NEWS 11/09/2026
Still waiting for a final call on Proposition 137 as supporters claim the win
Plus: Vail Resorts wades into a bitter proxy fight, weather not a factor in the deaths of 2 Leadville climbers, urban skijoring coming to Denver
Proposition 137, the measure that could funnel $180 million a year in existing sales taxes toward wildfire mitigation and land conservation, turned into one of Colorado’s tightest ballot measure races this election.
With 85% of the votes counted Thursday morning, the “yes” votes outnumbered the “no” votes by a slim 32,199, out of more than 2.3 million votes cast. The Associated Press had not called the race as of early Thursday.
Supporters Wednesday said that was enough to claim the win, calling it “a decisive victory for the state’s conservation legacy.”
The ballot measure allows the state to keep revenue generated from the sales tax on certain sporting equipment for forest management, watershed restoration, land protection and improved access to the outdoors.
Stay tuned on for a final decision from The Associated Press on the Proposition 137 vote.
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Breaking Trail
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Vail Resorts girds for proxy battle
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The base of Vail ski area in January 2025
“I am amused I live rent free in Rob Katz’s head.”
— Utah billionaire Matthew Prince
Vail Resorts, like many Republicans last month, is fretting about an upcoming election.
A bitter proxy battle is brewing as a large investor pushes to overhaul the company’s business strategy with two outsider board nominees. And an upstart investor is lobbying shareholders to put him on the board to adjust the company’s trajectory.
And just like the 2026 midterms, the company’s annual meeting Dec. 14 could mark a significant change for the largest ski resort operator in the world.
The proxy fight comes as Vail Resorts sees annual sales of its game-changing Epic Pass ebb. For nearly 15 years the company soared on those sales, often posting double-digit annual increases in sales dollars. But now, as the season pass market matures — the days of 10%, 20% and even 30% annual increases are over — growth is going to have to come from other places.
The company is asking shareholders for patience: vote for the incumbents who support company CEO Rob Katz while he orchestrates a rebound based on technological innovation and customer-focused improvements. But Oasis Management, which owns $500 million in Vail Resorts stock, is done with patience. The company’s stock has wallowed at a 10-year low for the last three years and it’s time for a change, the investor says.
“Despite its competitive advantages, however, Vail Resorts has gone downhill,” Oasis founder and CEO Seth Fischer said in a letter to Vail Resorts shareholders this week. “The company has been operationally mismanaged, in our view, resulting in a stagnant guest experience, deteriorating operating performance and disappointing returns for shareholders. It’s time to get Vail Resorts back on its edges.”
Vail Resorts in its proxy statements argues that Utah billionaire Matthew Prince introduced Oasis to its nominees. Prince wants Vail Resorts to sell him its Park City Mountain Resort, saying the company would be stronger if it pursued an “asset light” business model and sold off its major ski areas. Vail Resorts suggests in its filings that the Oasis plan is connected to Prince’s push for the world’s largest resort operator to shed ski areas.
The software entrepreneur denies he introduced nominees to Oasis but following the Vail Resorts proxy filings suggesting the connection, Oasis did strip two of its initial nominees — Utah ski racing legend Picabo Street and Utah venture capitalist Bryce Roberts — from its roster of nominees last week.
>> Click here to read this story
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The Guide
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Colorado Mountain College climbers were killed in a fall. Weather did not play a role.
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Jackson Donlon, 20, of New York (left) and Kaden Matsuda, 19, from Ridgway
It was too easy of an assumption. The wet snowstorm that dumped as much as 2 feet of snow on the Sawatch Range on Oct. 24 must have played a role in the deaths of the two Colorado Mountain College students who never returned from a climbing trip that weekend.
But weather did not factor into the deaths of Kaden Matsuda, a 19-year-old from Ridgway studying to be a woodland firefighter, and 20-year-old Jackson Donlon, from New York, who was studying to be a mountain guide. The Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office on Tuesday said the pair were killed in a fall resulting from the “catastrophic failure” of an anchor as they descended a peak near Ice Mountain and West Apostle Mountain.
