Mountain Village, Colorado
OPRAH IN TELLURIDE
Everyone's heard a version of this story: a 50,000 square foot mansion, pressurized to sea level, an exact copy of her house in Maui. Almost none of it is true. The real story, verified through property records and her own words, is stranger and better than the rumor.
15 chapters · real estate · history · myth-busting
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Telluride, Colorado
TELLURIDE
You've heard of it, maybe skied it, maybe just seen the name on a beer can or an SUV. The town itself has a name that doesn't mean what it implies, a bank robbery that made a legend famous, and an 1891 electricity experiment that helped decide how the country would get powered.
15 chapters · history · culture · geography
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San Juan Mountains, Colorado
ABANDONED MINES
Drive almost any road around Silverton, Telluride, or Durango and you'll pass gravel mounds and dark openings in the hillside. Colorado has roughly 23,000 of them. The history, the hazards, the chemistry, and what's actually being done about it.
15 chapters · history · safety · environment
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Telluride, Colorado
WILSON PEAK
You've held the can. The mountain on it is real: a specific 14,023-foot peak southeast of Telluride, in a designated wilderness area. The brewery, the founder who stowed away on a ship, the beer that couldn't be sold east of the Mississippi for most of a century, and the mountain that turned blue.
13 chapters · geology · history · brewing
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Chemistry
SALT & SODIUM
It's on your table, dissolved in your blood, and made from two elements that would each be dangerous on their own. The crystal structure, the pink salt marketing, what sodium actually does inside every cell in your body, and the history of a substance people have taxed and marched against.
13 chapters · chemistry · physiology · history
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Gear
TREKKING POLES
You just got new poles. Adjustable, cork grips, the kind serious hikers actually carry. Here's what's actually happening with every step: the physics, the failure points, and the one thing almost everyone gets backwards.
14 chapters · biomechanics · gear · history
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San Juan Mountains, Colorado
MARMOTS
You saw one on the trail. It whistled and disappeared. Here's what it actually is, how it hibernates for 8 months without eating, and why it may age only half as fast as the calendar suggests.
13 chapters · biology · ecology · climate
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