shouldn't use swing sets??

Daily Darwin: Tuesday, March 26, 2024

 Waddya mean grown men shouldn't use swingsets??

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily State Government and Politics reporter, Leo Wolfson.

Leo Wolfson For Cowboy State Daily

Outdoors

Looking up at Colorado's Aspen Snowmass Ski Resort, you'll see large, white tarps covering a mysterious mass two to three stories high. No, the circus isn't in town — it's a matter of snow security.

As unusually warm, long fall seasons become more frequent — like 

 — ski areas across the West and around the world are seeking new ways to guarantee they can open on time. 

One solution is pushing together snow left over from the previous winter, storing it in enormous piles, and reusing it the following season.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Harvesting the Snow"}]

Known as "snow harvesting" or "snow farming," the practice is now catching on at resorts across Idaho, Montana, Utah and Colorado. 

By securing snow piles under thermal mats, blankets, tarps or even hay bales, resorts keep their snow in a giant cooler of sorts, shielded from the heat, sun and rain. 

That means they no longer have to anxiously watch the thermometer for temperatures cold enough to make snow, or wait on natural flakes from the sky.

Antti Lauslahti, CEO of the snow-storage company Snow Secure, believes these efforts will follow the same path as snowmaking equipment did in the 1970s. Most mountains were impressed by the technology at the time, he said, but skeptical that anyone actually needed to make snow.

"Then they started to do it for just the early season, and little by little it just took off," he said.

Lauslahti said Big Sky Resort in Montana — a favorite of many northern Wyoming residents — is running a small-scale test of Snow Secure technology to use on its slopes next season. 

Snow Secure makes white polystyrene thermal mats that fold out like an accordion and can stretch as long as a football field while keeping snow insulated, much like the insulation in a house, at near freezing temperatures.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The New Snowmaking"}]

In recent years, warm weather has repeatedly kept ski areas from meeting their traditional opening dates, sometimes pushing openings past Christmas or forcing seasons to be canceled altogether. 

Early season skiing is one of the industry's most profitable stretches, when public enthusiasm runs highest — especially among casual skiers. The Christmas holidays alone can account for 20% of a mountain's annual revenue, Lauslahti said.

"The beginning of the season is becoming more unpredictable," he said. "A bad start means you lose season-pass sales. If there's at least a minimum amount open in the early season, people accept it better."

Bogus Basin in Idaho and Aspen Snowmass have both recently invested in Snow Secure's mats to guarantee a solid snow base for next season. 

In Aspen, the mats now cover piles on Buttermilk and Snowmass mountains — the equivalent of 3.5 million gallons of water, mostly man-made snow left over from the previous season. 

Beyond saving the snow itself, the practice preserves the money already spent making it and can cut the cost of snowmaking for the season ahead.

Having snow ready to go also gives mountains flexibility to time their snowmaking for the most efficient conditions. 

Snowmaking machines work better the colder it gets, so instead of blowing snow in marginal early-season conditions out of desperation, resorts can draw on their stored supply for a usable base. 

Others are preemptively making a deep base of snow during winter's coldest stretches, either to extend their seasons into May or to save it for the next one.

"It's economically really, really viable," Lauslahti said. "It's really fast, really cost efficient. You need snowmaking, you need groomers, but the point is, you have a new tool."

Lauslahti noted that Levi, a Finnish mountain that traditionally hosts the season's first FIS World Cup race each November, relied entirely on snow stored inside the Snow Secure mats to host the event this past season. 

The mountain itself opened a few years back on Oct. 6 thanks to their snow-storage efforts.

Chris Miller, senior vice president of sustainability at Aspen Snowmass, told the Aspen Times saving snow expands the resort's climate-resilient toolbox for navigating volatile weather.

Snowmass Mountain's relatively low base elevation of 7,870 feet leaves it especially vulnerable to warm, dry early-season spells. 

As host of the Winter X Games, Snowmass produces enormous amounts of snow each fall to build the massive terrain-park features the globally televised event requires. By piling up and covering the leftover snow for the following year, the mountain saves significant money.

Soldier Hollow Nordic Center in Utah has joined the trend too, preserving a 15,000-square-foot mound under the Snow Secure mats. 

At just 5,600 feet of elevation, the venue is slated to host cross-country events for the 2034 Winter Olympics, though that may not happen naturally if Utah sees another winter as poor as this past one.

Luke Bodensteiner, Soldier Hollow's general manager, told NBC News he views the effort as a contingency plan, and hopes that snow farming plus new snowmakers could make Soldier Hollow the first Nordic venue in the country to open this coming fall.

