The Outsider .. San Miguel County Sheriff Bill Masters ponders a half-century as a freethinking lawman ...Middle East

Jason Blevins

Outdoors/Business Reporter

Sneak Peek of the Week

“Every turn has a story” for San Miguel County Sheriff Bill Masters, the longest serving lawman in Colorado

“There are numerous examples of laws that I think are bad laws that have been passed with good intentions. A big example is the drug war. We can’t arrest ourselves out of addiction and we can’t arrest ourselves out of drug use.”

— San Miguel County Sheriff Bill Masters

12

Number of times Bill Masters has been elected sheriff in San Miguel County since 1980, always by overwhelming margins

He’s been called “Liberty Bill.” Some Latinos call him “La Cuenta.” An old friend used to call him “Old Penny.”

“I asked him why and he says, ‘Because you’re a dirty copper,’” Bill Masters says.

And for more than 46 years, everyone has called Masters “sheriff.” He’s served 12 terms as the top cop in San Miguel County, making him the longest serving lawman in Colorado history.

Soon, he’s gonna be just Bill.

As he plans to step down from a historic career, he reflects on the overwhelming changes that have transformed Telluride from a gritty mining village into a resort destination packed with million-dollar manses. And since he landed in town in the 1970s, escaping Southern California suburbia, he has rolled with each shifting evolution.

He doesn’t wear a uniform. He’s been a Libertarian, a Republican and a Democrat. He’s been a decades-long advocate for abolishing the failed drug war. He draws a distinction between “law enforcement” and “peacekeeping.” He’s miffed at state lawmakers for burying cops in laws they have to enforce while forcing them to wear a camera that he says disrupts critical peacekeeping interactions with locals.

“We should make legislators wear body cameras and they would figure it out,” he says.

Masters has long prioritized the health and safety of his residents over being a traditional lawman or bowing to urban lawmakers. The regulations and laws trickling down from state legislators — he calls many of those laws Orwellian — have pushed too much enforcement into his peace-keeping ethos.

“I’m convinced now that this is just no country for old men,” says Masters, referencing his favorite movie and book. “I think the whole business is changing very rapidly, and I’ve been able to adapt over my long career several times. But now it’s gotten to the point where I can’t.”

The stories Masters’ tells reflect his predecessors, the grizzled lawmen who forged one-of-a-kind Western Slope communities like Telluride. He’s got tales for days, each one reflecting the challenges and unique characters who flock to Colorado’s end-of-the-road mountain towns.

Driving the winding county roads with Masters is a history lesson. The murders, the arrests, the investigations, the secrets. It’s all there, an entire lifetime of perspective from the captain’s perch.

“Every turn,” he says, “has a story.”

>> Click over to The Colorado Sun on Sunday to read this story

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In Their Words

Ambitious plan to revive pro cycling racing in Colorado sounds familiar

“Races that are managed by outside entities without truly embedding in the community can struggle to build lasting momentum. Sustainability depends on shared ownership, not just event-day excitement.”

— Durango resident Mary Monroe

The graveyard of professional road cycling races in Colorado is stacked deep. Despite fervent fandom for pedaling pavement, the state seems unable to sustain high-profile contests.

But a British event planning company thinks it can break the skid of pro cycling racing in Colorado. With dreamy ambition, the U.K.-based Infinity Events Group — which organizes large conventions and meetings — says it can revive stage road racing in Colorado and avoid the collapse of previous organizers who tried to convert the state’s historical embrace of bike racing into profits.

“Originally I was thinking California,” Infinity Events Group director Scott Taylor told Colorado Sun freelancer Betsy Welch. Taylor has never been to Colorado and is laboring to find backers for what he’s calling the Tour of Colorado. (A name owned by a Colorado Springs businessman who seems unwilling to share.)

“As I did more research, I started to realize that Colorado offered some amazing opportunities in terms of what a course might look like, the scenery, how that might translate to broadcast and press,” Taylor said. “It has an interesting history of previous races that translates to some untapped support and a wish to see racing back in the state.”

History and wishing have not worked well for race organizers. The USA Pro Challenge folded after five years of racing across the state with organizers citing $20 million in debt. Next up was Denver businessman Ken Gart’s Colorado Classic, which morphed from racing around an urban music festival in 2017 into a women’s only race before shuttering in 2022. Those two races now occupy gravesites next to the Coors Classic and Red Zinger races that flourished in the 1970s and ‘80s before petering out.

In 2019, Colorado’s Anshutz Entertainment Group shut down the popular Amgen Tour of California and the Tour of Utah — which started in 2004 — closed in 2021.

Can Infinity Events Group’s new bid with the Tour of Colorado rise above these past failures? Or, perhaps more importantly, why do they even want to try? Welch asks.

Taylor has collected support from Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and USA Cycling while he hunts for deep-pocketed sponsors and courts mountain towns that could host race athletes, organizers and spectators. Sponsors of big bike races have a long history of losing money. And Colorado’s towns are not as eager for large-scale events as they were when the USA Pro Challenge launched in 2011.

There’s a lot more reticence surrounding big events as community leaders listen to locals and craft amenities and parties that serve local values, not out-of-town pocketbooks.

“When road races become community races, that’s when the magic happens,” said Mary Monroe, who helped her hometown of Durango kick off the 2012 USA Pro Challenge. “Races that are managed by outside entities without truly embedding in the community can struggle to build lasting momentum. Sustainability depends on shared ownership, not just event-day excitement.”

>> Click over to The Sun next week to read Betsy’s story

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Breaking Trail

CPW stakes out “a turf war” with Forest Service over Mad Rabbit trails project above Steamboat Springs

“What’s going on here is a turf war.”

