No one was injured, and they hope it stays that way for the rest of the winter season.

CAIC has recorded more than two dozen avalanches in Vail and Summit County in the last week.

“Over the next couple of days, we’re going to see probably very few natural avalanches, but there’s still going to be a pretty good chance for human-triggered avalanches,” Ethan Greene, the director of the Colorado Avalanche Information Center, said.

One concern isn’t just backcountry skiers on avalanche terrain, but also hikers or snowshoers triggering avalanches from below.

Read the full story from our partner at denver7.com.

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And The Denver Post’s readers love to dig into those stories. This year, as always, skiing was one of the top topics of discussion, especially Epic Pass sales and a resort ranking. But hiking and camping were also big, especially when it came to Rocky Mountain National Park.

We also had an unusual sighting, literally, in our top 10. But we’ll let you see that for yourself. Here are our 10 most-read outdoor recreation stories of the year, with the number-one story at the end.

Bad drivers in the backcountry are a big problem

The sheriff in San Miguel County called a group of people who slid off Black Bear Pass in their truck “ass clowns,” which is funny. But the problem is real: More and more people, who lack skills or experience or proper maps, are driving on backcountry roads they can’t handle in Colorado — or simply ignoring closures — resulting in more rescues.

First-of-its-kind hiking permit proposed for Blue Lakes

The gorgeous Blue Lakes in the San Juan Mountains near Telluride have become so crowded in recent years that the U.S. Forest Service wants to require permits just to hike there during the day — as well as to camp. The goal of the plan, which would be the first in Colorado of its kind on forest service land, is to reduce the environmental impact of recreation.

Colorado’s oldest chairlift will be retired at age 70

Sunlight Mountain Resort’s Sunlight chairlift began its long life at Aspen in 1954 before being relocated in 1973. Since then, it has faithfully served skiers at Sunlight. The relic of ski history engineering is still safe, but is scheduled to be put out to pasture this spring.

High-alpine lake is one of Colorado’s most spectacular hikes

Nearly 2,500 feet below the summit of Long’s Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park is a beautiful alpine tarn called Chasm Lake. The 4.2 hike to get there is strenuous, but the steep rock walls soaring into the air above the water make it one of the most beautiful payoffs in Colorado.

Another hassle awaits Rocky Mountain National Park visitors

Rocky Mountain National Park has been feeling the heat. Not only will its busiest campground, Moraine Park, be closed into this summer (see below), but visitation continues to soar, resulting in what will likely be a permanent ticketing system. To make things worse, one of its two Estes Park-area entrances, Fall River, was under construction all summer and fall.

Epic Pass prices increase, early bird on sale for 2023-24 season

Vail Resorts announced its early bird prices in March for this season’s Epic Passes — and Denver Post readers wanted to know all about it. Of course they did. The pass, which includes Vail, Beaver Creek, Keystone, Breckenridge and Crested Butte, is one of the hottest items in Colorado. so the costs, the on-sale dates and every other detail is big news.

Colorado ski resort named the best in North America by website

Magazines, newspapers and websites love to rank things, including ski resorts, and since Colorado has some of the best in the world, they often end up on lists. In March, readers of OnTheSnow, a website, voted Steamboat as North America’s best overall resort.

Campground closure at RMNP could have ripple effect across Colorado

Rocky Mountain National Park’s largest campground, the immensely popular Moraine Park, shut down last summer so it could undergo a major modernization project, meaning 244 fewer sites in the area. That figured to put more pressure on nearby campgrounds in the adjacent and already overloaded national forests. The campground will hopefully reopen in June 2024.

Coloradans may see Northern Lights more often in coming months

Seeing the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, is on a lot of people’s bucket lists. So, how cool would it be to be able to see them from Colorado rather than having to travel to the Arctic? Space weather predictors say there is more of a possibility of that happening in 2024 with increasing solar storm activity — something that happens in an 11-year cycle.

Bigfoot may have been caught on camera from Durango train

In October, a Wyoming couple was looking for elk while riding the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad in southwest Colorado when they spotted, well, something that looked like Bigfoot. The story made national news after a video taken by another passenger went viral online. Was it really the famed but elusive cryptid? We’ll let you judge for yourself. See our story, with video, here.

