Estes Valley Voice Podcast

Story by Patti Brown While the goal is not to be busy for the sake of being busy, there are a lot of things that offer engagement and an opportunity to lean in and contribute to our community. Over the past week, I have attended an Indigenous Fashion Show, an instructional recital and ballet master class put on by AVID — Artistic Adventures in Dance –and the Estes Skijor event. This may be the “sh...

Story by Patti Brown Estes Park’s Town Hall is scheduled to reopen Friday morning after being shut down due to power and phone service outages that began Wednesday disrupting the ability of employees to conduct the Town’s business. What began with sporadic disruptions in the morning persisted throughout the day and backup power systems began to fail in the late afternoon, according to Public Infor...

Story by Patti Brown The Estes Park Town Hall was closed Wednesday afternoon due to a power outage in the building. Additionally, a phone service outage was also reported. Press releases about both situations did not provide a reason for the service disruptions but Public Information Officer Kate Miller responded to an inquiry by the Estes Valley Voice to deny that the utility outages were related...

Story by Terry Rustin Estes Park Health has a new Chief of the Medical Staff, Dr. Jennifer McLellan. McLellan will serve as the voice of the doctors in advocating for quality medical care at the hospital. “I’m really looking forward to working with all of our medical staff here, our physicians and our advanced practice providers,” she said. McLellan, a general surgeon, has been with EPH since 2019...

Story by Cathy Creagh How do we retire, grow older every year, and avoid living the stereotypical life of a senior citizen: decline, disengagement, and disappointment? How do we cope with common fears of old age: isolation, irrelevance, and invisibility? Author, researcher, and practitioner Ron Pevny has done decades of work to answer those questions and more in his book “Conscious Living, Conscio...

Story by Hank Lacey Congress gave the American people a long-sought gift before the holidays: a new law that dramatically improves access to public lands recreation. The Expanding Public Lands Outdoor Recreation Experiences (EXPLORE) Act includes numerous provisions aimed at modernizing recreational facilities and infrastructure, reduce paperwork burdens associated with outdoor play on federal lan...

Story by Patti Brown What do you get when you mix cowboys, horses, skis, snow, and speed? It’s called skijoring, a crazy and wild competitive sport that will debut on the campus of the Estes Park Fairground Jan. 24 to 26. Think waterskiing, only replace the water with snow and then switch out the speedboat with a horse. Add in some images of a rodeo. Now you have the picture – a person on skis bei...

Feature by Barb Boyer Buck This is a first in a series of profiles the Estes Valley Voice will publish on the individuals who serve as Estes Park Town Trustees. Outspoken and inquisitive, Trustee Mark Igel didn’t run for Town Board to rubber stamp every new idea the Town of Estes Park brings forward. Nor did he join to try to please the other board members. As a 35-year resident, volunteer fire fi...

Story by Patti Brown The Estes Park Salud Clinic is facing a looming funding crisis that threatens its future. If a solution is not found for the projected $1 million operating shortfall, the clinic may close May 31, said John Santistevan the president and CEO of Salud Family Health in an interview last week with the Estes Valley Voice. The dire financial situation is due in large part to signific...

Story by Hank Lacey Update, Jan. 13, 2025, 6:25 pm The Colorado General Assembly welcomed 25 new members in the past week. They include five new senators and about two dozen new representatives, including District 49’s Lesley Smith. Senators making their first appearance in the upper chamber are Scott Bright of District 13, elected to replace term-limited Kevin Priola; Lisa Frizell of District 2;...

Story by Patti Brown Over the past seven decades, Buel Porter’s holiday displays have charmed Estes Park. It began with a display of Santa in a helicopter which he created for his own home in 1955. The first one created for the Town of Estes Park was Santa and his reindeer which came in 1957. He created several whimsical ones—Christmas in Bugville, the Old Woman who Lived in a Shoe, and Santa’s Xm...

Story by Heidi Bigler Cole TWA Pilot Tom Maher noticed something unusual when he arrived at Heathrow Airport in London. It was 1965. Throngs of young women were crowded into the airport parking lot, looking toward the tarmac. “What’s going on around here?” Maher asked. “You’re taking the Beatles to New York today,” local airport staff told him. Maher was about four months into his 31-year TWA care...

