The line to meet American cyclist stretched out of Buckley Park and across 13th street, continuing past several rows of shops lining Main Avenue in downtown Durango, Colorado on Thursday, October 19. Clad in a jersey for the local Durango DEVO mountain bike team, 12-year-old Maggie Foose told me that she didn鈥檛 care how long she had to wait to meet Kuss, who grew up in town. She had watched him race the Tour de France this past July, and had read about his historic victory at the Vuelta a Espa帽a. Now, Maggie and her mom, Emily, intended to ask Kuss to autograph her jersey.

鈥淚 like that he grew up in Durango and how alot聽 of people know him, and that he鈥檚 so famous in this town,鈥� Maggie told me. 鈥淚 think it鈥檚 so cool they let us ride with him in a parade.鈥�

Several dozen spots behind Emily, eight-year-old Van Di Bernardino hopped up and down alongside his mother, Joanna. Van proudly showed me his new T-shirt, emblazoned with a Sepp Kuss caricature smiling aboard a bicycle. 鈥淚 like that he never gives up and he keeps smiling,鈥� Van said. Near Van, the Kleinsmith family also waited to meet Kuss. Five-year-old Will and eight-year-old Mason wore matching red bike kits鈥攕tyled after the Vuelta鈥檚 leader jersey. 鈥淭he cycling culture in Durango is so special,鈥� their father, Baird Kleinsmith, told me. 鈥淟ook how many people this has brought together.鈥� A few minutes later, I saw Will and Mason running through the park showing off the Sepp Kuss autographs on their red jerseys. 鈥淭hat was so cool!鈥� Mason Kleinsmith shouted.

Approximately 2,000 people鈥攎any of them children鈥攖urned out on Thursday afternoon for a festival and parade in downtown Durango to honor Kuss. In September, he won the Vuelta a Espa帽a, becoming the second American to win the event and just the fourth to ever win one of cycling鈥檚 three Grand Tours. The win reverberated in Durango.

Celebrating Sepp Kuss! Share your favorite picture from today鈥檚 celebration in the comments below!

— City of Durango (@CityofDurango)

Kuss lives in Andorra full-time but maintains his connection to the Durango DEVO youth cycling program鈥攈is former coach, Chad Cheeney, is the co-founder, and his close friend, Levi Kurlander, is the current director. After Kuss secured his Vuelta victory on September 17, Kurlander and Cheeney brainstormed ways to honor their friend鈥檚 historic win in town. Kuss planned to visit his parents, who still live in Durango, in mid-October, and Kurlander and Cheeney set to work organizing a party.

鈥淲e started three weeks out,鈥� Kurlander said. At first, Kurlander thought about doing a small meet-and-greet on the nearby Fort Lewis College campus. But in late September he sent out an email and social media post to the Durango DEVO community about a possible Sepp Kuss event. 鈥淲e got 3 million social impressions in the first few days,鈥� Kurlander said. 鈥淎s soon as we put out that first email we knew it wasn鈥檛 going to be chill.鈥�

Kurlander created a small organizing party of event producers. They secured a stage, food trucks, live music, and entertainment, and the proposed their plan to the City of Durango just two weeks before the celebration date. The plan called for a bike parade through downtown, starting and finishing at Buckley Park. Durango Mayor Melissa Youssef told me she fast-tracked the plan, approving permits for police escorts and road closures. 鈥淲e were all-in,鈥� she said. 鈥淪epp embodies the values of our community and we wanted to support him as best as we can.鈥�

The festival was slated to kick off at 3:30 P.M. on Thursday afternoon, but people stopped by well before then. I strolled across the grass at Buckley Park and saw multiple notable cyclists from Durango鈥檚 past and present. Ned Overend, the 1990 mountain bike world champion, stood in a corner near retired Olympian Travis Brown and Greg Herbold, the first person to ever win a world title in downhill mountain biking. Three-time Olympian Todd Wells shook hands with friends. Priscilla Blevins, whose son, Christopher, recently raced in the Olympics for Team USA, volunteered to shepherd crowds in and out of the park. Sepp鈥檚 mother, Sabina Kuss, walked the family dog along the grass. Volunteers distributed prints of a painting she had done of Sepp aboard his time trial bike, and passersby grabbed copies as mementos.

Longtime racing announcer Dave Towle took the stage to warm up the crowd at 3:30 P.M. 鈥淭he eagle of Durango has landed!鈥� Towle screamed. Mayor Youssef went next. 鈥淚t鈥檚 very likely that the next world champion is here in the audience today,鈥� she said. I stood near the stage and looked behind me鈥擨 saw row after row of children screaming, many of them wearing the team colors of Jumbo-Visma, Kuss鈥檚 WorldTour squad.

Behind the kids stood thousands of adults. They had created all manners of off-brand T-shirts to honor Kuss. One design said 鈥淜USS ARMY鈥� and was styled to look like the logo of the rock band KISS. Another had a blown-up image of Kuss鈥檚 face. A group of students from nearby Fort Lewis College draped American flags around their necks with a photo of Kuss silkscreened over the red-and-white stripes. One of the students, Jake Orlander, 20, said his affinity for Sepp Kuss wasn鈥檛 simply due to his wins.

鈥淚t really seems like he is into the fun aspect of cycling,鈥� Orlander said. 鈥淗e seems like he actually enjoys it and not just because he鈥檚 winning.鈥�

Tour de France cyclists are known for their monastic lifestyles of training, rest, and diet. Athletes focus on marginal performance gains and on precision鈥攆un usually takes a back seat. Riding up long, grinding climbs is painful, and often times the best racers are those who can suffer the hardest. Yet Kuss bucks the trend of the hardened racer鈥攃ameras usually show him smiling in the peloton. During his Vuelta win, he regularly congratulated rivals who beat him. Kuss鈥檚 racing attitude was not lost on the crowds in Buckley Park.

鈥淗e races like he鈥檚 having a blast,鈥� said Richard Clearbout, 65, a concrete finisher. 鈥淚t鈥檚 the Durango mentality.鈥�

Durango mentality or not, Kuss鈥檚 outward appearance of fun and enjoyment could help more young cyclists pursue the sport. Across the country, youth programs like Durango DEVO and the National Mountain Bike Association have attracted kids to the sport in throngs. Cycling fans鈥攁nd media members鈥攈ope that the influx will filter more talented kids upward toward the professional ranks. But nothing can sell a sport to kids quite like a hero鈥攁nd American cycling hasn鈥檛 had a bonafide Tour de France contender in decades. Kuss鈥檚 win has elevated him to that status. He may become the star athlete who opens the floodgates for cycling participation.

Kuss took the stage and thanked the thousands for coming to honor him. 鈥淚t鈥檚 been an incredible homecoming,鈥� he said, before introducing his wife, Noemi, and parents, Dolph and Sabina.

After the speeches and stories, Kuss climbed aboard a mountain bike on Main Avenue. Behind him, more than 1,000 cyclists queued up. A police escort slowly drove through Main Avenue, with Kuss and the throngs of others pedaling slowly behind. I watched the procession from the sidewalk. Locals rode past us on road bikes, mountain bikes, e-bikes, tandems, and wide tricycles. Some carried dogs, others wore costumes.

Darting between the adults were children aboard striders and bikes with training wheels. The line of kids on bikes seemed to go on forever.

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What happens in wilderness therapy doesn鈥檛 just stay at wilderness therapy anymore. The new podcast Skylights, from a bunch of (surprise) wilderness therapists, expands on that concept. Over 18 episodes, the folks at in Durango, Colorado, will dig into a range of current social issues and outdoor-oriented solutions, like advice for helicopter parents about how to let their kids struggle.

Open Sky offers therapeutic nature-based programs mostly for young adults and families. In each episode of the podcast, a different staffer from Open Sky talks about聽topics like motivation or gender identity.听Host Emily Fernandes, the cofounder and executive director of Open Sky,聽talked to 国产吃瓜黑料 about how the show聽shares wilderness therapy with people who can鈥檛 be out there聽with them,聽and why the lessons of resilience that being in nature teaches can translate to just about anyone.听

On translating their work into a podcast: I would say wilderness therapy generally is all about connection,聽and the learning and growth that takes place out there happens through relationships. Often those connections and conversations are happening around a fire聽or while looking at an expansive vista. I love the format of the podcast, because it鈥檚 intimate. It鈥檚 almost like the listener is joining in around the metaphorical fire.

On who might benefit from the show: It鈥檚 a hard time to be a young person in this society, and it鈥檚 a hard time to be a parent. More and more people need what we can offer in the wilderness, and the podcast enables us to reach more people and share our approach. We wanted to build a community network that ripples beyond the community base. Hopefully it gives a glimpse into the window of what wilderness therapy is all about. It鈥檚 also a way for alumni stay connected聽and for prospectives to listen and learn.

On the ideas they cover: We鈥檙e tapping into our staff鈥檚 areas of expertise. It鈥檚 a format for people to highlight their passions and specialties. For Morgan Seymour, who did episode one [鈥溾�漖, gaming is what she loves talking about. We have an episode about parenting and preparing your child for the road that addresses the ways snowplow parents are clearing the obstacles for their children,聽and how that鈥檚 not necessarily helpful. We have some guided meditations. We鈥檙e also going to cover things like connection and isolation in the age of technology and self-harm. I think people are interested and hungry to hear more about wilderness therapy. It鈥檚 always been powerful, and it鈥檚 even more so in this day and age, when so many people are spending time indoors and on their screens.

On why wilderness therapy feels so relevant right now: The concept of a rite of passage in the wilderness is part of so many cultures. Our Western culture has gotten away from it, but there鈥檚 a sense of independence聽and competence that comes from that environment that builds resilience. Wilderness itself is inherently a powerful place to heal and a powerful place to the nervous system. There鈥檚 the connection to something bigger that happens when you鈥檙e in nature. It鈥檚 the wilderness itself, and the experience of everyday living, like cooking food, building shelter, and carrying a backpack, that you have to take on.

On the goals of the podcast: My hope is that people can have an experience akin to what happens in wilderness therapy while listening to the podcast, even if it鈥檚 just driving in their car and looking at the view in a different way聽or listening to the podcast while they鈥檙e on a run or walk. It鈥檚 a mindfulness practice in and of itself to listen聽and to pay attention, and I think people are craving that.

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贰诲颈迟辞谤蝉鈥�聽note: This column generated an enormous reaction, with many readers writing in to contest the central premise and others letting us know they were offended by the tone. We have since published a response by writer Stephanie Case that you can read聽here.听

No, that headline isn鈥檛 just for clicks. Trail runners really are lazy parasites. Deadbeats, even.

Allow me to explain.

Nationally, nobody keeps a good tab on exactly who turns out on volunteer trail-work days to install water bars, build steps, reroute switchbacks, and replant vegetation. But here鈥檚 what we do know: trail running is booming鈥攊ts number of participants more than doubled from 2007 to 2017. According to the , there are now more trail runners鈥攏ine million and counting鈥攖han there are off-road bikers. A聽million more. We also know that in Colorado, where a whopping 92 percent of residents recreate outdoors, as many as 40,000 hikers and runners can be found on the trails of the more popular fourteeners聽each month of the summer.