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But with the millions of people exploring Colorado’s outdoors every year also comes a large number of accidents in the wilderness. The Colorado Search and Rescue Association estimates there are about 3,000 search and rescue incidents annually in the state and about 40,000 search and rescue volunteer hours logged.

This year’s incidents so far show even seasoned outdoorspoeple can be killed in accidents, and unprepared newcomers or people driving through the high country can also be faced with challenges or extreme conditions.

From thousands of search hours to national park closures and unique rescues, these are 10  incidents this year that required the most effort from search and rescue teams.

Two men stranded in Pike National Forest for 21 hours rescued by National Guard helicopter

Two men were stranded overnight in their car during a snowstorm in the Pike National Forest for 21 hours on May 11 before being rescued by a Colorado Army National Guard helicopter team.

A third man in the vehicle was rescued by a Douglas County deputy before snow conditions worsened and several trees toppled onto the roadway. Crews worked overnight to try and cut the fallen trees with chainsaws before the National Guard was called and flew in to rescue the men the next day.

Lost snowmobiler rescued from Vail Pass by helicopter

A lost snowmobiler on Vail Pass who later said he was not prepared for self-navigating was rescued May 14 after a search involving the Eagle and Summit counties sheriff’s offices, Colorado Search and Rescue, Colorado’s State Search and Rescue Coordinator Resource, Summit County Rescue Group and a Flight for Life helicopter.

Two other snowmobilers in the area were also given his last location and sent into the field from Vail Pass to search for him.

The helicopter and a rescue team eventually found and lifted him back to safety.

Dog saved from 14er during 8-hour Fourth of July weekend rescue

A seven-member volunteer team of rescuers from Alpine Rescue Team on July 2 spent eight hours rescuing a dog from the sheer east-facing side of Torreys Peak. The dog’s owners called for rescuers after she fell 600 feet over the side of the mountain, and 26 people responded to their call.

A rescuer descended about 30 feet to rescue the dog, and the team saved her using a bag as a makeshift harness.

CPW river ranger makes three round-trip Arkansas river crossings to save stranded rafters

A Colorado Parks and Wildlife river ranger traversed the Arkansas River in Brown’s Canyon three times overnight July 6 to save three rafters who had become stranded on the canyon’s sheer side.

Two Chaffee County Search and Rescue North team members and a team from Chaffee County SAR South assisted ranger Jeff Hammond in the daunting rescue that sent him bushwhacking through brush to the water’s edge in the darkness, kayaking across the river and back twice, then crossing the river a third time to rescue the rafters.

Aspen man’s body recovered after two-day search, rescue and recovery effort

A hiker reported missing from work July 30 was found dead in Conundrum Couloir during search and rescue efforts, and it took two days to recover his body due to weather conditions.

Mountain Rescue Aspen and the Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office began the search for the man, and when the team climbed up the couloir, they found the hiker’s body wedged into the skier’s lift against the rock face and mostly covered by snow.

Mountain Rescue Aspen wasn’t able to attempt recovery that day due to weather and had to return two days later on Aug. 2 for the hiker’s body.

Hiker found dead two months after going missing; his dog found alive with his body

Local, state and national search and rescue teams spent nearly 2,000 cumulative hours searching for a Pagosa Springs hiker and his dog who went missing in August before a hunter found the hiker’s body and the dog alive in late October.

Rich Moore, 71, was reported missing Aug. 19 in the area of Blackhead Peak approximately 18 miles east of Pagosa Springs. A hunter on Oct. 30 reported to the Archuleta County Sheriff’s Office he saw the hiker and a white dog in the lower Blanco River drainage basin.

On Oct. 31, a team flew in to recover Moore’s body and rescue Finney, the dog who stayed with her owner for more than ten weeks and who has regained her strength after losing half her body weight.

Driver gets vehicle stuck on hiking trail on 14er

A driver who apparently didn’t realize he was on a hiking trail, not a road, got his pickup truck stuck above 10,000 feet elevation on Mount Lincoln in Park County on Aug. 27, and it took several days for crews to recover the truck.

The nonprofit group Colorado 4×4 Rescue and Recovery said it spent 132 volunteer hours, and team members drove a total of 1,480 miles during its unsuccessful attempt to recover the GMC Canyon. Towing company Mountain Recovery eventually got the truck down the mountain.

