Rocky Mountains

The gray wolf, virtually exterminated in the West in the early 20th century, will be hunted once again in Idaho beginning today after a successful reintroduction program saw populations of the predator bloom across much of the northern Rocky Mountains. Though a federal judge has been asked to intervene, new state laws call for wolf hunts to begin today in two parts of Idaho, followed by hunts in much of the rest of the state and in Montana later this month. Protected under the federal Endangered Species Act since 1973, when they were nearly extinct in the continental United States, wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park and parts of Idaho in the 1990s and have since formed a large number of hunting and breeding packs that are beginning to range as far as Oregon.

The Democrats have Vice President Joe Biden for gaffe laughs. Now the Republicans in Colorado have a candidate wrestling with an all-too-familiar PR scandal in his scenic home state: not being able to recognize his own state's mountains. It's the sort of gaffe possibly unique to a state with more than a dozen distinct mountain ranges. First it was former Rep. Bob Schaffer, whose initial ad in an unsuccessful U.S.

A ski adventure, that's what we were having. Struggling up the side of Yellowstone National Park's highest peak, Mt. Washburn, in the dead of winter, in snow conditions that varied from wind-hardened white marble to soggy oatmeal. Up 3,000 feet to a giddy 10,000 above sea level and down again. Over open rock and through thick forest deadfall, into glaring sun and driving snow, on ungroomed trails and no trails at all. Now that's skiing!

At the outset of Richard Grant's journey into the Sierra Madre mountains of Mexico, before he's even left the United States, the air is thick with warnings. Fifth-generation cowboy J.P.S. Brown, who spent some four decades traveling in the Sierra Madre on horseback, advises Grant to first learn Spanish and how to ride a horse. Then he reconsiders: "Let's say you were fluent in Spanish and a horseman," he says. "I still don't see how you can do this without getting killed." But Grant, an English journalist living in the southwestern U.S., is determined to pursue his insane plan to travel the entire length of the mountain chain.

Gray wolves in the northern Rockies regained endangered-species protections Friday when a federal judge in Montana granted a preliminary injunction to environmentalists, who had challenged the wolves' delisting. U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials announced in February that gray wolves would be removed from the endangered species list after what they termed a successful 20-year effort to reestablish the wolves in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. Environmentalists sued.

A titanic battle between the West's two traditional power brokers -- Big Oil and Big Water -- has begun. At stake is one of the largest oil reserves in the world, a vast cache trapped beneath the Rocky Mountains containing an estimated 800 billion barrels -- about three times the reserves of Saudi Arabia.

An unusual winter snowfall has triggered a series of avalanches in the high mountains that has killed nine people in the U.S. and six members of a snowmobiling group in British Columbia in the last two weeks. Two other Canadians from the same small-town group are presumed dead. With increasingly treacherous conditions, Canadian avalanche forecasters warned skiers and snowmobilers that it was too risky to use the backcountry for the next several days.

Before the Colorado Rockies became the darling of this sports-mad town by winning the National League Championship Series and their first trip to the World Series, one of the side pleasures of going to a baseball game was looking at the mountains beyond the outfield. Fans could ignore the lousy play on the field (the Rockies have had only five winning seasons in 15 years of play) and gaze at the snowcapped peaks.

For a long time, people settled in this country where the natural resources were, or along railroads and highways. That left giant swaths of American outback empty by default, and the Rocky Mountain West, with its mind-numbing distances and extreme environment, was, for a long time, among the emptiest. Thirty years ago, when I moved from upstate New York to Montana, it was still a high-country Brigadoon, hidden away from the real world by its location, climate and deficit of jobs.