Based on this sheer volume alone, trail advocates know that trail runners are having a major impact. Every time one steps around a puddle to keep their shoesies clean (mountain bikers tend to ride through puddles), they鈥檙e widening the trail. This happens a step at a time, multiplied by tens of thousands of steps, until it turns singletrack into a six-foot-wide sidewalk. With every edging action around聽a curve聽or skid聽on a steep descent, trail runners are moving dirt and聽extruding roots and rocks. Hell, every time they take a leak鈥攁gain, when multiplied by thousands鈥攖hey鈥檙e killing native plants. Solo trail runners鈥攍ike solo cyclists, hikers, and even the occasional horse鈥攁re low impact. Nine million trail runners are a different story.

In other words, trail runners are now just like the rest of us. But anecdotally at least, when compared to mountain bikers and hikers, trail runners are the least likely to volunteer to build and maintain trails. Anna Zawisza, director of community relations and strategic partnership with (VOC), the state鈥檚 oldest and largest organizer of trail crews, ranks trail-runner turnout right down there with public-trail-riding equestrians, which, to be fair to the horse people, constitute a niche group compared to the scrawny Forrest Gump set. Even in the few communities where trail runners are active with trail work, they routinely show up less than other groups. You can see this if you ever work on a trail. I鈥檓 no star volunteer, but in the half dozen or so times I鈥檝e gotten out and swung a McLeod or a Pulaski, I haven鈥檛 met a single trail runner. But among the throngs of mountain bikers, I have met hikers, horse folk, dog walkers, and bird watchers on Colorado鈥檚 multi-use trails. Even the trail-running boosters I talked to bemoaned the lack of turnout of their own kind.

Part of the reason for this is that trail runners don鈥檛 have a national trail-advocacy group. There鈥檚 no equivalent of the International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA) organizing chapters and funneling resources and bodies鈥�700,000 volunteer hours in 2016鈥攁t projects. Well, to be precise, there was one. A mysterious outfit called Run Wild launched in 2017 with lofty goals, but now it鈥檚 and its hasn鈥檛 been updated in two years. That鈥檚 too bad, because the trails need it. Though three out of four Coloradans identify as conservationists, only聽 (another study claims 3 percent, but that鈥檚 dubious). In a typical year, VOC counts 5,000 volunteer work days. That might sound like a lot, but even if that number portrayed 5,000 individuals (and it doesn鈥檛; lots of folks volunteer for multiple days), it would represent less than a thousand people for every million Coloradans that recreate outdoors. It鈥檚 not enough. 鈥淲e have 39,000 miles of trail in Colorado,鈥� says Zawisza, 鈥渁nd we鈥檙e adding to that total every year. On a good year, VOC touches 30 miles.鈥�

As a former Coloradan, I鈥檓 not picking on the state. Colorado鈥檚 volunteer turnout is likely better than the national average. Nor, despite my ribbing, am I hating on the blister-adverse trail-running crew, with its聽weird little utility belts and tank tops. I may have to revise my calculations after this column comes out, but I count a number of trail runners as friends. I鈥檒l admit, though, that I am a bit mystified by trail runners. And I鈥檓 not alone. IMBA聽executive director Dave Wiens, who founded the nondenominational聽group long before taking the helm of the聽association, says that聽for mountain bikers, trail work 鈥渋s a social experience that ends with brats and beers. But from what I can tell, trail runners aren鈥檛 into the beers-and-brats part.鈥� It鈥檚 also true that one maniac trail runner allegedly in Golden, Colorado, in 2017, and more recently, another choked out a mountain lion. But I won鈥檛 paint them all with the crazy brush.

To really understand why mountain bikers are gung ho volunteers and trail runners are lazy parasites, it helps to look at the origins of the two sports.

Mountain bikers came on the scene in force in the 1980s. Castigated and labeled as outlaws, they were banned from many existing trail networks. Only later did research prove that 聽(and that both shoes and tires are way less destructive than horse hooves). Still, it took decades of advocacy and trail work to change the public鈥檚 opinion and prove that mountain bikes belong on our public lands. This effort remains a work in progress.

If we鈥檙e speaking openly here, mountain bikers would be OK with fewer hikers, runners, and horses walking up the downhills, which is why mountain bikers want to build more trails鈥攖o spread out the crowds. For these reasons, and also bratwurst and beer, trail work is part of mountain-bike culture. Minus the beer, pretty much every high school mountain-bike聽race team in the National Interscholastic Cycling Association (NICA) does trail work. Freeriders do it. Cross-country聽racers do it. Trail riders do it. Downhillers do it. Old guys that get fat in winter also throw down. 鈥淭rail work is part community outreach for us,鈥� says Wiens. 鈥淚t鈥檚 also true that the trail itself is essential to our experience. We say things like, 鈥楾hat was a good trail鈥� or聽鈥楾hat was a bad trail.鈥欌��

Trail runners, on the other hand, don鈥檛 have much of a birth story. No 聽monkeying around with old Schwinns. No access problems, no vigilantes laying booby traps for them. People were running on trails long before trail shoes were a thing. Nobody told them they couldn鈥檛 do it then, and nobody is telling them they can鈥檛 do it now. And while, like mountain bikers, runners can inadvertently sneak up behind hikers and spook them, they rarely get the same dirty looks. Even the social dynamics of trail running are different than those of mountain biking. 鈥淗istorically, ultrarunners and most trail runners were a little more self-sustained,鈥� says Brett Sublett, owner of the Durango Running Company, in Colorado. 鈥淧eople got into that solo mindset and kind of assumed they were the only people out there running. And that鈥檚 still a big part of what attracts people initially. But with the popularity of trail running, that鈥檚 changing. We used to get ten people to a group run, now we get 30 to 40. There鈥檚 a much stronger trail-running community.鈥�

Which gets us to today. Nine million trail runners and counting, yet a widely held belief鈥攊f an unproven one, as聽most trail crews don鈥檛 ask too many questions鈥攖hat they have the lowest turnout among the core user groups when it comes to trail maintenance. But here鈥檚 some good news: that鈥檚 changing. The most storied ultrarunning events have long required that racers complete volunteer trail days. Today, dozens of smaller events are following that lead,聽with many offering聽more lottery-style entry chances to volunteers. In Colorado, VOC is actively trying to recruit such folk by posting flyers at the Cheyenne Mountain Trail Race. Meanwhile, Nancy Hobbs, founder and executive director of the , is promoting trail work on her organization鈥檚聽site and actively directing runners to volunteer opportunities. (The association聽also plugs an activity called 鈥減logging,鈥� which聽involves stopping to pick up trash from trails as you jog. Not sure why it needs a name.)聽Sublett, of the Durango Running Company, requires that the Fort Lewis College kids he helps coach perform聽at least one day of trail work a year.听These types of initiatives, especially with the race entries, seem to be gaining traction.

Durango is also home to , a trail-maintenance nonprofit founded 30 years ago on the idea of engaging with all nonmotorized users. Its聽numbers suggest that it鈥檚 working. According to Mary Monroe Brown, the group鈥檚 executive director, Trail 2000鈥檚 volunteers break down as follows: 40 percent mountain bikers, 35 percent hikers, and 25 percent trail runners. 鈥淧eople who mountain bike here also trail run and dog walk,鈥� says Monroe Brown. 鈥淎nd the Durango Running Club and the Durango Running Company have helped create a culture where there鈥檚 a direct correlation between running and trail work. People that are driven enough to live in Durango have an outdoor ethic and tend not to develop that protectionist attitude, that this is my trail and I need to protect my experience. We should be taking the high road and working together.鈥�

Still more promising? Little Missoula, Montana, is home to what is (as near as I can tell) the nation鈥檚 only dedicated advocacy group organized to get trail runners out doing trail work. It鈥檚 called the (MTC), and to date it has聽adopted trails, purchased land, moved trailheads, and performed all manner of maintenance with hundreds of volunteers, some of whom get out for at least three trail days each summer. Sometimes the MTC works on pedestrian-only trails. Sometimes it聽sends volunteers to to help with multi-use paths. It doesn鈥檛 matter much to them. 鈥淎 lot of people get into trail running from a fitness or a road-running background,鈥� says MTC cofounder Jimmy Grant. 鈥淭hey don鈥檛 all have that mountain ethic. We wanted to serve as a model for other groups. You get more personally invested in your running and your town when you get your hands dirty.鈥�

So there you have it. Signs of progress. But will trail runners outside of chill towns like Durango and Missoula get the message? Tough to say. They might not want to get their arms all swole聽doing manual labor. But I hope so, if only because, if that happens, then the trail-running and mountain-biking communities can shame the hikers into stepping up as well. Call me snitty, but there are 45 million of those lazy parasites.

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If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide or self-harm, call the聽聽toll-free from anywhere in the U.S. at 1-800-273-8255.

Five years ago, Aleah Austin moved with her family from LaCrosse, Wisconsin, to Durango, Colorado. The then-ten-year-old was sad to leave her family鈥檚 deep roots in the Midwest, so to help ease the transition, her parents signed her up for Durango DEVO, a popular local nonprofit program that teaches kids as young as two years old how to ride mountain bikes.

Aleah showed up at practice with a clunky Giant with 24-inch wheels, and she was well behind the other fifth-graders, who had new 26-inch bikes and years of experience. She鈥檇 get frustrated and upset, but two of her coaches, Tricia Shadell, then 33, and Tina Ooley, then 40, both racers, stayed in the back with Aleah and patiently encouraged her. 鈥淚t doesn鈥檛 matter what everyone else thinks,鈥� they鈥檇 say. 鈥淚t鈥檚 just about what you think.鈥�

Over the years, as many girls hit adolescence and dropped out of sports, Aleah stuck with it, and she and her coach Tricia became particularly close. Strong and beautiful, Tricia always seemed upbeat and had a way of making each of the girls feel special. 鈥淚 came here and was, like, so afraid of mountain biking,鈥� Aleah says. 鈥淭rish taught me how to ride downhill and keep my feet on the pedals and stand up and go off jumps and stuff.鈥�

Standing 5'10″, with dark wavy hair, Tricia was a beacon of athleticism and fun. She had what seemed like a full life as a bike racer, coach, and massage therapist. Intensely extroverted, she was a wellspring of enthusiasm. She wore outrageously colored pants and tutus on her rides. When the girls rocked out to Taylor Swift, Tricia was the first to throw glitter all over the place. When they were at a restaurant and a live band struck up, she would make them get up and dance. The girls worshipped her.

Aleah was a 14-year-old high school freshman last November 2017 when she found out that Tricia Shadell had died by suicide the evening before. Tricia had posted a cryptic message on Facebook just before she died, and word quickly spread through the small town. Aleah鈥檚 mom, Amee, heard about Tricia鈥檚 death from another teacher and called her husband, Jason, who was driving his daughter to school.

Aleah is small for her age and reserved, her heart-shaped face framed by an unruly halo of light-brown curls. After hearing the news, she stared out the passenger鈥檚 side window, expressionless. She didn鈥檛 cry. Jason detoured away from the high school and dropped her off at Amee鈥檚 office. Shocked and numb, Aleah sat with her mom, her wide eyes beginning to tear up. 鈥淚 didn鈥檛 really understand,鈥� Aleah says now. 鈥淚t didn鈥檛 seem real.鈥�

Later that day, Aleah met up with her mountain biking friends. They were confused, angry, sad. Their faces streamed with tears, but Aleah鈥檚 mind was consumed with questions. Why? When? How could Trish have killed herself? She always seemed so happy.