 Man last heard from Sept. 27 in Rocky Mountain National Park still missing

Rocky Mountain National Park officials announced Oct. 12 that broad-scale search efforts for Chad Pallansch, a 46-year-old Fort Collins man, had been suspended. The search involved closing a large area that was reopened after federal, state and local search and rescue crews unsuccessfully combed the area.

Pallansch was reported missing in the park Sept. 28 after last being heard from the previous day when he was near the summit of Mount Alice, according to park officials. Park rangers found his car still parked at the North Inlet Trailhead near Grand Lake, where he started his planned 28-mile trek.

A GoFundMe started for Pallansch’s family states efforts to find him will likely not resume until late next summer.

Hiker with no food, water or cold-weather gear saved from Colorado 13er after 10-hour rescue

An ill-prepared hiker who attempted to bushwhack to the summit of a 13er in Chaffee County on Nov. 8 was located and brought down safely by Chaffee County Search and Rescue North after nearly 10 hours.

The person had been caught in inclement weather and was hypothermic when found by search and rescue.

The hiker contacted 911 about 7 p.m., and a rescue team found them about 2 a.m. After warming the individual up for three hours, the team began extracting them around 5 a.m. They were being evaluated in an ambulance by 7 a.m.

Chicago family rescued from Greenhorn Mountain in southern Colorado

A Pueblo County Search and Rescue team was flown by Flight for Life to the top of North Peak to rescue a family of five visiting from Chicago who were stuck on Greenhorn Mountain on Nov. 22.

The family of three adults and two children set out from the Greenhorn Trailhead, which has 3,880 feet of elevation gain.

The rescue team hiked with the family a mile over the peak, where they were joined by county and local fire personnel, and then hiked to Ophir Creek, where emergency vehicles were waiting for them. The rescue took about seven hours.

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But for 2024, the company’s travel experts have recommended one place in Colorado that should be on every vacationer’s bucket list.

Boulder is one of 24 places to land on Fodor’s “Go List” for 2024 and one of just two destinations in the United States. The other is Cannon Beach, Ore.

Fodor’s praised Boulder’s accessibility to recreation and nature, enticing outdoor enthusiasts with 30,000 acres of city-owned open space for hiking, mountain biking, climbing, and tubing. The story also noted the allure of Pearl Street’s al fresco dining options, the majesty of the Flatirons and the innumerable craft breweries worth their pint.

All that and a nod to Coach Prime, who led the University of Colorado football team on a nationally spotlighted journey this season. (We’ll give Fodor’s a pass for perpetuating the myth about Colorado’s 300-plus days of sunshine since we agree there’s nary a bad time of year to visit.)

“Whether you’re an outdoor enthusiast or simply looking to flock to a beautiful city nestled amidst nature, Boulder needs to be on your list,” the publication said.

Other places Fodor’s thinks travelers should visit in 2024 include Nelson, British Columbia; Botswana; Cape Verde; Franschhoek, South Africa; Ifrane, Morocco; Coron, Philippines; Sri Lanka; George Town, Malaysia; Kakaban Island, Indonesia; Stanley, Tasmania; Queenstown, New Zealand; Albania; Bergen, Norway; Rouen, France; Sighișoara, Romania; Copan Ruinas, Honduras; Negril, Jamaica; Puerto Escondido, Mexico; Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, Costa Rica; Cartagena, Colombia; Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay; and São Paulo, Brazil.

On the other side of things, Fodor’s suggested in its 2024 No List that people stay away from nine over-touristed areas of the world, including two in the United States: San Gabriel Mountains National Monument in California and Lake Superior in the Midwest.

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The latest federal numbers on the industry also show that Colorado’s outdoor economy grew by 19.9% last year, the sixth largest increase nationwide.

For the first time since the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis has released data on outdoor recreation, the industry’s sales crossed the $1 trillion mark.

“This is a historic day for the outdoor economy,” Chris Perkins, vice president of programs at the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable, said in a Nov. 17 news conference.

Perkins said ORR, a national coalition that represents more than 110,000 outdoor businesses, had a sense from members’ reports and anecdotes that 2022 was a good year. The federal numbers released last week confirm that, he said.

