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NEWS   08/24/2026

A peek into the extraordinary impact of Adam Palmer and his unwavering drive for a better community

Plus: Crested Butte ski patrollers negotiate better pay, rescuing buckets of fish from a fire, legislation to block a bigger Glenwood Springs mine

Sneak Peek of the Week

“The Casual Enormity of Adam Palmer”

The Adam’s Way trail in Eagle honors Adam Palmer, a father, friend and local leader who died in an avalanche in February 2021. (Jason Blevins, The Colorado Sun)

“It’s fun to be like Adam Palmer.”

— Montana Palmer

Just about everyone who knew Adam Palmer talks about a sudden, electric realization shortly after meeting him: This is an extraordinary human.

It was a common epiphany when Palmer was on a stage, a trail or a remote, snowy peak. It struck just as often in meetings as Palmer, an Eagle town councilman, cajoled others to join him on a mission to clean up his community’s carbon footprint.

And now, though he died in 2021, everyone gets a chance to feel the inspiring light of Palmer, thanks to a new movie touring the state. “The Casual Enormity of Adam Palmer” documentary is both a celebration of the mythical father, husband, musician, athlete and community leader and a call to arms in the fight for clean, renewable energy.

Palmer died on Feb. 1, 2021, in an avalanche in the San Juans outside Silverton that also killed Eagle entrepreneur and fellow town councilman Andy Jessen, and local architect and father Seth Bossung.

The well-named documentary details Palmer’s lasting impact on his community, from raising two daughters to spearheading a transformative effort to wean a giant swath of the Western Slope off coal. He was one of the first green-minded board members to push the Holy Cross Energy utility toward clean energy. (The 45,000-member electric cooperative reported 100% of its energy from wind and solar farms in March, reaching a milestone first pushed by Palmer in the early 2000s.)

“Adam’s spirit is very much with us today. To know Adam was to know joy in so many ways,” said Holy Cross Energy CEO Bryan Hannegan, who was one of more than two dozen people interviewed for the documentary. “Just embracing the opportunity and being optimistic. Waking up optimistic, man, there is nothing we can’t do and a lot of that I gained by being around and in his aura.”

Today, the Adam Palmer Sustainability Fund is carrying on his legacy, with projects in the town of Eagle that include Adam’s Way, a sustainable community of high-efficiency, affordable homes for local employees that was built by Habitat for Humanity and the Eagle County School District. The fund also helped Walking Mountains and local parents at Eagle Valley Elementary switch the heat at a greenhouse at the Walking Mountains Science Center campus in Edwards from to solar power from natural gas.

He also helped found the Hardscrabble Trails Coalition, which has carved some 150 miles of single track on federal and town-owned lands around Eagle. He was instrumental in securing funding for a surf wave in the Eagle River in town. He got a bunch of hockey folks together to build and maintain an ice rink in Eagle’s Town Park. He played music with several bands over the course of three decades in the valley. He served on the Eagle town board of trustees.

And, per the Palmer way, he was a gifted mountain athlete who excelled at skiing, river surfing and mountain biking.

“He was so accomplished as an endurance athlete that he just thought anything was possible and anything was attainable,” said his neighbor and longtime outdoors partner Ben Zeeb, who has an almost limitless supply of adventure stories with Palmer. “Just keep moving forward and keep charging and you could accomplish anything.”

Adam’s wife of more than 20 years, Kalie, still marvels at his relentless drive. In the movie she recalls many years ago hearing people call him “El Jefe” and “El Presidente” when he formed the trails group.

“Wait, you’re on another board?” she said. “People don’t want to just do things the normal way … and they saw through Adam’s life that you can make things happen in a way that is different.”

His oldest daughter, Montana, is an aspiring musician who plays a song she wrote after her dad’s death in the documentary.

Montana says she feels herself becoming “more and more like him.”

“It’s fun to be like Adam Palmer,” she said. “I think everyone should be like Adam Palmer.”