The next morning, DEVO鈥檚 founder, Sarah Tescher, sent an email to parents.听She also organized聽a candlelight vigil that evening at a gazebo downtown. Friends gathered silently and cried in the flickering gloom. For weeks, it was as if no one in the outdoor community quite knew what to do with their feelings鈥攇uilt, devastation, anger, disbelief. But the worst was the concern for the children who knew Tricia.

鈥淔or the kids, Tricia was a sparkly unicorn,鈥� Tina Ooley says. 鈥淪he really was. That鈥檚 what the girls saw. To have this happen, they questioned everything.鈥�

Tricia Shadell鈥檚 death was one of 19 suicides in Durango and the surrounding La Plata County in 2017, a figure almost three times the national per-capita average. The year before, 13 people took their own lives; in 2015, 12 did. (Figures are based on the coroner鈥檚 records, but suicides are sometimes miscategorized or unreported.) Locals are desperate for answers, but there are few discernible patterns to the deaths over the past few years. They were mostly Caucasian, but also included Hispanic, Native American, and Asian people; men, women, and boys; an elementary school teacher, a construction worker, a retiree, an eighth-grader. They ranged in age from 12 to 85.

鈥淧eople are, like, what the hell is going on in our community?鈥� says Jessica Reed, a child therapist and mountain bike coach with DEVO. 鈥淲hy is everyone so sad?鈥� The question has ricocheted not only inside therapists鈥� offices but also on group bike rides, hikes among friends, and barstools across this mountain town, which is known for its natural beauty and regularly makes best-places-to-live lists like 国产吃瓜黑料鈥檚.

Suicide has become . A June report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that suicide rates rose by more than 30 percent in half of all states since 1999. The problem is in Rocky Mountain states, which have some of the highest suicide rates in the country outside of Alaska, earning the grim moniker of the 鈥渟uicide belt.鈥� The picture-perfect resort towns of the mountain West are no exception, and several have struggled with their own suicide clusters. The rates in these communities may not be consistently higher than the surrounding rural areas, but the incongruity of suicide in a vacation paradise can be jarring. As a result, the phenomenon has garnered media attention over the years as reporters grapple with the reasons behind these spikes. In 2009, the Denver Post found that the rate in Aspen and Pitkin County, where Hunter S. Thompson died by suicide in 2005, had jumped to three times the national rate and two times the state rate. In 2016, National Geographic reported on the suicide death of a , one of three that unfolded in the county over just two weeks in 2016. And early this year, Mountain Town News reported on the rise in suicides in : 15 in 2017, more than three times the national average.

Theories abound as to why these towns are affected, though they remain speculation. Like Durango, these are places where the cost of living is high, good jobs are scarce, and people are financially stressed. There are fewer mental health resources than one would find in a big city. (It鈥檚 common for parents to find that every child therapist in town is booked and not taking new clients.) Others blame the play-hard, party-hard vibe in idyllic mountain towns that can lead to substance abuse (a risk factor for suicide), as well as social media, the culture of relentless athletic one-upmanship, and the obsessive pursuit of fun. 鈥淚t can be sort of this FOMO rat race,鈥� says Cara Kropp, a special education teacher, mountain bike coach, and friend of Tricia鈥檚. 鈥淧eople don鈥檛 want to be around nonstoked people.鈥�

During previous suicide clusters in the United States, much has been made about the correlation between altitude and suicide found around the world, including Sardinia, Turkey, Ecuador, and South Korea. that lower levels of oxygen at altitude may result in lower serotonin levels, a condition associated with suicide, and higher levels of dopamine, linked with reward centers of the brain and risk-taking behavior. Others believe that in the United States, the correlation is related to cultural factors, including easier access to guns and the ingrained value of self-reliance, which can lead to isolation and a reluctance to get help.

Ultimately, however, no one knows why a suicide cluster pops up here and not in a similar place at the same time. Part of it is simply that the phenomenon feeds on itself鈥攊n other words, suicide can be contagious. Research suggests that the friends and family bereaved by suicide鈥攊n comparison to someone who died of sudden natural causes鈥攈ave a 65 percent increased risk of taking their own lives. Children who have lost a parent to suicide are three times more likely to take their own lives.

鈥淚t鈥檚 this unfortunate positive-feedback loop,鈥� says Laura Warner, director of health promotion services at San Juan Basin Public Health in Durango. 鈥淚t could happen anywhere. This is not unique to Durango in any way.鈥� The question is: What can we do about it?

I have lived in Durango for 13 years. One of the reasons this feels so strange and upsetting to residents, including me, is that many of us adore this town. I grew up in big cities, thinking I鈥檇 always live in one, but I have never felt happier or more like myself since moving here. The idea that people are suffering deeply right around me makes me feel guilty and appalled at my own obliviousness.

The last time I saw Tricia, it was at a party late last summer celebrating the opening of a new bike shop. She was back in town after a six-month stint in Crested Butte, where she had been recuperating after a messy divorce. She had always been a classic free spirit, flitting off on trips and chasing shiny new ideas. At age 16, Tricia left her hometown of Memphis to become a climbing bum in Yosemite, eventually becoming a massage therapist and yoga instructor. Over the years, she tried living in a tepee, opening a flower shop, and fostering puppies. Her friends described her as a yes-to-adventure person and full of surprises.

That night at the party, Tricia was lightly buzzed and seemed distracted, but she always commanded a presence. As we both poured beers at the keg, I asked her how she was. Tricia stopped and looked at me with her glossy brown doe eyes. 鈥淗eartbroken,鈥� she said. I wasn鈥檛 expecting such a candid answer. I didn鈥檛 know what to say.

Like other towns that have experienced suicide clusters, Durango has mobilized, but solutions to an issue this complex take a long time to implement and longer to reap results. One reason for optimism is that Durango is in a position to learn from communities that have experienced these clusters before and have taken action. The solutions they鈥檙e trying could improve suicide-prevention efforts nationwide.

Last May, after a series of suicides of both students and staff members at the Durango schools, San Juan Basin Public Health organized a suicide-prevention forum. They expected about 100 to 200 people to show up. In the two weeks before the event, two more people took their lives in Durango, including a 14-year-old. More than 700 people turned up at the summit. 鈥淧eople were desperate to talk about it and to try to get some answers,鈥� says Claire Ninde, director of communications at San Juan Basin Public Health. 鈥淭hey wanted information, but they also wanted to do something.鈥�

The keynote speaker, Susan Becker, a psychology professor at Colorado Mesa University, offered what鈥檚 called 鈥渂rief suicide intervention training鈥� for how to talk to people who are struggling. Be direct and compassionate. Ask whether they鈥檝e had suicidal thoughts and, if so, whether they have a plan. Experts believe that up to 80 percent of suicidal people give signs, such as withdrawing from loved ones or favorite activities or sleeping too much or too little.

On a broader scale, one of the biggest challenges communities face is a lack of coordination among civic institutions, mental health organizations, and nonprofits, a problem that can result in people falling through the cracks. Since the summit, San Juan Basin Public Health, with the help of a $156,000 grant from the state, established a team of locals to design a community-wide suicide response plan, which will coordinate schools, the police and fire departments, grief support groups, and many other organizations and agencies.

The Colorado Office of Suicide Prevention, along with a consortium of national nonprofits and other organizations, also identified La Plata County and five others as study areas for a comprehensive prevention initiative. The goal is to develop a plan that would reduce suicide by 20 percent across the state by 2024 and could be emulated in other areas across the country.

鈥淲e鈥檙e hoping to show you can have a statewide impact on suicide rates by doing community-level work,鈥� says Sarah Brummett, director of the Colorado Office of Suicide Prevention. 鈥淪uicide is an incredibly complex issue鈥攖here are no vaccines, no seatbelts鈥攁nd it鈥檚 going to take everyone moving in the same direction.鈥�

Another challenge communities face is that residents can be reluctant to seek help because of the considerable stigma around mental illness鈥攁nd even if they want help, they often don鈥檛 know where to go or call. So San Juan Basin Public Health launched a campaign called Let鈥檚 Talk, spreading the word about local resources through posters, social media, and giveaways at places like the after-prom party and in counselors鈥� offices. It also initiated hour-long suicide-prevention seminars similar to the one taught by Susan Becker at the summit.

One of the most fraught issues around suicide clusters is unskillful media coverage, which studies suggest can spur copycats. The Durango Herald has been criticized for its coverage, so the newspaper retooled its policy last year in an attempt to lower the risk of contagion. 鈥淲e know it鈥檚 critical to cover suicide, because it鈥檚 a public health issue, and sharing those stories can take away the element of taboo,鈥� says Amy Maestas, editor of the Herald. 鈥淚t helps people get help. But the question is: Do we share that on social media? Because then it becomes something you can鈥檛 control.鈥� Among other measures, the Herald now closes down comments on all suicide stories and doesn鈥檛 post them on social media. The paper also covers the topic in different ways, such as or survived an attempt.

The Durango school district hired extra counselors, and the middle schools and high schools are staging suicide-prevention screenings. The school district has also established a more concerted response when suicides do occur. The schools bring in counselors and mental health experts but also move back into routines as quickly as possible. To prevent glorifying suicide, they no longer allow memorials, including shrines and ceremonies, at schools. (The school district also doesn鈥檛 allow memorials for students who die of other causes.)

Not everyone is a fan of the new policies. Amee Austin, Aleah鈥檚 mom, opted her daughter out of the suicide-prevention screenings. 鈥淭o me, school is about reading, writing, and arithmetic,鈥� she says. 鈥淵ou don鈥檛 go to school to do therapy.鈥� And for Aleah, acting like nothing happened after the death of a 13-year-old classmate in 2016 felt odd. 鈥淓ven the people who didn鈥檛 know him, it was like, why?鈥� she says. 鈥淲hy are we carrying on?鈥�

Grieving is at the crux of suicide prevention on an individual level, even though community outpourings of grief can embolden copycat suicides, especially if they are highlighted in the media. But how do you mourn a loss and honor the deceased without ennobling suicide itself?

鈥淧art of it is we don鈥檛 grieve well in this culture,鈥� says Kati Bachman, a grief counselor in Durango. 鈥淲e are taught to be alone in it, which I think increases the suicide rate. But if people are allowed to sit down, listen to each other, and feel what they鈥檙e feeling, they鈥檙e empowered.鈥�

After Tricia鈥檚 suicide, Sarah Tescher hired a therapist to meet with the kids, but none opted to see her. They wanted to talk to the coaches they knew, even though not everyone was trained or comfortable with talking about suicide and mental health challenges. Now the organization is encouraging staff to attend training sessions for educators and coaches on mental-health first aid. 鈥淪ome of the girls who are the quietest were the ones who were most affected, it seemed,鈥� says Tescher, who also organized the vigil. 鈥淵ou could just see it in their faces. They were so sad, which concerned me.鈥�

While it has been painful to watch waves of grief ripple through my town, it has also been inspiring to see businesses and individuals of all kinds respond with creative ideas for supporting each other. Last July, rafting outfitter Mild2Wild started Raft for Hope, an annual fundraising float to benefit a local church program that pays for mental health counseling for those with financial concerns. In January, high school senior Brooke Buccowich started a campaign to benefit the Second Wind Fund, which finances therapy sessions to at-risk youth across Colorado.