The recreation covered by the economic review includes bicycling, boating, hiking, fishing, hunting and snow sports. Other outdoor activities focus on motorcycles, all-terrain and recreational vehicles.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis in the Commerce Department issued its first-ever report about the outdoor recreation industry in 2018. Former Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner was a sponsor of the legislation that directed the Commerce Department to issue the report, which goes out annually.

Jessica Turner, president of ORR, said the economic numbers help buttress the industry’s efforts to gain congressional support for money and new policies aimed at growing the outdoor recreation economy.

“I think we’ve always known that this industry is special. It connects people with nature. It makes them healthy and happy. It connects people with family and friends,” Turner said. “But having the actual economic data that takes our industry from a nice-to-have on the weekends to a need-to-have for community jobs has been transformational.”

The new federal analysis found that outdoor recreation supported almost 5 million jobs nationwide, or 3.2%, of U.S employees, in 2022. The numbers in Colorado were 129,773 employees for 4.3% of the state workforce and roughly $6.9 billion in wages.

“We are grateful to the BEA for gathering this data showing clearly that the outdoor industry is a critical economic driver and source of jobs for both Colorado and the country,” Conor Hall, director of Colorado’s Outdoor Recreation Industry Office, said in a statement.

Hall said the state continues to promote stewardship, more equitable access to the outdoors, a healthy workforce and “sustainable growth of the industry.”

Many outdoor businesses were hurt when the coronavirus pandemic first hit because ski resorts, campgrounds and other venues were closed or restricted. Manufacturing of equipment, boats and other goods were affected.

But outdoor recreation boomed in Colorado and across the country during the height of the pandemic when COVID-19 restrictions limited other activities. In the summer of 2020, the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable pitched outdoor recreation as a way to help rejuvenate the economy.

And recreation organizations and advocates continue to champion outdoor recreation as a means of diversifying local economies, especially in rural areas. The bipartisan America’s Outdoor Recreation Act has passed the U.S. Senate and is scheduled to be heard Nov. 30 by the House Natural Resources Committee.

The legislation would, among several things, invest in modernizing campgrounds; increase access to public lands for recreation; and provide technical and financial  help to rural communities near recreation areas.

Turner with the recreation roundtable said the act includes proposals for reservation and data systems to better manage recreation sites.

“We need better policies and better management tools to ensure that the overused, highly visited places are getting the management they need to control that and help with resources and that the underused, amazing landscapes that people don’t know about are getting visitation,” Turner with the recreation roundtable said.

Updated at 10 a.m. Nov. 23 to correct amount of wages of the outdoor recreation industry in Colorado in  2022.

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Per the post, the individual found themselves out of water with no food and was only wearing a cotton hoodie with no other way to warm themselves. As darkness set in, they chose to traverse down an avalanche chute to try to get to a road rather than hiking down the same way they had come up.

The individual was able to contact search and rescue at about 7 p.m., but their phone’s GPS was unable to provide an exact location, according to the post. The response team made up of about 25 search and rescue members was sent out to search for the individual, and at approximately 12:42 a.m. on Nov. 9, they found footprints in six to eight inches of fresh snow as they descended into the gully.

At about 2 a.m., the team came across an odd-looking rock, only to discover that it was the individual — alive, but hypothermic — curled up in the fetal position and covered with snow. After warming the individual up for three hours, the team began extracting them around 5 a.m. They were being evaluated in an ambulance by 7 a.m.

“CCSAR-N and CCSAR-S would like to remind everyone that the 10 essentials are ‘Essential’ for a reason,” the search and rescue group posted on Facebook. “While you may not plan to be out in inclement weather the 10 essentials are essential in helping to keep you alive. … It is also always a good idea to look up the weather before your hike and prepare accordingly.”

The agreement ends an eminent domain dispute that rankled residents of Coal Creek Canyon, 40 miles northwest of downtown Denver in far northern Jefferson and Gilpin counties.

In 2021, the Axton family donated its 448-acre ranch to Denver for use as the city’s 23rd mountain park and its first new mountain park since 1939. The area includes expansive meadows, ponds and a trail built by the Civilian Conservation Corps.

What the city did not acquire then is access to the only road leading to that property.

Beth Eden Baptist Church in Wheat Ridge owns Camp Eden and Camp Eden Road, which runs through the camp for a quarter mile, ending at the entrance to Axton Ranch. The Axtons have been able to use the road due to a handshake agreement they have with the church.

