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Need a Backcountry Guide? There’s an App for That

So, you’re itching for an adventure. Not surprising, given most Coloradans’ proximity to, well, a veritable promised land of mountains, crags, trails, rivers, and general outdoorsy splendor. Given the options, though, it can be a little overwhelming to narrow down what, exactly, you want to do, and where, exactly, you can do it. And chances are, if you want to really push yourself outside your recreational comfort zone, you’ll need a backcountry guide. Enter 57hours, a platform that connects adrenaline seekers—of all levels—and outdoor guides in much the same way that VRBO or Airbnb connect vacationers and homeowners.

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Colorado’s Iconic Guest Ranches are Contending with an Upswing in Visitors and Changes in the Workforce

Staying at a dude ranch in the West is a rite of passage for many vacationers. So beloved is the experience that for decades, the same families have booked the same weeks at the same guest ranches in Colorado. Some of these destinations are more luxurious than others, but all of them offer a taste of the iconic, gritty Old West (horseback riding! chuckwagon feasts!) intertwined with the gourmet meals and guided adventures. Because of COVID-19, however, the way guest ranches operate has necessarily had to change. Early on, the pandemic took an economic toll on many ranches, where communal traditions like family-style dinners and campfire jam sessions became a little too close for comfort in a virus-y world. While early closures, capacity restrictions, and staff cuts dealt catastrophic blows to some, almost every ranch owner had to make difficult decisions about how to survive—and hopefully thrive—in the new normal. But change wasn’t easy.

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How outdoor brands are taking vaccine mandates into their own hands

In the summer of 2021, Kim Miller found himself in a familiar position: considering the best move to shepherd his team through a life-threatening storm. In his previous life as an expedition leader, he’d shouldered that very burden on plenty of high peaks. As the CEO of Scarpa North America, he now faced a different deadly threat: Covid-19. “My mentality as a leader is to keep people safe,” Miller says. “And motivated, engaged, and happy at a time when people are freaking out.”

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Outdoor Retailer has wrapped. Here's what you missed on the last day.

[Co-bylined] Aaaand, that’s a wrap on the 2022 Outdoor Retailer Snow Show. As attendees trickled in to hit their last meetings and squeeze in just a few more booths, conversations were upbeat. Coffee queue congratulations were plentiful coming off of last night’s fourth annual Innovation Awards ceremony, where 14 winners were crowned by an independent judging panel for their game-changing outdoor products and services.

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Live from the second day of Outdoor Retailer

[Co-bylined] Right on cue, the flakes were flying outside the Convention Center as the second day of the OR Snow Show ramped up. The morning kicked off with an early session covering outdoor market research and consumer trends, which parsed data on a phenomenon we’ve all happily witnessed over the past couple of years: More people are itching to buy outdoor stuff. In fact, the core outdoor market grew by $5 billion between 2019 and 2021, now sitting at $27.4 billion. Accompanying this data was the pointed re

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Our Happy Place: The Lifestyle We Live And Love [cover story]

If there’s one thing we’ve learned over the past year, it’s to appreciate the place we live—because, well, we’ve all been spending a lot of time here. We found ourselves rediscovering what we love about the institutions, venues, businesses, restaurants, parks, and people that make up our (suddenly smaller) world. Sure, the way we go about crafting our lifestyle has been—and will continue to be—outside the norm these past months, and the places that infuse the personality of our neighborhoods may operate differently or more intermittently than they ever have, but their contribution to the character of our city remains.

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The More You Know

Colorado’s economy is good. Really good. We’ve got the seventh-fastest job growth rate in the country. Plus, we’re a top 10 state for venture capital (as a percent of our GDP) and in the top five states for small-business innovation research grants. Yep, we’re calling it a boom—and, according to the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation, there are nine industries in the nine-county metro Denver region that are driving our state’s roaring economy.

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Family Ties (cover story)

Too often, people talk about our city’s power players as an elite cabal of the über-rich. But in an ancient town like Boston, family names are worth far more than any Forbes ranking. Power, at its core, is about having a lasting voice that effects change, whether you were born into a stately Brahmin house or got your start pushing a souvenir cart outside Fenway. Many families on this list—all include at least two successive generations—first made their mark here decades or centuries ago: a rags-to-riches tale of launching a business just to stay afloat only to reach unimaginable heights. Today, we know those humble beginnings as empires built on the inherited wisdom, work ethic, and ambition passed down from generation to generation. From our biggest money movers and development moguls to our most dedicated public servants and media pioneers, here are Boston’s power families.

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Will Big Oil Tank Colorado's Economy—Again?

Not too long ago, a ghost town stood where downtown Denver now flourishes. It was in the mid-1980s, when the price of crude oil nose-dived 67 percent in about a year and dragged the state’s economy down with it. Companies fled the city and major institutions shut down, leaving Denver with the highest number of empty offices in the nation. (One of the vacant desks at Buckhorn Petroleum belonged to a geologist named John Hickenlooper.)

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Meet Christina Anderson: The Most Important Person at GoPro

How’s this for a branding achievement: In making the space-survival film of the year, The Martian, Ridley Scott turned to GoPro cameras as a key storytelling tool. As Quartz points out, “GoPros had more screen time than Kristen Wiig or Donald Glover.” Watching Matt Damon’s ill-fated astronaut log his every action with the small camera, you have to wonder at how GoPro has become synonymous with first-person video capture. One woman deserves much of the credit for that: Christina Anderson.

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