Over the holidays, chiropractor Haley Arias hosted a Christmas party for those bereaved by suicide and launched the Living Forward Foundation, which will offer scholarships and outdoor adventure鈥揵ased trips for the children of people who have died by suicide. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 think people realize until they鈥檙e older how much suicide is going to shape their life,鈥� says Arias, whose father took his own life 11 years ago. 鈥淭he best thing we can do is give kids a place to feel safe and grow that self-confidence and resilience.鈥�

Tina Ooley started hosting monthly social gatherings, such as a prayer flag鈥搈aking party and a workshop for making spoke cards for bike wheels, just to offer a space to socialize without necessarily talking about suicide. 鈥淢y hope is that we can get people thinking about how they can consistently connect and keep the web strong, and not just in times of tragedy,鈥� Ooley says. 鈥淲hy can鈥檛 we come together regularly?鈥�

The sad irony of suicide prevention is that individuals and communities typically take significant action only after tragedies. But when communities do take action, it can make a real difference. In 2016, for example, Summit County, which encompasses Breckenridge, Keystone, and other resorts, experienced 13 suicides鈥攎ore than three times the national average. In response to the death of a particularly prominent community member, locals started Building Hope, a community initiative that has helped organize disparate agencies and started numerous other initiatives, such as a stigma-reduction campaign showing successful locals talking about their mental health challenges, a popular grant program for therapy sessions, and a mental health navigator who helps residents deal with insurance and find care. Last year, the suicide rate fell to four, although it鈥檚 too soon to attribute the change to any particular program.

When I talked to Betsy Casey, program manager for Building Hope, she echoed what other public health experts have told me: that relationships鈥攂etween community institutions and on a personal level鈥攁re the key to preventing suicide.

Over the months that I researched this story, I grappled with my own role and responsibility. At first I tried to be a detached observer and meticulously follow the guidelines for journalists covering suicide鈥攄on鈥檛 glorify the dead, don鈥檛 describe the means of death, don鈥檛 depict community outpourings of grief鈥攖o the extent that I was too paralyzed to write.

Then I started to have dreams about those lost to suicide, as if the feelings that came up after listening to so many people cry in my office needed to come to the surface. After one particularly vivid dream, I awoke in a state of intense horror and compassion鈥擨 felt like I had been punched in the stomach and had the wind knocked out of me. I was rattled and teary for the rest of the day. I realized that the only way to really understand the issue was to allow myself to be touched by the messiness and devastation of it all. Many of the people I talked with also wanted to help but, like me, were afraid to say or do the wrong thing. Perhaps it鈥檚 better to talk about it imperfectly than not at all.

What struck me most while reporting this story was the sheer courage of those who face mental illness, which is one of the leading factors in completed suicides. One friend of Tricia鈥檚, an avid endurance athlete who survived an attempted suicide, described pulling herself out of the despair as being harder than climbing Everest 100 times. To add to the difficulty, people who are struggling often face the fierce headwinds of stigma and shame.

And yet the vast majority of people who contemplate or attempt suicide survive and get better. The CDC estimates that for every one completed suicide, there are approximately three hospitalizations, nine emergency room visits, 27 nonmedically treated attempts, and more than 200 people who experience suicidal ideation. Ninety percent of those who survive an attempt will not die by suicide in the long run. Every single person I spoke with believed that we need to talk more openly about mental suffering. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 16.2 million adults鈥攐r 鈥攅xperienced at least one major depressive episode in 2016.

Aleah Austin perhaps said it best: 鈥淲hen people are that sad, I don鈥檛 think they should feel that they need to hide it. They need to be more open鈥攁nd we need to be open to helping people.鈥�

I learned how difficult it is to talk about it firsthand when an old friend visited me this winter in a fit of tears and panic. She is smart, athletic, beautiful, successful鈥攁nd depressed. I was worried about her. Suicide prevention trainings tell you to be direct, but when you鈥檙e in the moment, that鈥檚 hard. I didn鈥檛 want to offend her by suggesting she was struggling more than she said she was鈥攚hich I realized later was my own internalized stigma. But ultimately my concern for her overcame my fear of awkwardness.

鈥淗ave you had any thoughts about hurting yourself?鈥� I asked.

鈥淎re you asking me because you鈥檙e in the middle of that suicide story?鈥� she said with an irreverent grin. I felt sheepish.

鈥淲ell, yeah, kinda,鈥� I said. 鈥淚鈥檝e been learning what the signs are, and you pretty much fit them exactly.鈥� She paused for a beat then turned sincere and thoughtful.

鈥淚 have felt suicidal in the past,鈥� she said. 鈥淏ut not now.鈥�

I told her how much I love her and that I would do anything to support her in finding her way, even if I can鈥檛 control the conditions in her life or the decisions she makes.

About a week after Tricia died, Tina Ooley invited Aleah on a bike ride with Bri Dilley, another friend of Tricia鈥檚. On the north edge of town, the trio switchbacked up a trail through the pi帽ons and junipers.

Part of the difficulty of grieving Tricia Shadell鈥攐r anyone who takes their own life鈥攊s that it鈥檚 easy to ruminate about what could have prevented her death, but the reasons behind any individual suicide are generally complex and inscrutable. Over the years, Tricia struggled with anxiety, depression, and substance abuse. Though she assiduously hid her challenges from the kids, her friends knew and made heroic measures to care for her, including going with her to seek help at a local mental health agency, helping her find an inpatient facility, and even sleeping overnight at her house to make sure she didn鈥檛 hurt herself.

During the ride on that warm mid-November day, Tina told Aleah that she could say anything about how she was feeling or nothing at all. At first, she was quiet. The Animas Mountain Trail is a sustained uphill with boulders and babyheads, but Aleah was nailing it, not putting her feet down once until the top. On the way down, they veered onto a little-known trail on the east side of the mountain, where Tina had set up a shrine for Tricia with prayer flags and heart-shaped rocks. After sprinkling some unicorn glitter, they sat down and talked and cried while staring over the river oxbows and tidy streets of Durango far below. They shared their grief and confusion, but also their rage.

Aleah was pissed at Tricia, partly because she felt blindsided鈥擳ricia hid her struggles perhaps too well from the girls. To Aleah and the others, it had seemed like Tricia had this perfect life.

鈥淪he was always so excited to come and see us,鈥� Aleah says. 鈥淪he would always yell on the trail, 鈥榊eah, this is so fun!鈥� It always seemed like she had a really good time.鈥� Now Aleah wondered if there was something not quite genuine about Tricia鈥檚 enthusiasm.

鈥淎leah was also angry because she was thinking about me and all the other kids,鈥� Tina says. 鈥淚 know when I get angry about Tricia, I鈥檓 angry at her because of the kids. I鈥檓 angry at her for the suffering she left for other people to hold.鈥� Dilley recalls that when Tricia talked about suicide before she died, she believed people would be sad but that they would get over it. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 think you ever get over it,鈥� Dilley says. In the coming days, Aleah took her friends to the altar, each time bringing something new to leave behind鈥攃andles, lavender, a heart-shaped rock. She still has prayer flags hanging in her room that remind her of Tricia.

Aleah has come a long way since those first days of mountain biking. She now bombs down the most technical trails in Durango, mentors younger girls, and can clean sections of trail that even Tina will walk. She credits Tricia with instilling in her a passion for downhill by teaching her how to float off jumps and descend steep sections. (鈥淏oobs to the tube!鈥� Tricia used to yell.) Earlier this year, Aleah rode for the first time in the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic, a beloved local race that wends into the mountains every Memorial Day weekend. This summer and fall, she鈥檚 even trying her first downhill competitions. Eventually she wants to be a top racer and go to college at a big school, maybe in the Midwest, but she鈥檚 not hemming herself in with too many distant plans or expectations. To Aleah, the future is nothing but possibilities.

The post The Suicide Clusters That Threaten Mountain Towns appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

#1. Kelvin to Superior, Arizona

Don’t Miss: Mountain Biking, Chimichangas

Running 800 miles between Utah and Mexico, the Arizona Trail offers countless stretches of high-quality mountain biking. And of the Arizona Trail Association鈥檚 43 total passages, the 38-mile segment southeast of Phoenix鈥攑assages 16 and 17鈥攊s the finest. Beginning at the Kelvin Bridge, several hours鈥� worth of precipitous singletrack bob and spike like an EKG chart above the Gila River before the trail turns north, climbing a dirt path into a cirque of golden granite needles and towers. Reaching the peak feels like riding into Narnia, especially when the buff thread gives way to a ten-mile, high-speed bedrock descent. Racers in the grueling Arizona Trail 300, which follows this path to Superior, sometimes wonder if they hallucinated how good it was. But this is the genuine article, best finished off with icy Tecates and greasy chimichangas at Los Hermanos in Superior, a few miles from the trailhead. 鈥擜aron Gulley

#2. Chiricahua National Monument, Arizona

Don’t Miss: Bird-watching, Bluegrass

Though visitors come for the dark skies and the critters鈥攃oatimundis, javelinas, and a plethora of rare birds鈥攖he biggest reason to visit Chiricahua National Monument is the rocks: an alien wonderland of towering rhyolite-tuff spires and hoodoos resembling tops frozen in midspin. Reserve a site at Bonita Canyon Campground, hit the 17 miles of hiking trails, and don鈥檛 forget to bring your binocs; if you鈥檙e lucky, you might spy an elegant trogon or a violet-throated hummingbird among the alligator junipers and ponderosas. You鈥檒l understand why Apache chiefs Geronimo and Cochise were drawn to the area鈥檚 wildlife and edible plants. For more Old West vibes, head southwest to the mining town turned funky arts burg of Bisbee, 70 miles from Chiricahua and only eight miles north of the Mexico border. Set at 5,500 feet amid red hills, 140-year-old Bisbee was once the biggest town in the state; today its charm lies in chilling with a cold one while listening to banjo pickers at St. Elmo鈥檚 bar. Order a pie at Screaming Banshee Pizza or splurge at renowned Caf茅 Roka, a locally sourced, art-deco-style eatery. Then check into a decked-out Airstream at the , just outside town, and go on forgetting that the 20th century ever happened (from $85). 鈥擶ill Palmer

#3. Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, California

Don’t Miss: Hiking, Gravel Riding, Wildflowers

The American Southwest teems with unexpected treasures that take just a bit of boot rubber to discover. Many are within or just beyond the boundaries of some of the region鈥檚 cities. (Hell, Edward Abbey鈥檚 bones are resting below a nameless mesa in Arizona鈥檚 Cabeza Prieta 颅National Wildlife Refuge, a few hours from Tucson.) Others are harder to find yet reward travelers with some of the last grand landscapes in the country. Years ago, I paid my first visit to California鈥檚 940-square-mile Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, 90 miles northeast of San Diego, on the westernmost lobe of the Sonoran Desert.