"If we get the results that we think … in the summer of 2033, we'll probably have three to four of these piles going around the venue," he told NBC.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Heat Resilient"}]

Back in Aspen when interviewed last month, Miller said temperatures beneath the Snow Secure blankets were registering at 32.6 degrees. 

Even when outdoor temperatures top 100 degrees, the insulated barriers keep the snow between 35 and 37, Lauslahti said, and can limit melting to about 20% of the original mass over an entire summer.

The mats were put to the test last summer at Bogus Basin, a mid-sized ski area outside Boise, where temperatures outside the piles hit 119 degrees. The snow held up fine, and despite recording its warmest November on record, the resort still managed to open that month.

Snow Secure isn't just for the biggest resorts with the biggest budgets. Lauslahti argues the tarps offer even more value at smaller areas with shorter runs, where every saved inch counts — pointing to a small Wisconsin resort that’s invested in the product. "The first chairlift isn't so long, so you don't need so much material," he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Other Snow-Storage Efforts"}]

Copper Mountain in Colorado stores snow for its summertime private Woodward camps and public hike park. At each season's end, the mountain pushes 

thousands of cubic yards of leftover snow

 from its runs, terrain parks and superpipe into huge piles; months later, it spreads the snow back out into a short run with a roughly 25-foot base, letting the public ski all summer.

Trollhaugen in Wisconsin insulates its snow with 

hay bales and a large tarp weighed down by car tires

 for a terrain-park event it hosts each fall.

Snow farming Ruka 15 Snow Secure 7 5 26

<title>Save It For Later: 'Snow Farming' Is Keeping Ski Seasons Alive Across Rockies | Cowboy State Daily</title>

As temperatures soar in the summer, ski resorts in the Rocky Mountain West are "farming" snow, storing it under giant thermal mats as insurance for the upcoming season. Snow stays close to freezing in the summer even in triple-digit temperatures.

Save It For Later: 'Snow Farming' Is Keeping Ski Seasons Alive Across Rockies

[{"type":"text","text":"Usually the strategy is to stay on the ATV...."}]

Darwin 7 6 26

<title>Daily Darwin: Monday, July 6, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Usually the strategy is to stay on the ATV....

Daily Darwin: Monday, July 6, 2026

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

DUBOIS — When Marion Taylor talks about America, there’s a little catch in her voice that she just can’t help any more than she can help how her eyes start misting over.

That was doubly true Saturday on a flag-lined main street in a tiny Wyoming mountain town, where thousands gathered to celebrate America’s 250th birthday by watching one of the nation’s most unique parades. 

Each year, Dubois fields something few towns or cities of any size could manage — a parade of roughly two dozen military tanks and other vehicles, hand-picked by National Museum of Military Vehicles founder Dan Starks to tell a sweeping story of American freedom.

“This means something to me because I wasn’t a natural born U.S. citizen,” Taylor told Cowboy State Daily. “I immigrated from Canada as a child and we were so — I can almost cry, thinking about it.”

The memory that came flooding back was a much smaller, quieter parade when she was being sworn in as a U.S. citizen at 19 years old.

“I was living in Missouri back then, and we went to St. Louis to the big courthouse,” she said.

Taylor said she remembers Wold War veterans at the courthouse as a color guard for the ceremony.

Taylor’s eyes light up when she talks about how Dubois celebrates the Fourth of July. 

“Last year we had 3,000 people here winding the streets for the parade,” she said. “And this year, I think it’ll be the same, or maybe more. Everybody wants to come to the Dubois parade because we have the military vehicles. 

"It’s the most unique parade in America.”

That uniqueness doesn’t come without logistical headaches. Shutting down a state highway, even for a short time, takes serious coordination with the Wyoming Department of Transportation. 

“They give us a set amount of time to close the road and get the parade through,” she said. “But we still get it done.”

Last year, Mother Nature stepped in with her own deadline, splashing onlookers with a sudden storm that came blowing down the mountain. 

“The wind was blowing dirt in our eyes and taking people’s hats and chairs and everything,” she said. 

People came back anyway, she added with a proud smile. 

It’s the tanks, she acknowledges. They are just irresistible.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Rolling History Lesson "}]

For the crowd lining both sides of U.S. Highway 26 through Dubois, also known as Ramshorn Highway, the tank parade is pure spectacle — and they love it. 

The roar of the engines rumbling down the streets and echoing off the Wind River Mountains as they belch diesel smoke is what it’s all about.  

For Starks, though, the spectacle is actually a carefully chosen curation of American military history.  