The post-tragedy speculation swirled around decision-making in the snowy backcountry, following the well-worn narrative that follows most every death in the snowy wilds. Matsuda and Donlon, by all reports, were smart and experienced outdoorsmen.
The Chaffee County investigation into their deaths showed they were descending a peak, with Donlon rappelling off, presumably, a natural rock anchor — a Tuesday release by Chaffee County Sheriff Andy Rohrich said the anchor was “made of rock substrate” — that was backed up by a piton and a third “rock substrate” anchor, demonstrating a redundancy deployed by experienced mountaineers. Matsuda was attached to those two backups as well as the primary anchor when “the anchor had a catastrophic failure of unknown cause,” reads the release from the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office.
Anchor failure can involve a fixed anchor like a bolt or piton ripping out of a rock, a piece of gear placed by a climber pulling out or a climber making a mistake when anchoring a rappel or lowering off a route, said Pete Takeda, a longtime climber who edits the American Alpine Club’s annual “Accidents in North American Climbing” report, which ranks as one of the outdoor world’s top safety publications.
“It happens every year but this sounds like an unusual set of circumstances,” said Takeda, who noted there were not enough details in the Chaffee County statement to know what happened. (The arcane term “rock substrate,” when Googled, turns up two things: news reports citing the Chaffee County sheriff’s statement and a layer of stone for the bottom of a fish aquarium.)
Rohrich, in his Tuesday Facebook post announcing the cause of death for Donlon and Matsuda, said the two “will certainly be remembered by my staff as an example to others of what preparation looks like.”
“In most similar cases that have led to a devastating conclusion we find it easy to pick apart what was done wrong,” Rohrich wrote. “That was not the case with Kaden and Jackson.”
>> Click here to read this story.
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The Playground
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Ski-Haw! Skijoring coming to Denver
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Skijoring racer Colter Fretwell on Feb. 20, 2022, in Silverton. (Hugh Carey, The Colorado Sun)
Organizers of distinctly mountain events have spent the last two decades exploring urban settings for their winter contests. The idea behind high-flying athletes in cityscapes — like the 2011 Big Air contest in downtown Denver and the 2022 Olympic Big Air venue flanked by industrial cooling towers in Beijing — is to expose new audiences to snowy fun.
Next up is skijoring, the fast-paced blurring of rodeo and skiing where horseback riders yank skiers through snowy small-town streets. Denver will host two skijoring big-city debuts this winter, yanking the historic mountain-town races into the Mile High City for the first time ever.
The National Western Stock Show this week announced it would host its first skijoring contest Jan. 18 with 50 teams on Betty Cram Drive on the west side of the stock show grounds near Denver. And the Pro Skijor Frontier Tour this week announced a stop at Bally’s Arapahoe Horse Park in Aurora on Feb. 19-21.
With harried horses pulling skiers through a course of gates, jumps and obstacles, the historic Western sport is galloping into cities like Denver, Boise and Salt Lake as part of the second Pro Skijor Frontier Tour, which offers competitions for cash-chasing elite skiers and snowboarders as well as seniors and kids.
The push into metropolitan markets is part of a larger plan to establish skijoring as a legitimate professional sport with a loyal following, said Pro Skijor co-founder and CEO Brian Gardner, whose tour offers big cash prizes, season-long points and a championship finals at a Lake Tahoe casino that he hopes appeals to athletes, sponsors and fans.
“It’s a sport that people don’t necessarily have to understand before they show up. Within a few minutes of watching it, they’re hooked,” Gardner said in an email to The Sun. “What we’re building with Pro Skijor is an opportunity to take that excitement to a much larger audience while preserving the Western heritage and authenticity that make the sport so special.”
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The Outsider has a podcast! This week, Colorado’s ski season is underway after Arapahoe Basin won the race to be the first resort in the state to open. Sun reporter Parker Yamasaki was there for the opening day runs and talks about the friendly rivalry among a trio of resorts to try to be the first to open and what those bragging rights come with.
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Corrections & Clarifications
Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.
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