Driving into the Borrego Valley, my group made the 4,000-foot plunge from the Peninsular Ranges into what seemed like another planet鈥攅normous canyons scythed down from the Santa Rosa Mountains, valley bottoms cut into arroyos by summer monsoons, and an ancient sea floor whose tallest peaks now catch snow. I returned to those same peaks when I traveled to Anza more recently, during the winter, to backpack in Cougar Canyon. My friends and I hiked alone, eventually tracking an improbable rill of water that emerged from the top of the canyon. We followed it upstream until the gorge opened into a 20-foot waterfall, and everywhere we looked we saw the prints of coyotes, mountain lions, and indigenous bighorn sheep that had come to the water to drink. That evening, while the wind whipped eddies around the canyon head, I laid back on my bag atop a bed of granite and ogled the endless night sky. Though thousands of people visit during wildflower season, the park and its closest town, 颅Borrego Springs, are otherwise low on crowds, and the area offers a surprisingly diverse array of restaurants. During my recent visit, after camping, we stayed in a rental house in town, fueling up on chorizo-and-potato burritos at Los Jilbertos and Kicking Horse coffee from Center Market. And with hundreds of miles of classic road, gravel, and fat-bike riding, the park makes it very tough to leave in more ways than one. 鈥擝rad Rassler

#4. Phil鈥檚 World, Colorado

Don’t Miss: Mountain Biking, German Lager

Colorado mountain biking can be brutally up and down, but Phil鈥檚 World is the fast and fun exception. Sitting at 6,360 feet, on BLM and state trust acreage some 40 miles west of Durango, this 27-mile singletrack system has sweeping views of Mesa Verde National Park and the La Plata Mountains. Cyclists from beginner to advanced rave about Rib Cage, the five-mile interior hardpack loop that rides like a slick luge run through arroyos. Outer loops like Lemon Head and Stinking Springs mix flow trail with technical, Moab-like bedrock riding, ledge drops, and boulder waterfalls. It鈥檚 possible to ride year-round, but shoulder-season months like November are ideal, when everything at higher altitudes is too wet. Stay in Durango at the 聽(from $65), where mountain bikes are welcome and the new owners have rehabbed most of the 25 rooms. On the way to the trail, stop at Fahrenheit Coffee 颅Roasters in Mancos for a pulse-quickening espresso and rent a hardtail, full-suspension, or fat bike at 聽($45 to $55) in Cortez; then it鈥檚 time to ride. After a few dizzying loops, head back to Durango for a Pils World German lager at Ska Brewing before indulging in a grass-fed, 21-day wet-aged T-bone at Ore House. 鈥擲tephanie Pearson

#5. Yampa River, Colorado

Don’t Miss: Rafting, Fishing, Petroglyphs

The last major free-flowing waterway in the Colorado River Basin, the Yampa packs Zion-esque scenery, a string of Class III鈥揑V rapids, and an unrivaled level of solitude. In just four days, you can paddle past striped canyon walls that stretch up to 1,200 feet and amphitheaters full of ponderosas that preside over the river like a patrician audience, take side hikes to fossil and petroglyph sites, and visit an old cattle rustler鈥檚 cabin. The natural cycles of this rare untamed river favor native plants and fish; they also form wide 颅sandy beaches that are perfect for building campfires and spotting shooting stars. It鈥檚 easy to see why 聽are among the toughest to snag in the West. If you don鈥檛 win the permit lottery, sign up for a trip with the outfitter 聽($1,049 for four days), which starts in the Deerlodge Park area of Dinosaur National Monument. 鈥擪ate Siber

#6. Mount Charleston, Nevada

Don’t Miss: Sport Climbing, Hiking

Mount Charleston, elevation 11,916 feet, is a world apart from the Las Vegas Strip two miles below鈥攁nd even from the recreational crowds at increasingly popular Red Rock Canyon. 鈥淵ou get up there and it鈥檚 like being in a European mountain town,鈥� says Randy Leavitt, one of the country鈥檚 most accomplished climbers, who has put up 5.14鈥檚 in the area. To Travis Graves, co-owner of Las Vegas鈥檚 Desert Rock Sports, the Mount Charleston Wilderness and 颅surrounding Spring Mountains are the city鈥檚 saving grace, especially in summer, when temperatures up on the peaks can be 20 degrees cooler than the valley floor. Graves advises climbers new to the spot to acquaint themselves with the short, relatively moderate Yellow Pine cliff鈥攚hich ranges from 5.9 to 5.12鈥攂efore moving on to classics like the three-pitch 5.11+ Imaginator. 鈥擝.R.

#7. Gila National Forest, New Mexico

Don’t Miss: Road-tripping, Camping, Hot Springs

Let us now praise Aldo Leopold, who advocated for the Gila to become the nation鈥檚 first wilderness area. Home to some of the most stunning terrain in the Southwest, its wide open spaces and empty mountains make it perfect for road-tripping and exploration. Start in the funky small town of Truth or Consequences, 150 miles south of Albuquerque on I-25, where you can stock up on supplies and take a dip at Riverbend Hot Springs on the Rio Grande. Then head west on Highway 152 toward the 聽in Kingston (population 32). The lodge is a great launching point for hikes, including the spectacular nine-mile Black Range Crest Trail to Hillsboro Peak. If you鈥檙e lucky, your stay might overlap with a visit from national banjo champion Jeff Scroggins and an impromptu jam session (from $95). Leaving Kingston, head southwest to camp among the surreal volcanic rock formations at City of Rocks State Park, then soak at nearby Faywood Hot Springs. Next stop: Silver City, a charming off-the-grid town in the heart of the Gila. Base yourself at 聽(from $170), or pitch a tent at the Grapevine Campground, which offers easy access to Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, a 颅13th-century housing site built into caves by nomadic tribes that offers a unique perspective on the region鈥檚 vastness. On your way back to Albuquerque, detour through White Sands. Not much beats sliding down the massive dunes. 鈥擬ary Turner

#8. The Lightning Field, Catron County, New Mexico

Don’t Miss: Solitude, Outdoor Art

Don鈥檛 let the name throw you. The 400 stainless-steel rods that make up this monumental work of outdoor art have never been touched by any electrical discharges from the sky. The real emphasis of this place isn鈥檛 on conductivity. Overnight guests of The Lightning Field, built by sculptor Walter De Maria in 1977 and maintained by the Dia Art Foundation, are encouraged to simply sit or walk in and around the work鈥攑articularly at dawn and dusk鈥攁s tiny gradations of shadow, light, and color hitting the nearby Mogollon Mountains are reflected in the rods, which average about 20 feet in height. The foundation provides transportation from the tiny town of Quemado, through grasslands and down unmarked dirt roads to the edge of the grid and the site鈥檚 small three-bedroom cabin, which has no cell service. (There鈥檚 a 911-ready phone available for emergencies.) The cabin sleeps six, and you can book one bed or reserve the entire thing. Meals are provided by Dia staff and include simple dishes like fresh granola and vegetarian cheese enchiladas. 聽for the season, which runs from May to October, begin in February and go fast (from $150). 鈥擱eid Singer

#9. Cataract Canyon, Utah

Don’t Miss: Rafting, Kayaking, Stone Ruins

Less than 200 miles up the Colorado River from the Grand Canyon, Cataract has the same towering red-rock walls, beach camping, and thundering whitewater of its more famous cousin. But the permitting process is much less arduous: river runners can take their pick of launch dates from four months to as little as two days in advance. The put-in is just downstream from Moab, near Canyonlands National Park; from there, paddle your raft to Lake Powell, 95 miles away, with breaks to scope ancient Anasazi handprint pictographs and stone ruins at places like Lathrop Canyon. Though the first few days are mostly flatwater, you鈥檒l encounter 29 sets of rapids starting on day three, including the Class IV Big Drops. Run them with care come springtime: the river can be so swollen with snowmelt at these spots that the Park Service often stations a motorboat just below the Big Drops to herd flipped rafts out of the frigid current. Camp at Spanish Bottom, right above Brown Betty rapids, and hike up to the red-and-white-banded rock spires of the Doll鈥檚 House to watch the sun set 1,000 feet above the river. are $20 per person, plus a $30 reservation fee. (For guided service, 聽hosts four-day trips from April through October for $1,649.) 鈥擣rederick Reimers

#10. Goblin Valley State Park, Utah

Don’t Miss: Singletrack, Hiking, Hoodoos

It may be dwarfed by Capitol Reef National Monument to the west and Canyonlands National Park to the southeast, but this 3,654-acre state park, named for an abundance of ghoulish hoodoos, packs a lot of punch for its size. Its seven-mile singletrack system, built in 2015, offers five mountain-biking loops, affording views of steep-sided canyons below. Hikers have six miles of their own trails or can head to Valley of the Goblins, part of the Henry Mountains, a highlight of which is Goblin鈥檚 Lair, a 100-foot natural sandstone slot canyon that requires technical gear and a backcountry permit to access for canyoneers. The 聽offers guided trips to the cave. Because this park is so isolated鈥攊t鈥檚 located on a remote corner of the Colorado Plateau, 223 miles southeast of Salt Lake City鈥攖he clarity of the sky at night is one of its most impressive features. In 2016, it received the International Dark-Sky Association鈥檚 Gold Tier certification. Take full advantage and pitch a tent at the 25-site 聽($25;), or upgrade to a yurt with a 颅propane grill, a deck, heat, and A/C ($100). 鈥擲.P.

#11. Amangiri Resort, Utah

Don’t Miss: Splurging, Climbing, Plunge Pools

As arresting as the surrounding Colorado Plateau, southern Utah鈥檚 聽mixes elegance and adrenaline. The 34-suite property sits on its own 600-acre playground at the base of a 100-foot-high canyon in the vicinity of three national parks: Zion, Bryce, and Grand Canyon. By day, climb the resort鈥檚 seven via ferrata routes with a guide, paddleboard Lake Powell, or hike the hoodoos of Bryce Canyon鈥攖he 25,000-square-foot spa will ease any discomfort upon your return. Enjoy flotation therapy or ten variations of massage, then cool off in a private plunge pool before dining al fresco on wild greens, foie gras terrine, and 颅freshly caught rainbow trout. Oh, and switch off your cell phone: every vantage and architectural detail is Instagram-worthy here and will only drive you to distraction. From $1,400.听鈥擲.P.

#12. Palo Duro Canyon State Park, Texas

Don’t Miss: Mountain Biking, Cabins, Intoxicating Sunsets

Home to the second-largest canyon in the U.S., Georgia O鈥橩eeffe once called this rugged 120-mile-long gorge within the Texas panhandle a 鈥渟eething cauldron, filled with dramatic color and light.鈥� Come equipped鈥攂ike rentals are hard to come by in the town of Canyon, though less so in nearby Amarillo鈥攁nd you can glide down the park鈥檚 12 mountain-biking trails, including the fast and flowing Givens, Spicer, and Lowry, ranked number one in Texas by Singletracks.com. One of the most dramatic sights in the park is the Lighthouse, a 300-foot freestanding column of layered rock that is most striking at sunset. Or follow one of the smaller footpaths up to the southern rim and watch as the entire canyon shifts 颅between deep shades of red, pink, and purple. Grab provisions in advance at Market Street in Amarillo, and spend the night in one of three rustic rim-top 聽built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s (from $110). 鈥擭icholas Hunt

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Autumn in聽Durango, Colorado is stunning but strikingly short lived. Before the Aspens lost their leaves, riders Brandon Mathis and Terrance Siemon embarked on a 28-degree morning to capture this video,聽High Country Trailblazing. On top of the cold temperatures, the remoteness of the trail, technical no-crash zones, and wildlife all contributed to a challenging ride. Follow more from filmmakers 国产吃瓜黑料 Pro on Twitter and their website .