When it came time for Denver to buy public access to the road, the church balked.

On May 31, Denver’s finance director sent a letter to Beth Eden offering $20,000, according to a copy of that letter BusinessDen obtained in a records request. The church declined.

On July 3, an assistant city attorney sent a second letter that contained what he called the city’s “LAST AND FINAL WRITTEN OFFER”: $100,000. Beth Eden turned that down too.

The church, which has declined interview requests about its negotiations with the city, told a local Facebook group in July that it was concerned about illegal activity, increased traffic and that it could be held liable for injuries on the road if it granted access.

That same month, Denver sued Beth Eden and asked a Jefferson County judge to let it take access through eminent domain. Meanwhile, the two sides kept negotiating.

On Oct. 30, the Denver City Attorney’s Office informed Judge Jason Carrithers that a settlement had been reached and asked him to close the case. He did so the next day.

That settlement calls for the city to pay $100,000 to Beth Eden; to snowplow and otherwise maintain the road; to put up “No Trespassing,” “No Parking” and “Slow – Children at Play” signs; and to be liable for injuries that occur, according to a copy of the deal obtained in a records request. In exchange, the church grants Denver an access easement.

The agreement was signed by Mayor Mike Johnston and Beth Eden’s top deacon. City and church officials declined BusinessDen’s requests to discuss their deal last week.

Denver was represented in the case by Senior Assistant City Attorney Ed Gorman. Beth Eden’s lawyer was Christopher Loy of the firm Hatch Ray Olsen Conant in Denver.

Axton Ranch will not become a public park immediately. It is a conservation area for now and will remain so until the city determines what infrastructure, if any, is needed there. Conservation areas are open to small school groups and surveyors but not the general public.

Word of the settlement has drawn mixed reactions from Coal Creek Canyon residents who worry about the effects a public park will have on cleanliness, traffic and fire risks.

“I am so happy Beth Eden won their battle but this of course means the burdens on our neighborhood are about to be realized,” said Jessica Gregg, who lives south of Axton Ranch. “I can only hope Denver does a better job at community engagement this time around.”

Joel Furnace, who lives just up the road from Camp Eden and Axton Ranch, said residents still want to see a ban on fires and overnight camping, plus better communication.

“While the City and County of Denver has addressed certain concerns related to Beth Eden’s private land, such as maintenance and liability,” he said Friday, “there remains many notable omissions in addressing the key concerns voiced by local residents.”

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Officially called The Outside Lab at CU Denver, its mission will be to provide a space where faculty, students, Outside editors and entrepreneurs in the outdoors industry can test skiing, running, hiking gear and other outdoors equipment using highly sophisticated machinery.

Outside will use laboratory findings to enhance gear review features across its platforms by introducing objective testing data to augment subjective field tests, while students will gain valuable experience operating in a laboratory setting, the university said.

“They might create the next Gore-Tex,” said Outside chief executive Robin Thurston, a CU Denver grad. “Obviously we already have a very robust outdoor industry, but it creates an opportunity for even more start-ups and outdoor companies to come to Colorado for a whole number of reasons — for brands, for individual entrepreneurs — and ultimately all this will benefit the consumer because they’re going to end up getting better products, more innovative products, better materials, even crash-testing for helmets.

“CU has really taken a visionary position on this, on how to get diverse students into the lab, how to expose the lab to their engineering department, as well as other programs,” he added.

Colorado’s outdoor industry has a $9.6-billion impact on the state’s GDP annually, according to the Colorado Office of Economic Development & International Trade.

The College of Engineering, Design and Computing will manage the lab, which received $200,000 from the Colorado State Outdoor Recreation Grant Program, according to Conor Hall, director of Colorado’s Outdoor Recreation Industry Office.

The college already has some testing equipment, according to Dean Martin L. Dunn, but much more is coming. “We’re kind of working on things ranging from behavior of wear of shoes to behavior of skis, helmets, even an area we’re soon going to be ramping up, (testing) permeability and behavior of garments,” Dunn said.

“Being able to exercise our engineering chops on really cool products that students will be able to see in a few months, when they’re at the ski lift seeing a pair of skis and saying, ‘Hey, I worked on those skis in the lab,'” he added.

The seed of the idea came from Thurston, who was chief digital officer at Under Armour, a sportswear company, from 2013-16.