“On the lineup of vehicles, the first thing I like to have is an array,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “And each year I like to include vehicles that people haven’t seen before.”

Among this year’s standouts was an M110 self-propelled Howitzer, a hulking piece of bristling Cold War history to send rolling down the street.

“It’s the biggest howitzer, the largest diameter howitzer,” Starks said. “They’re firing the largest shell of any howitzer in the U.S. military inventory, and it was capable of firing a nuclear projectile.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"\"So, that’s pretty cool.”"}]

Not all the vehicles are about shock and awe. 

Starks wants the convoy to tell a coherent story, one that teases people and encourages them to want to learn more. 

This year’s biggest teaser was a World War II halftrack named Krystyna, with a special story pulled from the shadow world of espionage.

Krystyna was “a daring Polish aristocrat,” Starks said. 

“She was Winston Churchill’s favorite World War II spy,” he said. “This halftrack was restored over in Europe by a group that had particular connections with the Polish military and knew the story of this Polish spy … and decided to name this halftrack after her.”

Dubois has but one hour for its big military tank parade. It’s an hour that turns the pages of history, with vehicles normally only seen behind museum ropes. 

Bringing them out to an American main street in a small town like Dubois is something Starks believes happens nowhere else in the country. 

“It’s not that nobody else has a military vehicle in a parade,” he said. “I’m sure there are plenty of military vehicles here and there, but nothing like this.”

It’s the depth and breadth of those military vehicles, spanning 80 years of history, that’s unmatched. 

“I haven’t verified it, but I’ve been around a long time and I’ve worked with lots and lots of people,” he said. “And I consistently hear nobody else does this.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Big Flag For Big Birthday"}]

The people who come to watch Dubois Fourth of July tank parade are just as varied as the military convoy itself. 

One family from Riverton, for example, stood out from the crowd for the unusual flag they were waving around. 

It was not just large, but also proclaimed America 250. 

Matt Burrell found the flag when he was searching around online for something special to mark the occasion. 

“I didn’t know what yet, but then I saw that right off the bat on Amazon,” he said. “And I said, ‘That’s it.’”

Burrell showed up in Dubois last year on a whim with his two young children. This year, it was not just a plan, but a full-blown getaway.

They stayed in the KOA campground, which impressed them with its indoor swimming pool, as well as activities like gold mining for the kids.

“You buy a bag of dirt and you can run it through the water and do the whole process,” he said with a chuckle. “I don’t know if you ever find anything like gold.”

But fun was the real gold he was looking for.

Not everyone in the crowd was feeling their best. 

A woman from Casper admitted she’d been sick for two weeks and was still on a mostly “bland cracker diet.”

The thought of staying home for America’s 250th, though, was unimaginable.

“I’m old enough that I can remember the 200th anniversary in 1976 and how special it was and how lucky I felt, even back then, at a child’s age, just to celebrate,” she said. “And here we are again. 

"I know America’s not perfect. I know we have our problems. But it’s still the absolute best place in the world. And Wyoming is the only place I ever want to live.”

Most years, she and her family go to Cody’s famous Stampede Parade for the Fourth of July, but this year they made a deliberate pivot to Dubois to see the tanks.

“We wanted to experience the tanks and the military display, honestly,” she said. “Dubois is absolutely just outstanding. So beautiful.”

On one corner of main street Dubois, a man named Steve Burgess offered a simple card table draped in red, white, and blue and piled with free flags, whirligigs, and mints.

“I love this country,” he told Cowboy State Daily, gesturing to the table. “This country has been good to me and my family, and I like to celebrate along with everybody else and give out flags and whirlybirds and mints and just enjoy the day.”

This was the third year Burgess offered patriotic accessories set out on what looked like a handmade, crocheted tablecloth.

“I did not make it,” he admitted. “I bought it at the Op Shop — Opportunity Shop. St. Thomas Episcopal Church runs it.”

Burgess had gone there specifically to find a tablecloth, but wasn’t expecting to find something quite so perfect. 

America’s 250th is special to Burgess because the miracle still persists, despite all the tensions and challenges.

“We’ve got a great country in spite of some of the differences we share,” he said. “Long story short, it’s the greatest country in the world and it’s survived 250 years. History says our nation should not be here, that it should have run its course in about 200 years. 

“Well, we’re 50 years over what the expectancy is throughout history. So that’s a win, and it means that a lot of people sacrificed for the freedom that we enjoy to this day, and I do not take that lightly.”

For Kevin and Josh Gentile of Casper — father and son, Navy and Marine Corps service, respectively — America’s 250th birthday is something they feel deeply. 