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Living in a mountain town聽comes with serious perks: backyard trail access, midweek powder days, and a community of adventurous spirits. But it also comes at a price. The cost of living in resort towns聽across the country continues to rise, while the high demand for housing means availability is just as scarce as affordability. Still ready to make the plunge? Here are our picks for the least and most livable mountain towns.听

Least Livable

Aspen, Colorado

One of the most expensive ski towns in the country, 聽is the go-to vacation spot for the superrich and ultra-famous, which makes it a tough place to live year-round if you鈥檙e John, the snowcat driver. Over 50 percent of the area鈥檚 employees commute from down valley because housing in town is out-of-this-world pricey and rental units are nearly non-existent. Your best chance? Apply for the affordable housing lottery鈥攖he longer you鈥檙e on the list, the better your chances of scoring a place to live.

Population: 6,680
Median age: 37
Median home sale price: $2.6 million
Median household income: $72,336
Average rental price: $1,400听
Vacancy of rental market: Less than 1 percent

Local鈥檚 take: 鈥淔or a while, I was switching houses every six months,鈥� says Will Cardamone, a skier, fly fishing guide, and Aspen native. 鈥淚 lived in a trailer park for the summer. I feel like I can always find a spot by putting out feelers, but you never know what kind of situation it鈥檚 going to be. It鈥檚 doable to find housing, but there鈥檚 no way you鈥檙e saving any money.鈥�

Jackson, Wyoming

Living in , means you鈥檒l be treated to epic climbing and skiing at 聽and within . But the cost of living is higher here than the rest of Wyoming, and a lack of housing inventory means rent prices have skyrocketed. Although elected officials recently voted to send more tax money to affordable housing projects, less than 2 percent of the land in the area can be developed, so finding solutions to the area鈥檚 housing crunch has been challenging.听

Population: 10,523
Median age: 32
Median home sale price: $1.025 million
Median household income: $64,345
Average rental price: $1,500听

Local鈥檚 take: 鈥淚 have lived in nine rentals during my 10 years in Jackson,鈥� says Louise Sanseau, owner of Jackson鈥檚 . 鈥淢y rent is $1,900 a month. My roof does not have insulation and the people before me had a chimney fire, so I am not allowed to use the wood-burning stove. While it seems crazy to pay so much for an uninsulated wooden shack, I love my place and I hope to live there as long as I can. In Jackson, we are all moving, all the time. This seems to simply be the nature of living in a desirous mountain town.鈥�

Ketchum, Idaho

Dubbed 鈥淎merica鈥檚 first destination ski resort,鈥� 聽was founded in 1936 by the chairman of Union Pacific Railroad and it remains an upscale resort today. Sun Valley and the town of , Idaho, offer empty mountain slopes and a charmingly historic town, but you may have to live outside of town or in a teepee in the woods to make it work. Once a hub for ski industry brands like Smith Optics and Scott Sports, both of those companies have fled town in recent years, putting a dent in the local workforce.听

Population: 2,689
Median age: 44
Median home sale price: $945,000
Median household income: $63,750
Average rental price: $1,800听

Local鈥檚 take: 鈥淪ure, there are some limits here鈥攖here aren鈥檛 a ton of jobs or housing, it鈥檚 a small town. But you can make it work,鈥� says Banks Gilberti, a pro skier who grew up in Ketchum and moved back a few years ago. 鈥淚f you鈥檙e wealthy, you go to Vail; if you鈥檙e a super celebrity and you don鈥檛 want to deal with other humans, you come to Sun Valley. Things are expensive鈥攕ometimes you鈥檝e got to pay to play. But this place is like nowhere else on Earth. That鈥檚 what makes it worth it.鈥�

Stowe, Vermont

A quaint village near the base of , has all the charm of a New England paradise, like lush fall foliage, white-picket fences, and farm-to-table restaurants. By ski town standards, Stowe is still a relatively affordable place to call home鈥攜ou can buy a house here for under half a million bucks. But compared to elsewhere in Vermont, it鈥檚 on the pricier end. A good chunk of the market is driven by second home owners, but for the year-round residents of Stowe, the higher cost of living is well worth it.听

Population: 4,886
Seasonal population: 8,000
Median age: 44
Median home sale price: $427,500
Median household income: $67,138
Average rental price: $1,194
Cost of living: 34.2 percent higher than U.S. average

Local鈥檚 take: 鈥淚t鈥檚 a resort town and it鈥檚 hard to get full time work here. It was cheaper when I first moved here 37 years ago鈥攖he price of land and homes has gone up,鈥� says Douglas Proulx, assistant manager at Stowe鈥檚 and a longtime carpenter. 鈥淏ut it鈥檚 a very outdoorsy town, with great access to skiing, biking, hiking. Everybody knows everybody鈥攖here simply aren鈥檛 that many full-time residents鈥攁nd we help each other in lots of different ways.鈥�

Park City, Utah

People flock to , Utah, to escape the smog and summer heat in the valley of nearby 聽and to gain access to skiing and biking out the door and a picturesque main street studded with fancy restaurants and the annual Sundance Film Festival. But it also means spending $500,000 on a tiny house in need of updates or for the guys bumping chairs at , cramming six or more people into a rental home meant for two.听

Population: 8,085
Median age: 40
Median home sale price: $716,654
Median household income: $82,864
Average rental price: $1,375

Local鈥檚 take: 鈥淲hen we bought our house here six years ago, there was good inventory and pricing was at a low,鈥� says Sandra Salvas, a Park City-based freelance photographer. 鈥淣ow, you鈥檒l be hard pressed to find a rental under $1,000, and if you鈥檙e looking to buy, get yourself psyched up for a bidding war. But we wanted to bike and ski out our front door, have a yard the dogs could enjoy, and not worry about locking our doors at night. It鈥檚 quiet here, it smells like pine, and we are close to everything. It鈥檚 worth it to us because those are our priorities.鈥�

Most Liveable

Ogden, Utah

A decade ago, 聽was barely on the map of dreamy mountain towns. But thanks to ample affordable housing and an influx of outdoor industry brands鈥攍ike Salomon, Atomic, Scott Sports, Enve, and others鈥攎ore people are moving to Ogden, which is 38 miles from Salt Lake City and near Snowbasin and Powder Mountain ski resorts. From free summer concerts to the youthful vibe from Ogden鈥檚 Weber State University to the 9,500-foot peaks shooting up nearby, this town is on the rise.听

Population: 84,316
Median age: 29
Median home sale price: $122,800
Median household income: $71,500
Average rental price: $758
Cost of living: 12.8 percent lower than U.S. average

Local鈥檚 take: 鈥淎s far as mountain towns go, there鈥檚 nothing that compares to the cost of living in Ogden. We don鈥檛 get the reality-bending bubble effect of other quaint and homogeneous towns,鈥� says Chris McKearin, Salomon鈥檚 alpine commercial manager and an Ogden resident since 2007. 鈥淏efore work today I rode two hours of singletrack from my front door. My commute to work is 1.5 miles, so I am biking most of the week. The city is doing a great job of building new neighborhoods on vacant or blight-declared lots and the single family home market seems to be competitive.鈥�

South Lake Tahoe, California

Once the third largest gambling city in the country, , which straddles the California and Nevada border, is now in the midst of a renaissance, with major redevelopment of dilapidated downtown buildings, costly investments from Vail Resorts, which owns 聽in town, and a surge in outdoor recreationalists. Compared to elsewhere in Tahoe, the south end of the lake is downright affordable.听

Population: 21,529
Median age: 39
Median home sale price: $313,929
Median household income: $36,311
Average rental price: $841

Local鈥檚 take: 鈥淏y mountain standards, living in South Lake Tahoe is super easy, especially compared to North Lake Tahoe, where I could afford to rent but I couldn鈥檛 own without winning the lottery,鈥� says Wes Berkshire, a high school English teacher and three-year South Lake Tahoe resident. 鈥淚n South Lake, it鈥檚 much more affordable and the options are plentiful. I鈥檓 a teacher and I own my own house in Tahoe. Seriously. What do I love best? The lake, the weather, the skiing, the access to the rest of California; it鈥檚 hard to beat.鈥�

Leavenworth, Washington

In the Bavarian-themed mountain town of , in Washington鈥檚 eastern Cascade Mountains, you鈥檙e 35 miles from ski resort and a two-plus-hour drive from Seattle. The town is known for its legendary Oktoberfest and holiday festivals, but locals love it for its affordability and access to endless backcountry skiing and climbing, paddling on the Wenatchee River, and over 700 miles of trails.听

Population: 1,979
Median age: 45
Median home sale price: $251,838
Median household income: $33,913
Average rental price: $892

Local鈥檚 take: 鈥淚f you compare Leavenworth to other resort towns, it鈥檚 very affordable. However, like most places that have tourism and access to endless outdoor recreation, it鈥檚 becoming more of a destination and prices are going up,鈥� says Joel Martinez, general manager at Leavenworth鈥檚 and a Leavenworth resident since 2000. 鈥淭he community in Leavenworth is very tight. People say hi walking down the street and my kids can ride their bikes wherever they need to go in town. The things I love most about living here are the people, the community, location, and access to everything that we want in the outdoors.鈥�

Durango, Colorado

Compared to some of Colorado鈥檚 pricier mountain towns (we鈥檙e looking at you Aspen, Vail, and Telluride), the college town of , on the banks of the Animas River and in the heart of the San Juan Mountains, is considerably more liveable. You can rent a room for $400 or buy a fixer-upper for $300,000, plus jobs in tourism, oil and gas, and at Fort Lewis College are plentiful. This southwestern town has ample bike paths, river tubing, mountain biking, and skiing at nearby Durango Mountain Resort.听

Population: 17,834
Median age: 33
Median home sale price: $368,590听
Median household income: 听$55,014
Average rental price: $1,068

Local鈥檚 take: 鈥淨uality of life is really important here and people prioritize health and well-being over working their tails off,鈥� says Kate Siber, a freelance writer who鈥檚 lived in Durango for 11 years. 鈥淧art of what makes this place affordable is the culture. It鈥檚 rare that I meet friends out at a bar or restaurant. We go for rides, hikes, and riverside happy hours instead. I frequently think to myself when I鈥檓 riding to work, 鈥業 live in paradise. It鈥檚 so safe and green and easy. How lucky am I?鈥欌��

Ludlow, Vermont

, Vermont, balloons each winter with visitors to , but the rest of the year, the former mill town at the junction of Vermont鈥檚 Route 100 and 103 feels pretty sleepy, with a small yet passionate year-round population of multi-generational Vermonters. You鈥檒l find ample four-season outdoor recreation here鈥攖he summer hiking trails are not to be missed鈥攑lus zucchini festivals, craft shows, and a pedestrian village to remind you of small-town America at its finest.听

Population: 795
Median age: 48
Median home sale price: $211,352
Median household income: $35,780
Average rental price: $683

Local鈥檚 take: 鈥淲hat sealed the deal on opening our business in Ludlow was the great deal that we got on the building we bought for the hostel. We knew we couldn鈥檛 beat the price for a Main Street location in any other ski town,鈥� says Eliza Greene, co-owner of Ludlow鈥檚 who grew up near Ludlow and moved back in 2014 after 10 years away. 鈥淎s compared to other southern Vermont ski towns, Ludlow has the largest pool of available rental homes and apartments at affordable rates. Plus, we love the small-town feel in Ludlow where we get so much support from our community.鈥�

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When I say that Brit Eaton was in the doghouse, I don't mean that he was in trouble with his wife. I mean he was literally inside a dog's house, with just his boots sticking out the door.

