If you saw — in a news article last month — that a judge had rejected the 2015 land exchange between Rio Grande National Forest and Leavell-McCombs Joint Venture, and thus put the kibosh one of the legal paths forward for the development of the proposed “Village at Wolf Creek”, you may have suspected the Durango Herald was not really telling us the whole story.
Right, you are.
The December 16 article by Herald staff writer Aedan Hannon made it sound like a simple case of carelessness — a Forest Service agency that slapped together a sloppy environmental impact study — which then led to Judge John L. Kane annulling a land patent that gave 205 acres of National Forest Service land to developers Leavell-McCombs Joint Venture, led by Texas billionaire B.J. ‘Red’ McCombs and daughter Marsha McCombs Shields.
This resort development controversy — a proposal to built a town the size of Aspen, Colorado, at the very top of 10,000-foot Wolf Creek Pass — has been keeping lawyers and judges, environmentalists and federal bureaucrats, busy since 1987.
What was totally absent from the Herald article, unfortunately, was any discussion about Sasquatch — a presumably intelligent bipedal hominid that was documented very near the site of the planned development, by some tourists visiting Wolf Creek Ski Area from Madison, Wisconsin, in late 2006.
The Pagosa Daily Post was able to gain access to the video document, and posted the surprising events — along with commentary by local experts — on April 1, 2007.
For the benefit of any Daily Post readers who didn’t have a chance to view the 4-minute video back then, I’ve asked our editor to allow me to share it in my column this morning. (I didn’t actually hear back from him, but I’m guessing he probably won’t mind.)
Although the Leavell-McCombs Joint Venture and a variety of environmental groups have spent literally a lot of money fighting about this proposed development for the past 35 years, I think the whole thing could easily have been settled back in April 2007, without too much fuss, if more people had been paying attention to the Daily Post.
Not that I have anything against lawyers and judges and federal bureaucrats. But really, they’re a dime a dozen.
When you’ve got a real endangered species in your back yard… that’s just so much more special.
Daily Post readers might be curious what has happened to the experts interviewed for the Sasquatch video back in 2007. (We already know what happened to the Village at Wolf Creek, and likely we are gleefully clapping our hands in appreciation.)
The documentary’s commentator, Claudia Rains, moved to Missoula, where she teaches journalism at the University of Montana, with a focus on TikTok video production. Real estate developer Farmhead Bunmunch went bankrupt during the Great Recession, and now raises sugar beets on a 40-acre farm east of Fort Collins. Attorney Oliver Wendall Hunyak moved to Hollywood and appeared in several episodes of ‘Law and Order’ as a corrupt lawyer. The anonymous biologist joined a polygamist cult in Utah, where he’s done his best to remain anonymous.
And Mr. and Ms. Smith, from Madison, Wisconsin? They published a best-selling book, “We Met Sasquatch on Our Ski Vacation,” and retired comfortably to Scotland, where they are reportedly making a film documentary about the Loch Ness Monster.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.