“Both of us have served our country,” Kevin said. “He did four years in the Marine Corps, and I did four years in the Navy. I felt it was important to serve my country if I’m going to enjoy its freedoms.”

Kevin remembers America’s 200th birthday in 1976, and seeing another one with his son is beyond special. 

The National Museum of Military Vehicles, meanwhile, is “mind-boggling.” 

“The freedom, the country … this is the greatest country in the world, as far as I’m concerned,” Kevin said. “And this (parade) is just a great event to celebrate that.”

Kevin loved what he saw in Dubois — people from all walks of life coming together.

“You hear about all the controversies that are going on,” he said. “But here we are, and people are happy, people are friendly. It’s a really great thing. It makes you feel good to be here.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The 'Genius' Of America "}]

For Taylor, who has watched both America 200 and now America 250, the real strength she sees in the country isn’t that everyone agrees all the time. It’s that they don’t, and yet still find ways to work together. 

“If you love this country, you’re going to come together,” she said. “I used to work for a lady who was very left, and we were great friends.”

Taylor’s friend made great homemade sourdough bread, while Taylor made all the fillings. 

“We never got in each other’s way,” Taylor said. “I had her do the salads and she made the bread. I made the sandwiches, and the special, and I baked the desserts. 

"We got along so well, and we were different political realms completely. I was right, she was left, but we didn’t care. We’re still friends.”

Her takeaway from that as an American is simple.

“You don’t have to get mad at people because they’re a different affiliation,” she said. “Just agree to disagree, that’s it.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Disagreement Built America"}]

Disagreement, Starks said, is part of what built the country that America is now. 

Though today, the Founding Fathers are often referred to as though they were of one mind and one body, the truth is they were men who had vehement disagreements with each other over a range of divisive issues, from slavery to federalism, he said.

Their “genius,” Starks said, was working together in spite of that and creating a new country where the principal remains all men are created equal.

“People think, ‘Oh the country is going to hell because look at all the divisiveness,'” Starks said. “But that’s just typical. That’s what happens in a country like us, that has as many different people, with so many different life experiences, different backgrounds, different values. 

"What we hold in common is the value of being Americans and the value of finding a way to thread the needle and get an acceptable path through all these differences. That’s what we’re celebrating today.”

And that’s what Starks saw on full display as he drove one of his own military vehicles in the small-town parade that shuts down a state highway every year so history and freedom can roll down a main street in America and celebrate everything that makes it great. 

It’s a spectacle that tells a story in steel and diesel and thousands of human voices, like the immigrant who still cries when she remembers a World War color guard escort when she became a citizen. 

Or a woman too sick to eat much more than crackers but who can’t miss America’s 250th birthday. Or the veterans who gathered to cheer tanks rolling down the streets of town for a country they loved enough to serve in the military.

This 250th Fourth of July, one thin slice of America in Dubois, Wyoming, offered a larger glimpse of a nation that can still come together and celebrate when it really matters.

Dubois Fourth of July 20260704 1500340 7 4 26

<title>Dubois’ One-Of-A-Kind Military Tank Parade Celebrates America's 250th | Cowboy State Daily</title>

On America’s 250th, Dubois did something few towns in America can do — fielding a parade with more than two dozen military tanks and vehicles spanning 80 years of U.S. history. "It’s the most unique parade in America,” said one patriotic-feeling parade-goer.

Dubois’ One-Of-A-Kind Military Tank Parade Celebrates America's 250th

Employee kate meadows cropped

Kate Meadows

Business & Tourism

Business

[{"type":"text","text":"Trey Scharp received the phone call of a lifetime on his birthday."}]

It was December 2025, and the owners of the historic Flat Creek Ranch northeast of Jackson, Joe Albright and Marcia Kunstel, were calling with an unexpected question.

Would Trey and his wife, Shelby, like to own the ranch they had managed for more than two decades?

Albright and Kunstel, longtime journalists whose careers were built on documenting history, weren’t offering to sell the ranch.

[{"type":"text","text":"They wanted to give it away."}]

“It was truly an amazing birthday phone call,” Shelby Scharp told Cowboy State Daily.

Seven months later, the Scharps are settling into their first season not just as managers but as owners of a 140-acre guest ranch tucked beneath the iconic Sleeping Indian in the Gros Ventre Mountains. 

In a valley where ranches routinely sell for tens of millions of dollars and development pressure never lets up, Albright and Kunstel chose a different path.

"We didn't want it to fall in the hands of someone who would destroy the land, the wildlife or the buildings," Kunstel told Cowboy State Daily. "It deserves to be maintained."