Bret Eaton on the denim trail, exploring for a basement

Eaton on the denim trail; Exploring a basement for forgotten clothes

Hunting for jeans in an abandoned shed

An old storage shed comes up bust

Local rancher, and Bret Eaton exploring in a loft.

A rancher Eaton visited; Searching an attic

Bret Eaton and ranchers

Eaton explains the value of old chaps to ranchers

I shone my flashlight over Brit's back to watch as he picked through the layers of old rags and clothes making up the bed of the occupant, a heeler with a baseball-size cyst on her belly. The dog's owner, a sixtyish rancher named Mike, from Modena, Utah, was too distracted to pay much attention to his visitor's behavior. Just that morning, Mike had learned that a mountain lion had somehow infiltrated the eight-foot-tall fence surrounding the headquarters of the Meathook Ranch, which his grandfather had established in 1903. He was cautiously watching a juniper thicket above a corral of calves. “I'm a son of a bitch on following tracks,” he was saying, “so you better believe when I say it was a big cat.” Mike turned back toward the doghouse and was surprised to see Brit's backside. He pointed a thumb at Brit. “People make money all sorts of ways, don't they?”

Brit, 38, is of medium height and solid build. He has a stern, square face that would be suitable on an evening newscaster if it weren't for a tangled scar above his lip that resembles a strand of barbed wire. He makes his living scouring the old ranches, ghost towns, abandoned homesteads, and forgotten antique shops of the American West in search of vintage clothes. When most people hear the word vintage, they think of bell-bottoms from the seventies, but Brit's definition of that word goes many decades deeper into American fashion. He has a particular interest in denim workwear from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His company's name is , and he sells his products, or “pieces,” to a disparate array of clients, including Hollywood wardrobe departments, private collectors, and companies like Levi's, Ralph Lauren, the Gap, and Dickies.

He is unabashed about his prowess; he freely admits to being “the best person in the country at finding old clothes, maybe the best in the world.” In a career spanning more than ten years, he has found hundreds of thousands of sellable vintage-clothing items. He once sold a pair of chinos with links to a soldier from the Spanish-American War to a Japanese collector for $12,000, his personal record for a single piece, and he's discovered as much as $50,000 worth of clothes in a single day. Brit is deathly afraid of competition there are a handful of other vintage-denim hunters so he's skittish talking about money. It's clear, though, that he earns an annual income pushing well into six figures.

Despite these numbers, Brit has yet to find a piece that approaches the pinnacle of the vintage market. In the summer of 2008, an eBay seller going by “Burgman” auctioned a pair of circa-1890s, candle-wax-encrusted Levi's that he claimed were found in a mine in California's Mojave Desert. On July 30, the bidding closed at $36,099. In 2001, an anonymous person sold a pair of 100-plus-year-old jeans, discovered in a Nevada mining town, on eBay through Butterfields, a San Francisco based聽auction house. The jeans were purchased by their original manufacturer, Levi Strauss & Co., for $46,532. With stakes this high, Brit isn't eager to reveal his hunting grounds, but I'd arranged to spend a week with him on what he calls a “denim safari” and had met up with him at his warehouse, in Durango, Colorado. He was in good spirits; the day before, a couple of designers from Dickies had visited and made a substantial purchase. The warehouse is a garage-like structure with overhead doors, chaotically stacked wall to wall and floor to ceiling with plastic crates of vintage clothes bearing cryptic labels that Brit himself can hardly understand. “I hide stuff from myself so I can't sell it right away,” he said. “It's a retirement plan.”

From the warehouse, we'd driven to Brit's home, on the outskirts of town along the Animas River. In the morning, he said goodbye to his wife of four years, Kelly, and their three-year-old son, Zealand. Brit loaded a barebones collection of camping gear into the back of his Toyota Tundra and we headed west toward the Great Basin, between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada. “There's a chance we won't find anything out there,” he warned, “but it's the best place to be if you want to find something that's going to shake up the world.”

Late the following morning, we'd rolled into Modena, Utah, a once-thriving railroad community reduced by time to little more than a ghost town. The bank, hotel, and bars were all closed and permanently shuttered. The only sign of life was a middle-aged woman in a sedan who was sorting mail she'd pulled from a P.O. box. Brit's intuition suggested, correctly, that this woman lived on an old ranch, and he stepped out of his truck to make the somewhat preposterous suggestion that she let him dig through her closets and attics. Earlier, Brit had complained that the rain was a detriment to this particular approach. “People associate storms with strangers and trouble,” he said.

If the storm didn't scare her off, I was thinking, Brit's clothing might. He was wearing an olive-green 1940s canvas hunting vest, oversize 1950s fatigue pants, beat-to-hell leather boots of indeterminate age, and a white henley-style shirt from the 1920s. He explained to the woman that he pays good money for the sorts of things he was wearing and that it's not uncommon for him to fork over a thousand dollars for a piece that most people wouldn't even give to the Salvation Army.

“You know how kids nowadays buy jeans that are faded and full of holes?” he asked her. “Well, clients rely on guys like me to find things for design inspiration.” The woman looked at Brit as if he were asking her to strip right then and there, and she said that we better talk to her husband, Mike, about eight miles up the canyon. “But wait an hour,” she said. “He's dealing with a lion right now.”

Brit Eaton's path into the vintage-denim business was as circuitous as the occupation itself. The son of an investment banker and a mother with an interest in archaeology, he was born in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1970 and raised in a home dating back to the 18th century. His mother, Landis, believes that Brit inherited “the looking-for-things genes” from her.听During spring-cleaning season, she would strap him into a car seat and drive around to see what their neighbors had put out on the curb. “He never liked to wear anything but old stuff, and he was always an entrepreneur,” she says. As a kid, he sold pumpkins and lemonade at a roadside stand, and when he got a little older he tried expanding his product line to include lead toy soldiers that he produced with a Bunsen burner and a hand-casting mold. He remembers taking some of his product to a local Kmart in an unsuccessful bid to broker a wholesale contract.

Vintage Jeans

The Levi Strauss & Co. Archives contains聽聽dating back to 1879, and shows the evolution of the iconic blue jean.

See More

In 1988, Brit enrolled at Rollins College, in Winter Park, Florida. He spent his junior year in a semester-at-sea program that took him around the world, and the journey left him with him a deep wanderlust. After graduating, in 1992, he shipped an old Harley-Davidson to Rotterdam, Holland, thinking he'd tour Europe on two wheels. He rode the bike up to Norway, where he sold it for twice what he'd paid. Brit knew a solid business opportunity when he saw one, so he returned to the U.S. and escorted three more Harleys to Europe in 1993. He might have stayed in the motorcycle-import-export business if he hadn't gone to a party one night in Princeton, fallen into a window well, and broken a few ribs. “That made it pretty much impossible to kick-start old bikes,” he says.

Over the next few years, he racked up an impressive roamer's r茅sum茅: He was thrown in jail in Greece; drove a cab in Madison, Wisconsin; created and sold T-shirts at Grateful Dead concerts; sold ice cream on nudist beaches in Holland; got caught up in a multilevel marketing scheme in Florida; and worked for a company that organized trekking expeditions for Americans traveling in Europe. In early 1997, he took a job working on a swordfish long-liner out of Puerto Rico. He was confined to his quarters for insubordination, but the trip had a positive outcome. A fishing captain from another boat mentioned to Brit that his mother worked for an import-export agent who had a 1,000-pound, compression-packed bale of used Levi's in a Florida warehouse. It reminded Brit of something he'd heard a few years before, when a Norwegian Harley-Davidson customer suggested he import vintage Levi's along with bikes.

Brit returned to Florida in April 1997 and bought the bale for $750, then took it to a home where he was staying in Fort Lauderdale. When he cut the bale's straps, it exploded into a room-size pile of denim that his friends called Mount Levi. “Those jeans were in horrible shape,” Brit recalls. “Full of holes, ripped up.” Rather than ship them overseas, he spent his nights patching the jeans and his days trying to sell them at flea markets, three pairs for $10. Profits were skimpy. “It was absolutely the lowest point of my life,” he says.

But Brit noticed something unusual at the flea markets. Some vintage dealers would inspect his stacks of jeans and excitedly pluck out individual pairs for purchase regardless of condition. That's when Brit began to learn about big E's and little e's. Before 1971, Levi's jeans had an uppercase E printed on the tab sewn into the rear right pocket. After 1971, the company switched it to lowercase. In a general sense, a pair of Levi's is considered vintage when it has a big E, and these are much more valuable in the eyes of connoisseurs. (Vintage big E's are unrelated to Levi's premium Capital E line.) Brit learned about dozens of such categories for different brands, including classifications exclusive to the earliest types of jeans. He educated himself in the nuances of rivets, stitching, denim types, labels, and suspender buttons. “Jeans have their own language,” he said. “It takes a while to figure it out.”

Levi's is easily the most deep-pocketed consumer of vintage jeans. The company's historian, Lynn Downey, a self-described “obsessed vintage lunatic,” explained that Levi Strauss effectively invented “jeans” when he began putting rivets into the seams of denim pants in 1873. In 1906, the company's four-story warehouse burned down after the great San Francisco earthquake, destroying their inventory. Currently, is from 1879. “Levi's has produced items that I've never seen,” she said. This is a problem because vintage clothes represent the history of fashion and also mark the future. “Levi's designers are the primary users of our archives,” she said. In 1996, the company launched its Levi's Vintage Clothing line, featuring replicas of recovered pieces. Brit has conducted a few deals with Downey, and he refers to her type of high-dollar denim as “big game.”

Because Levi's didn't start selling jeans in the eastern U.S. until after World War II, there was an inherent limit to what could be found there. So in August 1997, Brit loaded his Jeep and migrated to Durango, Colorado. He began traveling up and down the Rocky Mountains until he knew the location and hours of just about every small-town thrift shop where someone might unknowingly drop off an item of surprising rarity and value. He would buy pickup loads of clothing at Goodwill prices and then sort out the more valuable items for shipment to his growing clientele of domestic and international vintage-clothing dealers. Jeans remained his passion, but he also developed an eye for other items that would get snapped up by savvy shoppers and Wild West enthusiasts: canvas work clothes, concho belts, biker jackets, hand-tooled cowboy boots, decorative saddle blankets, antique fur coats, riding chaps, cowboy hats, army surplus, and even homemade apparel.