Story by Elisabeth Sherwin Colorado is known for many things. Unfortunately drinking is one of them. The state’s per capita alcohol consumption is higher than the national average. The national average is 536 drinks per person per year. Colorado beat that in 2023 with 645 drinks per person per year, according to the State Epidemiological Outcomes Workgroup . Fortunately, many residents also seek t...

Story by Barb Boyer Buck Over the last year as America prepared to elect a new president, immigration was one of the most talked about political issues, including heated rhetoric about deporting those who are in the country without legal authorization. On Oct. 30, a week before the election, during a campaign rally in Rocky Mount, N.C., Donald Trump promised that “on day one,” he would “launch the...

Story by Patti Brown Looking back and looking forward This week we touched the six-month milestone since the launch of the Estes Valley Voice. We are grateful to our readers, subscribers, sponsors, and advertisers. Thank you all and thank you the generous contributors who helped us not just to reach our goal but to exceed it for a 50-50 match through ColoradoGives . Thank you to the Colorado Media...

Story by Hank Lacey A Larimer County judge ruled Monday that the Estes Valley Fire Protection District violated the state’s open meetings law when it hired chief Paul Capo during an October executive session. The decision is a win for the Estes Valley Voice and its editor, Patti Brown, in a lawsuit filed to challenge EVFPD’s secretive process for hiring its new day-to-day leader.  “[W]hile they av...

Story by Elisabeth Sherwin “I am a story-teller,” said Kevin Wolf, 73, in a recent interview. Wolf also is a published author of a half-dozen books, the most recent of which is “Trailridge,” a mystery/adventure set in Rocky Mountain National Park. In it he introduces Guy Hogan who will be a recurring character in future stories. In Hogan’s debut novel, he solves a crime involving poaching, the Law...

Story by Hank Lacey The human-wildlife interface is one of the many challenges threatening the state’s big cat population. Colorado Parks and Wildlife unveiled in November the results of a multi-year study on Western Slope mountain lions, showing robust population densities, while the agency’s governing body also adopted a ten-year management plan for mountain lions on the East Slope. The density...

The Barrel owner Ingrid Bush sheds light on building a successful business Story by Dawn Wilson On a windy, late fall afternoon, Mike, the bar manager at The Barrel, places a cinnamon stick on the handle of a red mug and pours a hot beverage into the cup. Steam drifts off the golden liquid of hot whisky with a hint of honey and lemon. A hot toddy, one of the winter specials at The Barrel, is the i...

Light pollution from outdoor, artificial light has been shown to take a toll on humans, wildlife, and ecosystems Story by Suzy Blackhurst Clearly seeing the Milky Way and other stars and protecting ecosystems that rely on the day-night cycle are just two of the named benefits of becoming a certified Dark Sky International Community, according to Dana Paiement, senior destination development manage...

Candidates interested in standing for election on one of five area boards can submit their name from Jan. 26 through Feb. 20 Story by Suzy Blackhurst On Jan. 26, just six short weeks from now, people interested in serving on one of five special taxing districts in the Estes Valley can get an early jump on other candidates. Procrastinators have until Feb. 20 for their name to be printed on a ballot...

Hospital board authorizes a 4% market and merit-based salary increase for staff Story by Suzy Blackhurst Thirty minutes was all it took to reject two objections made by the Estes Valley Voice and pass the 2025 Estes Park Health’s $63 million budget Friday morning. The special session of the EPH Board of Directors was called so the board would have time to consider the objections prior to adopting...

Ballet Boulder comes to The Stanley Hotel for three sold-out performances Feature by Patti Brown A Sugar Plum Fairy, waltzing flowers, a princely nutcracker, a young girl, magical mice, and a parade of exotic characters from Spain, Arabia, China, and Russia all make Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker a perennial holiday tradition. The Boulder Ballet will perform excerpts from The Nut...

“Nero is fiddling while Rome is burning, and the emperor has no clothes on.” Commentary by Thomas E. Leigh M.D. Part of the Hippocratic oath is "primum non nocere" -- do no harm. I recently tried to contact both David Beaty and Corey Workman after the last board meeting and neither returned my calls or emails. So, I am choosing to go public with my concerns. We could communicate more effe...

Company acquires local Caring Hands company to provide continuity of services in the Estes Valley Story by Patti Brown Estes Park is often called the “oldest” community in Colorado. That has nothing to do with when the town was founded – April 17, 1917. Estes is considered the oldest community because more than 50 percent of the population of the community’s population is 60 years of age or older....