“The Casual Enormity of Adam Palmer” premiered at the Capitol Theater in Eagle in June, kicking off a statewide tour that is raising money for sustainable energy nonprofits at every stop. Each film screening includes a panel of local sustainability advocates discussing how everyone can play a role in transforming their communities.

The movie tour includes:

• Aug. 1 at the Sheridan Opera House in Telluride
• Aug. 5 at the Dairy Arts Center in Boulder
• Aug. 7 at the Alma Stone Church in Alma
• Aug. 13 at the Backdoor Theater in Nederland
• Sept. 9 at the Wheeler Opera House in Aspen
• Sept. 10 at the Paradise Theater in Paonia
• Sept. 17 at the Crystal Theater in Carbondale

>> Click over to The Sun next week to read this story

The Outsider has a podcast! Veteran reporter Jason Blevins covers the industry from the inside out, plus indulges in the fun side of being outdoors in our beautiful state.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Breaking Trail

Crested Butte ski patrollers secure pay increases after refreshingly quiet negotiation with Vail Resorts

Crested Butte Mountain Resort ski patrollers tend to an injured skier beneath the Paradise chairlift in January. (Jason Blevins, The Colorado Sun)

The Crested Butte Mountain Resort ski patroller union last week unanimously approved a new contract after negotiating with Vail Resorts for three months.

On the heels of a failed ski patrol contract negotiation at Telluride ski area that resulted in a strike and the owner closing the resort during the New Year’s holiday last winter, the Crested Butte ski patrollers were able to secure a 17% wage increase, with most getting several more dollars an hour.

The 64-member Crested Butte Professional Ski Patrol Association — one of three founding patrols in the United Professional Ski Patrollers of America union that formed in 2003 and eventually became the United Mountain Workers union — also negotiated medical and technical rescue training opportunities. Some members received retroactive pay and benefits reaching back to the start of the 2025-26 ski season. The collective bargaining agreement also included recovery time off for patrollers working on their physical and mental well-being.

A pinch point for ski patrollers at Vail Resorts’ ski areas has been wage compression. When the company raised starting wages in 2022 to $20 an hour as part of a $175 million investment in employees, that same increase did not apply to veteran workers. The new Crested Butte Mountain Resort contract run through November 2029 and increases pay for senior patrollers.

“We’ve been able to help those with the most experience in the immediate future, by targeting a market adjustment based on years of experience, (while also) creating a pathway for new patrollers to earn the wages of an experienced trade professional,” said Reid Pritchett, president of the ski patrol local, which is a chapter of the United Mountain Workers labor union representing more than 1,100 resort workers at 13 resorts in four Western states.

Crested Butte Mountain Resort, in a statement, said it was pleased with the new agreement and “grateful for the entire team who are working hard to welcome guests and employees” back to the resort this coming winter.

Vail Resorts endured a blow when ski patrollers went on strike at its Park City Mountain Resort over the New Year’s holiday in 2024 after months of failed negotiations to reach a new contract. The long lines and lack of open terrain became one of the ugliest public relations debacles in the company’s history and the 12-day strike ended with patrollers getting close to everything they were wanting.

On the flip side of that is the Telluride ski patrol strike in late December that ended when patrollers returned to work without winning much.

The Crested Butte contract appears to have landed somewhere in the middle of those two high-profile collective bargaining agreements.

“Were we able to win everything that we wanted? No,” reads a statement from the Crested Butte union’s executive board. “However we have been able to correct years of wage compression for the more senior members. We secured much needed recovery time off for the mental and physical health of our team, and a wage structure that allows our younger members more growth opportunities throughout their careers.”

The Guide

Colorado’s Western Slope lawmakers unite to block Glenwood Springs gravel quarry expansion

Politically connected investment firm Rocky Mountain Industrials wants to grow its Mid-Continent Limestone Quarry, seen in the upper left of the photo, above Glenwood Springs, from about 16 acres to almost 60 acres. (Jason Blevins, The Colorado Sun and EcoFlights)

“One of Colorado’s most iconic natural resources should not be put at unnecessary risk for materials that can be found somewhere else.”