“We had a very robust, amazing innovation lab,” Thurston recalled. “It was everything from 3D printing to reliability testing to fabric testing in heat and cold rooms. Having had the experience of seeing an innovation lab like that, I felt like there was a big opportunity to have something that was more open to the industry as a whole, a place where start-up founders could potentially come and test their products, a place for Outside to do more in-depth reviews similar to a Consumer Reports — which does a lot of lab testing on products — but in the outdoor category. CU Denver was just the perfect partner for that.”

For example, Outside gear guru Will Taylor foresees being able to measure the flex and torsional stiffness of skis with a machine that can test a lot of skis in a short period of time. That data can be combined with subjective on-mountain testing conducted by teams of Outside’s expert skiers, which is how skis have been tested for gear reviews for decades.

“You’re bringing those two things together to create very compelling results for our readership,” Taylor said. “We can be like, ‘OK, we felt this ski flex this way on the mountain. We think it compares with this other ski in this way.’ Now we’re going to be able to go to the lab and test that and see if we’re right. Our goal is to give the best objective gear reviews that we can. This takes us light years ahead of where we were before.”

Another machine will be able to test the durability of hiking boots, trail running shoes and road running shoes by simulating the human gait in hiking and running over hundreds of miles in a matter of days to identify the most durable footwear.

“You can take measurements of how the midsole has been affected, how the traction on the bottom has been affected, whether things are wearing evenly or not,” Taylor said.

Students will benefit by gaining experience that is hard to get elsewhere, preparing them for jobs at outdoors industry giants such as Patagonia and VF, a Denver-based outdoors company that includes The North Face, JanSport, Timberland, Eastpak, Smartwool and Vans.

“The student part of it is super cool,” Taylor said. “Engineers that I’ve talked to, these are outdoors people that are like, ‘We wish we had this opportunity when we were in college, that we could touch these machines, work with them, instead of having to get on-the-job training.’ We’re really hoping we can provide a well-trained workforce for people like VF, or maybe it’s one person who’s building bike frames and can use someone who knows how to use the equipment so they can test that stuff. There’s a multitude of ways a student with that training could go into the work force.”

Facilitating the lab at CU Denver fits with the mission of the state’s Outdoor Recreation Industry Office to attract outdoor industry players to Colorado. The grant from the state will be used largely for purchasing more testing equipment.

“In this industry, the big players — the VFs and Patagonias of the world — have their own gear testing labs, but very few others do,” Hall said. “They don’t have the size and economies of scale to make that practical. It’s a great opportunity for our industry here, and a really attractive thing for companies looking to come to Colorado. We see the value in this, and we’re going to do everything we can to help this effort succeed.”

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Denver Water crews will be making improvements to a water distribution pipe in the canyon, so the parking lot and the canyon itself will be inaccessible, according to a news release.

“As a working facility, there are times when operations and maintenance projects create unsafe conditions for the public, prompting us to close trail access,” said Brandon Ransom, manager of recreation at Denver Water. “In this case, the project requires the use of a helicopter to bring in the appropriate equipment, and it is in everyone’s best interest that we close trail access for the day.”

The canyon is set to reopen the next day.

Hikers and bikers on the Colorado Trail will also need to seek alternative access points on Thursday, Nov. 2.

The Sprague Lake Boardwalk Replacement Project was officially completed on Oct. 20 and was funded mostly through recreation fee dollars, plus additional funds from the Rocky Mountain Conservancy.

The flat Sprague Lake Loop is about 0.7 miles and takes visitors around one of the most popular lakes in the park for hiking, fishing and seeing wildlife, all while under views of the Continental Divide. Its parking lot area has a picnic area and vault toilets, as well as an accessible backcountry campsite.

During the 2023 summer season, National Park Service staff and partners worked to replace a 230-foot section of the trail, which included a boardwalk built in 200 that brought visitors over riparian habitat along the southwest shore. That boardwalk had “outlived its lifespan,” the NPS said, and the project to replace it would not only address its structural deficiencies, but would also widen the trail to better accommodate people in wheelchairs or using strollers.

A steel frame was installed as the support base to protect the wetland area and new wooden boards were laid down. Two scenic overlooks were also widened and improved.

Read the full story from our partner at Denver7.com.