The couple explained their motivation in a newspaper advertisement announcing the transfer: “Why are we doing all this? To keep our 103-year-old Ranch from falling into the wake of Jackson’s rush to develop mega-mansions and hulking hotels.”

As part of the gift, the Scharps agreed not to sell the ranch for at least 10 years and pledged to preserve its historic cabins, off-grid infrastructure and operation as a guest ranch.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"More Than Real Estate"}]

For Albright and Kunstel, both retired foreign correspondents, the decision was about conservation as much as succession.

"We felt that giving this land to people with the talents and background that Trey and Shelby have was the best way to keep this ranch going for another 100 years," Albright told Cowboy State Daily.

The couple spent 27 years restoring and preserving the ranch after buying it back from the Jackson Hole Land Trust in 1998. By then, many of the 1920s-era cabins had fallen into disrepair.

An extensive restoration project returned the historic buildings to life while modernizing the ranch behind the scenes. Today it operates entirely off solar power with a custom-designed water system. The property was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2001 and reopened as a guest ranch that same year.

Its history stretches back even further. A timeline on the ranch’s website is full of gems – characters and moments that have cemented the ranch’s place in time.

[{"type":"text","text":"“There are a million stories within the big story,” Shelby said."}]

In the summer of 1900, cowboy Enoch “Cal” Carrington camped on the land for a few days while working as a cook on a hunting expedition. Carrington returned the following summer, staked his claim and built a small cabin.

In 1917, Cal met Eleanor “Cissy” Patterson – Albright’s great aunt – at the Bar BC Ranch, where Patterson was staying as a guest. Carrington was the head hunting guide.

Carrington obtained a patent for a homestead in 1922 and sold the property to Patterson a year later, for $5,000. Patterson was an heiress to the Chicago Tribune.

Later, her niece and Albright’s mother, Josephine Patteron, would own the property.

In 1928, Cissy Patterson hired a man named Farney Cole to be caretaker. Cole famously beat a black bear to death with a waterlogged aspen limb in 1944. He had been using the limb to break up a beaver dam on the property when the bear, which had two cubs with her, attacked him.

Cissy longed to host Saturday night dances in the lodge at the ranch, and she made that dream come true in 1929, when she had a grand piano shipped to the ranch from Chicago. The instrument was hauled up the primitive bumpy road on an ox cart. It is still in use today.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Jackson Gambling Scene"}]

For a few weeks, Flat Creek Ranch was party to a thriving gambling scene in Jackson in the 1950s, As gambling raids swept through Jackson, hotel staff drove their guests out to the ranch, where a casino room was set up.

In 1986, Josephine Albright donated Flat Creek Ranch to the Jackson Hole Land Trust to guarantee the land’s permanent protection. She ensured that her heirs would have the first option to buy back the ranch at an appraised price upon her death.

Albright and Kunstel had not intended to buy the ranch in 1998, but they fell in love with Jackson and were ready to retire from longtime journalism careers.

The 1920s-era cabins remained on the land but were in desperate need of maintenance and restoration.

Contractor Porgy McClelland headed an ambitious restoration project that lasted four years. Cabins were moved and some were taken apart and put back on new foundations.

During the process, McClelland found old newspapers stuffed between logs for chinking.

, “He opened up one and found a box score for a baseball game in which Babe Ruth hit two home runs. It disintegrated into dust before he could share it too widely.” -

When the ranch was turning 100, Shelby suggested Albright and Kunstel write a book chronicling the history of the ranch.

“They jumped in with both feet and did this incredible coffee table book,” Shelby said.

 during the writing of the book, Flat Creek Ranch: Cissy and Cal Launch a Rip-Roaring Jackson Hole Saga. Newspapers on the platform date to 1911 for the city of Jackson. They also searched land records that told traces of stories.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"An Unexpected Opportunity"}]

The Scharps’ connection to Albright and Kunstel happened unexpectedly, in the early 2000s. The Scharps were managing a fly fishing lodge in Patagonia, Chile, when guests Joan and Huntley Baldwin mentioned friends in Jackson who were looking for ranch managers.

When Trey heard the name "Flat Creek Ranch," he wasn't immediately interested.

[{"type":"text","text":"Growing up in Jackson, he remembered it as a neglected property."}]

Instead of selling the century-old 140-acre Flat Creek Ranch for millions, a Jackson couple gave the property to its longtime managers. "We didn't want it to fall in the hands of someone who would destroy the land, the wildlife or the buildings," they said.

Daily Darwin: Tuesday, March 26, 2024

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