— Colorado U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd

The federal government’s resource roller coaster in the last decade — from expanded mining to more protection and back to extraction — has challenged Glenwood Springs and Garfield County as the community works to block plans to expand a gravel quarry above the hot springs town.

Legislation by Colorado’s Western Slope federal lawmakers could stop the ride, with a unified push to permanently prevent Bureau of Land Management approval of the controversial gravel mine expansion above Glenwood Springs.

The Glenwood Hot Springs Protection Act — proposed by Republican U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd and Democratic U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper — lands a few weeks after the BLM deemed the Mid-Continent Limestone Quarry expansion proposal in order and ready to move to the next phase of review.

The owner of the quarry mine — Rocky Mountain Industrials, which paid $2.8 million for the 16-acre mine in 2016 — first proposed the expansion to more than 56 acres in 2018. The plan has galvanized local governments, tribal groups and locals who fear the tripling of the gravel quarry operation could hurt the region’s robust tourist economy, which includes a hot springs resort that ranks as one of Colorado’s first tourist attractions. The proposal would increase the number of trucks carrying gravel through the town to around 400, up from 20.

Hurd, in a press call on Thursday, said his legislation “should not be very controversial at all.”

“I am pro-mining. I am pro-energy. I am pro-resource development,” said the first-term congressman who grew up in Grand Junction and whose first job as a politician is representing Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District. “But responsible resource development means recognizing that not every location is the right place for every project.”

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Firefighters, biologists work together to rescue Uncompahgre cutthroat from charred forest

Eric Gardunio uses an electrofishing backpack while CPW staff and fire personnel look on with nets and buckets ready to secure fish. (Courtesy, CPW)

“After hiking through burned and smoldering forest, it was a relief to get to the creek and do the work we know how to do — catching fish.”

— Eric Gardunio, CPW aquatic biologist

In the middle of the Gold Mountain fire is Nate Creek, a small stream tumbling down the west side of the toothy Cimarron Ridge. And in that creek are fish that are the last genetic relatives to the native cutthroats that once crowded the streams flowing into Uncompahgre River around Ouray and Ridgway.

This week 10 biologists with Colorado Parks and Wildlife joined firefighters for a one-of-a-kind rescue of Uncompahgre cutthroat trout, in a short weather window that allowed access to Nate Creek in the middle of a nearly 40,000-acre fire that is 24% contained. The biologists rescued 103 trout and transported them to a state fish hatchery for protection.

“These beautiful fish represent a living part of the history of this place,” said state aquatic biologist Eric Gardunio, in a statement. “They also fill a unique role in the function of the ecosystems they inhabit. Currently, CPW is trying to restore them to many of the streams where they have been lost. They are resilient and have persisted in harsh environments for thousands of years, and they can flourish again if we give them a chance.”

Gardunio has been watching the Gold Mountain fire spread toward Cimarron Ridge and Silver Jack Reservoir, growing increasingly anxious for the rare fish in Nate Creek, which rolls down Owl Creek Pass and through Devils Canyon above Ridgway Reservoir.

On July 15, Gardunio’s team hiked through burned and smoldering forest to reach the creek, where they used electrofishing backpacks to stun fish in a section of the stream. With rain forecast — which is good for firefighters but not necessarily fish in streams that get clogged with debris — they were harried.

The biologists and firefighters lugged 5-gallon buckets of fish up and out of the canyon before 1 p.m. as winds shifted and the fire danger spiked. They loaded the 103 fish — from 3 inches to 7 inches — into a hatchery truck and hauled them 160 miles to the Rifle Falls Hatchery, where they are in an isolated facility.

“In my 26 years of experience, I have never had such a smooth field operation — in a hazard zone, no less,” said Valerie Thompson, aquatic program manager with the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests, in a statement that heralded the cooperation between biologists, wildlife manager, fire personnel and the Forest Service. “The level of coordination and communication was unprecedented.”

— j

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