— Craig Frithsen with Routt County Riders

49

Miles of new trails planned in the Forest Service’s final Mad Rabbit decision, down from an initial proposal for 79 miles

The finish line was so close. After more than eight years of intensive environmental study, dozens of public meetings, hundreds of comments and hard-negotiated compromises, the new singletrack trails atop Rabbit Ears Pass last month were set for construction as early as this summer.

Now the project is back in a familiar limbo as state wildlife officials revive objections to the Forest Service’s final approval of the trails plan, which could threaten Steamboat Springs public funding of trail development.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife and the Department of Natural Resources first objected to the Forest Service plan for new trails in the fall of 2023, arguing that more singletrack on forest land would stress elk herds and fragment habitat. Wildlife and recreation officials with the state and Routt National Forest spent nearly a year working on a compromise — they called it an Adaptive Management Plan — that would reduce the reach of new trails, rehabilitate unauthorized trails and limit development in critical elk habitat.

After hammering out the Adaptive Management Plan, CPW pulled its objection to the Mad Rabbit project in November 2024. The Forest Service last month issued its final approval of the project after nearly a decade of discussion and study. But there were slight changes in the final decision. Now, CPW is resuscitating its objections to the Mad Rabbit project, saying the Forest Service’s “last-minute alterations to the Adaptive Management Plan are significant and unacceptable to Colorado.”

“Communication regarding this project ceased toward the end of 2024,” reads a letter CPW sent to Routt National Forest officials April 21, saying that the Forest Service “made substantive changes removing meaningful, essential components of the Adaptive Management Plan that had previously been agreed upon.”

The crux of the state’s objections revolves around an elk study that CPW says the Forest Service agreed to conduct before trail construction. The final decision also removed CPW as the agency monitoring elk migration within the project area.

“CPW no longer has a formal role in determining if substantial changes to elk distribution and herd use within the project area have occurred,” reads the letter signed by Department of Natural Resources Director Dan Gibbs.

The original plan suggested 79 miles of new trails but public input and wildlife concerns whittled that to 49 miles, with the closure of 36 miles of unauthorized trails across 127,124 acres of the national forest. The project also imposes seasonal wildlife closures of trails. Trail advocates who have spent the better part of a decade lobbying for new trails between Mad Creek and Rabbit Ears Pass say the project should be a model for expanding recreation access on public lands through careful deliberation.

“CPW has tried to make a power play to delay this project, siding with elk hunters who want to limit access to trails. The Forest Service has said, ‘You can’t change the goal posts on us after we reached an agreement’ and they are flexing their own power play,” said Steamboat Springs resident Craig Frithsen, who has worked with the trail and bike advocacy group Routt County Riders to add the new trails between Mad Creek and Rabbit Ears Pass. “What’s going on here is a turf war. The hunters want exclusive access to the national forest on Rabbit Ears and limit trail development to keep others out. This has been studied for years and years. This is a well-planned trail network put in appropriate places to protect wildlife and other forest resources.”

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

Let’s talk more openly about deaths on ski slopes

10

Number of fatalities following accidents on intermediate slopes in Colorado in 2024-25

At least 13 people died following accidents or medical events on Colorado’s ski slopes in 2024-25. That’s a horrible number for a recreational pursuit, but with about one person dying for every 1 million visits to resorts, skiing remains one of the safest sports out there.

Which makes it so frustrating to see the ski industry for decades ignore fatalities and injuries on the slopes. Skiing is hardly safe. That’s part of the appeal. But the resort industry, in its scramble to attract and retain newcomers, does everything it can to divert attention from the fact that people get hurt and die when they are skiing.

The Colorado Sun has to survey 16 mountain county coroners to track fatalities at Colorado’s ski areas. The resorts do not report any deaths or injuries. Of the three women and 10 men who died following an accident or medical event at Colorado ski areas in the 2024-25 season, eight were skiers and five were snowboarders, with ages ranging from 20 to 76. Five of the deaths were recorded days or even weeks after an accident at a ski area. Two skiers died from heart attacks, one suffocated in deep snow and 10 suffered trauma following a fall.

Colorado coroners reported at least 15 deaths in 2023-24 and at least 17 deaths at ski resorts in the 2022-23 ski season, more than in previous seasons but less than the historic high of 22 fatalities set in the low-snow season of 2011-12.

Colorado’s ski resort death rate of about one per million visits is about double the national average, which makes sense for the most trafficked ski state in the country. There is no indication, in any sense, that ski resorts are doing something unsafe or not doing everything they can to protect skiers.

But they are not transparent about the inherent dangers of the sport. Exercising at altitude can stress hearts, especially for people not used to altitude. Or exercise. Going fast on tree-lined slopes carries a high consequence for skiers who catch an edge. These are not secrets. But the ski resort business does not want to talk about them, preferring to sell Disney-like holiday scenarios where it’s all about fun.

Could the resorts be doing something better? Maybe. It’s hard to tell because of the lack of transparency around injuries and deaths on the slopes. Could skiers be better prepared to temper their thrills with a dash of level-headed safety if they knew more about deaths and injuries?

If I ruled the resort roost, everyone would know the specific dangers of skiing and I would make sure that skiers know that despite those dangers, you are much more likely to get hurt or killed while participating in hundreds of other sports. I mean, more people are injured or killed playing golf than skiing. So let’s talk about the small slivers of darkness in our sport. Maybe it can make skiing’s brilliance even brighter.

>> Click over to The Sun on Friday to read this story

— j

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