Perhaps the most important thing Brit learned while hunting vintage clothes in thrift shops is that thrift shops are not the best places for guys like him to hunt vintage clothes. He didn't want the things that a person had recently quit wearing and donated; rather, he wanted the things that a person's great-grandfather had quit wearing and tossed into a dusty corner on a homestead, where it was forgotten about for a few generations. “I used to walk into a good thrift shop and my palms would get sweaty,” Brit told me. “And then one day I couldn't get excited by thrift shops. It's like I used to enjoy firecrackers, but now it takes dynamite to get me high.”

Finding a $40,000 pair of jeans requires luck and daring, but, most important, it requires leads. Brit collects leads while talking to people in bars, caf茅s, hotels, gas stations, and antique shops. Good leads include the phone numbers of multigenerational ranch families, addresses of small-town historical societies, favorite saloons of modern-day miners, and even descriptions of landmarks leading to the properties of crazy old hermits who live up in the hills with collections of junk and arsenals of weapons.

As he follows these tips, Brit sometimes stumbles into a series of unusual events that cascade along for days. Before we even made it to the Meathook Ranch, where the lion had been trapped inside a fence, we had stopped in western Utah to visit the home of a retiree named Theo who spends his days tinkering with a vast collection of antique steam-engine tractors and compressors. Brit suspected that there might just be some old denim mixed in with all that old iron.

Theo was skeptical. “If it had been around that long, I would have sopped up some grease with it by now,” he said. His comment reminded me of something Brit had told me earlier: “My number-one rule in this business is to never believe anything I hear. The more someone tells me they don't have anything, the more I know they do.” Sure enough, Brit reached beneath a leaky outdoor spigot and picked up a small-game item that I would become very jealous of. It was a black T-shirt with macbeth printed on the front in an ominous font, and it resembled the faux-faded, distressed T-shirts that college freshmen buy at Urban Outfitters. Except this shirt's fading had happened thanks to endless doses of sun and occasional spurts of water, so it was infinitely cooler. Clutching the ten bucks that Brit gave him, Theo was beginning to agree. “It was all just rags to me,” he said. “Not no more!”

We spent much of the next day at the Meathook Ranch, where Mike the rancher segued seamlessly between searching for the lion and telling stretchers. “My grandfather didn't buy this ranch,” he bragged. “He just paid the outlaws and murderers who were living here to move along.” As we walked around, Mike pointed to various places where he'd allegedly killed 250 lions over the years. Brit scurried behind us like an unleashed dog, prying and poking into every trash pile, junked car, corral, smokehouse, and outhouse. After an hour of searching, he realized that the good stuff was long gone, having met its usual fate over the years in burning barrels and county dumps. “I was dying to get in here,” he whispered in my ear. “Now I'm dying to get outta here.”

When we finally shook free of the Meathook, we stumbled into a coyote trapper outside Modena whose trailer home fronted a collection of ramshackle log cabins. Right away, I saw the waistband of a pair of jeans stuffed between two cabin logs as chinking a common frontier use for old rags. The jeans had a buckle and straps riveted into the waistband in the back. Known as “bucklebacks,” such work pants were prevalent from the earliest days of jeans until about 1940.

We were on the right track. We crawled down into a root cellar and found banks of shelves still stocked with the fractured remains of canning jars. An ancient shirt was wedged into a doorjamb, but it turned to powder when Brit tried to carefully pull it free. When I creaked open the door of a neighboring cellar, I was greeted by the unmistakable snicker of a rattlesnake. I eased the door shut and remembered a story Brit had told me about the time he crawled into a mine and heard the hissing sound of a snake coming from the vicinity of his crotch. He retreated from the serpent with a mad dash while an excruciating burning sensation spread across his groin. Once outside, he realized that he'd actually been “bitten” by a canister of pepper spray he'd pocketed in order to defend himself against cave-dwelling beasts.

After Modena, Brit swore me to secrecy about the places we'd be visiting in “the vintage happy-hunting grounds.” We were on our way to visit a man I'll call Cowboy, who lived on the outskirts of a small mining town whose claim to fame is that, during its infancy, 75 citizens died in gunfights before a single person died of natural causes. Brit wanted to question Cowboy about a rumor he'd heard from the man's ex-wife that involved a mysterious building full of 1920s clothing.

“Cowboy is six-four and weighs 270 pounds,” said Brit. “He's a Korean War vet and a mountain man and, well, basically a hobo junk collector.” We found Cowboy at the center of the vast, moatlike collection of junked cars he uses as a security barrier around a small refuge of trashed camping trailers. His specific location inside an aluminum motor home was betrayed by a rising column of smoke out front where a pot of coffee was resting on a Weber grill packed full of smoldering sagebrush. Cowboy was passed out, his head propped on a stack of rags near an open window. Brit yelled inside to wake him, which startled the hell out of the man. He was drunk, or seemed to be, and he ranted and raved for a few minutes while expressing an intense lack of interest in talking about old clothes.

Brit and I drove into聽town and parked in front of the diner where Cowboy gets his mail. We went inside and took a seat next to Uncle Teddy, a man in his seventies with a severe comb-over hairstyle. Brit introduced Uncle Teddy as someone who'd once sold him a buffalo-hide jacket. As they talked, Brit made the mistake of dropping the name of his associate, Cowboy. “He wouldn't make a pimple on a cowboy's ass,” said Uncle Teddy. Then he told us that Cowboy had recently been prosecuted for stealing another man's outhouse.

“What was so special about the outhouse?” I asked.

“What was special is that it didn't belong to Cowboy,” said Uncle Teddy.

We had just enough daylight for one more lead, and we headed to a mining camp occupied by an old man who was sacked out in another trailer. It was getting dark. There was no immediate reply when Brit honked his truck's horn and rapped on the door, but a frantically barking dog suggested that someone was around. After about 15 minutes, the man revealed himself by kicking open the trailer door from the inside. He had a long white beard and screamed “What's going on out here?!” in a voice that would have made John Wayne soil his pants. He was toting a shotgun, and he detained us at gunpoint while shouting indecipherable commands. It took a few moments for us to realize that he was stone deaf. Brit started yelling, “We'll never come back!” while we walked backwards with our hands in the air and then eased into the truck and sped off.

We settled into a bar that I'll call the Peephole and had a couple of shots to toast that the man hadn't pulled the trigger. When I lifted my third vodka, an hour later, my hand was still shaking. Brit was at the end of the bar talking to a drunken man who was covered in coal ash and wearing a denim chore coat. “This guy's got great leads,” he said.

The leads from the peephole聽kept us busy for a couple more days, though they didn't produce any exciting finds beyond a human leg bone that I plucked from a hole in the ground after being directed to the location by a local landowner. The waistband from the buckleback jeans outside Modena was the closest we'd come to a big-game find, though the back of the truck continued to pile up with small-game items that might fetch $10 or $50 or $200. In addition to Theo's macbeth T-shirt, we had a stack of saddle blankets, assorted western-style button-up shirts, a pair of 1970s corduroy pants, a beat-up piece of Filson luggage, a Victorian-era women's coat made of velvet, a homemade coat rack of welded horseshoes and fencing staples, a leather rifle scabbard, old riding chaps, assorted trucker's hats, and a pair of cowboy boots that were so stiff with age, they felt bronzed. (Brit soaks leather goods back to life in neat's-foot oil, which he buys by the drum.)

It was better stuff than you're going to see in 90 percent of college-town secondhand stores, but Brit was hardly impressed; in fact, he was growing increasingly annoyed over our inability to make a major score. He likes to describe his occupation as equal parts Antiques Roadshow and The Crocodile Hunter, but I was beginning to see traces of the Tasmanian Devil creeping into the mix. I'd been marking my notebook every time we went into a building (I registered more than 40 marks the first day), but now Brit was flying through structures with such rapidity that I hardly had time to pull it out. Rather than walking around the perimeter of a 30-foot-deep chasm in the center of an abandoned mill, Brit went over it by trotting along a partially rotten six-inch beam, his arms flailing out to his sides for balance. Several times I watched him pull himself up through holes in rotten ceilings only to bust through in a shower of pigeon shit and dust. One time, blasting down a dirt road, I looked at his truck's speedometer and saw he was driving three times the posted speed limit while packing his mouth with carrots and bread washed down with a Starbucks Frappuccino.

The numbing speed of our travel was punctuated by a few short moments of crystalline excitement. On our last full day in the field, we ran into a farm kid and his pack of hunting dogs in a wide irrigated valley bordered by rugged, chalk-white mountains. He said it'd be OK to poke around for old clothes in a chain of abandoned farm buildings scattered along the river to the north. Brit pored over most of the buildings, leaving his truck running outside and wielding his flashlight in a way that reminded me of an FBI agent conducting a drug raid. Instead of yelling “Police!” he constantly shouted “Snakes!” in an effort to scare off rattlers.But there was one old house where Brit slowed his pace and came to a complete stop. When I stepped inside the kitchen door, I could see why. It seemed as though someone had wandered off decades ago, leaving behind evidence of a very simple life. Mice-gnawed food crates were scattered about. A cupboard contained the sopping-wet pages of a novel published in 1918. A woodstove and chimney stood against the wall. In a corner by the door was an old pile of clothing that had rotted into a dirt-like mound. I walked into the main room and was startled when a large raptor dropped down from a rafter and, with a pump of its wings, pushed itself out a window.

“Take a look in that second chimney,” Brit said. I noticed a single section of stovepipe poking through the living-room ceiling and attached to nothing but air. I peered upward into the pipe and was surprised I couldn't see sunlight. When my eyes adjusted to the dark, I let out a whoop. What I was seeing was unmistakable: Some bygone resident had grown weary of the cold drafts from the chimney and had plugged it with fabric. I climbed up to fetch it, but the roof was so decrepit that the chimney rolled off and landed outside in the tumbleweed. I raced outside and removed from the pipe a cylindrical wad of denim. The top of the ball was bleached white from the daily doses of sun that managed to peek inside. The underside was still blue, like the color on the knees of a pair of 501's when they're finally ready to give out. The denim crackled as it unfurled, and the bleached spot spread in a tie-dye pattern. I checked the label: J.C. PENNEY.

Brit said the pants might be from the 1940s or even earlier, a great find if it weren't for the size. I held them up to my waist, and the hems barely came down to my knees. They were made for a little boy. I was still holding the jeans as we walked back toward the truck, and I couldn't help but wonder about the slow line of circumstances that might have played out inside that house. A couple of times I looked over my shoulder, irrationally expecting to see some poor little kid off in the sagebrush wearing nothing but his underwear. I found myself thinking that this family might've liked that their old clothes were actually worth something in this day and age. I recalled something from just a few days before, when Brit was negotiating with a rancher's wife over a cowboy hat that Brit had found in a tenantless house on her property. He made an offer for the hat, and after accepting the price, the rancher's wife noted that it had belonged to her husband's dead father.

“I shouldn't take the hat then,” Brit said. “He might be upset.”

The woman silently compared the price of her husband's anger with the price of the hat. Apparently, the hat was worth more.

“Don't worry,” she said. “You'll be long gone by the time he gets home.”

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