by Matie Belle Lakish
According to District Judge Martin Gonzales, Saguache County Clerk Melinda Myers must allow Secretary of State Scott Gessler to have access to Saguache County’s voted ballots from the November 2010 election. 31. He plans to recount them the end of August. As promised prior to the hearing, Myers has agreed to follow the Judge’s ruling and turn over ballots. But even as the Clerk and Commissioners sought clarity on the ballot issue, a group of citizens calling themselves the Committee to Recall Melinda Myers as County Clerk and Recorder continue to gather signatures on a recall petition. They hope to put the recall on the ballot in a special election, probably after the November 2011 regular election.
The controversy over the County Clerk stems from the November 2010 vote count, where a discrepancy was found between the first vote count, which was made on election night, and another vote count done on November 5. Following the initial count made on election night, the Clerk’s office noticed a discrepancy in the numbers of votes from District 5 (Crestone/Baca). The Secretary of State’s office was brought in to advise the County and a “retabulation” was done which found 197 votes from District 5 had not been counted in the first round be cause the software used to count the votes had counted mail-in votes twice and left out the polling place votes.
The missing 197 votes cast by District 5 voters was enough to change the outcome of the election. As a result of the retabulation, Myers retained her seat as Clerk, and Linda Joseph retained her seat as Commissioner. A total of four counts were done on the ballots, all using the M650 ballot counting machine, with the same results being found on the last three “retabulations”.
However, a number of citizens continue to believe that mistakes were made in the count, and, along with Marilyn Marks, an Aspen resident who has taken a strong interest in Saguache County’s election, urged Secretary Gessler to bring a suit to force a public recount, preferably a hand count, of the ballots.
As a result of the judge’s decision, Secretary of State Gessler’s office will come to Saguache to count the votes on August 29 through 31. The results of this count will be posted on the this site when they become available.

There is still controversy over whether Judge Martinez’s order allows private citizens to have access to ballots. Myers contends that this could void the secrecy that is meant to surround ballots, especially in counties with small populations and many unique ballot styles, some of them voted by only three voters, and the Saguache County Commissioners have asked for clarification from the judge on whether his order to allow access to the ballots includes releasing them to private citizens, such as Marilyn Marks, who has requested them.
Recall of Saguache County Clerk initiated
In the meantime the Recall Committee is gathering signatures to put the recall on the ballot, as many citizens continue to believe that Myers did not accurately count the ballots and that the Clerk’s office should be run by a different person. They have expressed a lack of confindence in the Clerk.
In their article announcing the recall, the Committee, which is represented by Steven M. Carlson (R), Saguache, John Baker (D) Moffat, and Patricia A. Jenkins (U) Gunnison, quoted one sentence from the final paragraph of the Colorado Statewide Grand Jury investigation of the election, which was completed June 6, 2011. The chosen quote says “Clerk Myers and her staff committed the violations in this report.” It does not note the sentence following, which says, “The Grand Jury found, however, that the election ‘substantially complied’ with the provision of the Election Code.” That investigation also found no discrepancies in the final election count as done on November 5, 2010.
Steven Carlson, who was the Republican Candidate for County Commissioner, and whose apparent success in the election was overturned by the November 5 recount, said that the recall group will be seeking about 620 to 650 signatures, or one-quarter of the votes cast in the County Clerk election in November 2010. If they achieve the required number of signatures, the special election will be held to determine if a majority of voters wish to recall Clerk Myers. For those who vote to recall, there will then be candidates to vote for on the same ballot. There is a 60-day window for gathering signatures, which began in early August and will continue until October 3. If the signatures are deemed sufficient, an election will be set. It is unlikely it will occur during the normal November election cycle, however, so will require a special election. Recall committee members called for a polling place election rather than a mail-in election, and insisted that the election results be hand counted, rather than machine counted.
Commissioners appointed County Treasure Connie Trujillo to run the recall election, as the Saguache County Clerk cannot run it, and no other county clerk was found who was willing to take it on. Some residents from Center objected to Trujillo’s appointment to run the election, as they said she was closely tied to the recall committee. Commissioner Pace said, that given time constraints, Trujillo seemed the best choice, and Pace said he felt she would seek the assistance she needed and would recuse herself, if necessary, from some aspects of the election. In addition, some tasks related to the election will be handled by El Paso County election officials.
A number of citizens attended the Commission meeting on August 2. Proponents of the recall called themselves Citizens for Fair Government. Other citizens objected to the recall, including local residents Vince and Mary Palermo. Vince noted that they “feel this effort is totally inappropriate. The Clerk was exonerated (by the Colorado Grand Jury), that it is an inappropriate use of County money, and has no public benefit.” Michael Garcia of Center, however, said his registration had not been entered into the books, and he had not been allowed to vote. Jennie Sanchez, also of Center, who has often worked as an Election Judge, responded that he was listed at two addresses.
In other news related to the November election, Marilyn Marks of Aspen, who describes herself as a voting integrity advocate, has filed contempt charges against the maker of the vote counting machine used in the 2010 election, Election Systems and Software (ES&S). Judge Martin Gonzales ruled that ES&S could be held in contempt of Court for failing to appear for depositions in the Marilyn Marks vs. Melinda Myers Colorado Open Records Act case. The international company apparently failed to appear to answer questions about how the machine generated some Saguache County election reports. ES&S personnel were on hand to troubleshoot the M650 ballot counting machine on November 15.
An account of some of these election issues can be found on the County website. The Grand Jury report is accessible from the Home Page, while other election-related documents can be found on the Clerk’s page. Please see www.saguachecounty.net

by M. Diane Bairstow

Black Bear photo by Ken Archer

In mid-April, a bear came to Amy and John Myzko’s house, tore through a 6’ electrified fence, ripped down their chicken coop and ate 15 chickens. After that it was quiet at the Myzko’s until the beginning of July. Since then they have had bear visits every night. Their dog sleeps in the garden and has kept it safe except for one night when they forgot to put him out, and the bear crunched the fence again. Most of their nightly visitors have run away from their dog, but one big, black “humongous” bear just stood there while the dog ran circles around him (Amy thinks it’s a male). They’ve seen babies, and a smaller, shyer cinnamon colored bear, which Amy thinks is female. For the last few days, (around Aug. 19, this is now the 22nd) the bears haven’t dropped by. Amy and John did a ceremony asking them to stay away. Maybe that helped, maybe they got word there were berries in the mountains, whatever the reason, it has been blessed relief for the Myzko’s.
Bears are always hungry
We’ve all heard the expression, “hungry as a bear,” but it takes on more meaning when you understand their feeding cycles. It takes bears a couple of weeks to fully wake up from hibernation; then they are literally (always) in near starvation mode through mid to late July. This is also their breeding season. From late July until they go into hibernation, they are in a state called hyperphagia, during this time a bear will eat up to 22 hours a day. Its main goal in life is to get as fat as possible; they can eat 15,000 to 20,000 calories a day and drink several gallons of water. Bears in our area are only active about 5 months out of the year as their hibernation time is dependent upon food availability. They will eat pretty much anything: bark, grass, dandelions, horsetail—any vegetation—bees (adult and larva), ants, wasps, carrion, whatever. Bears aren’t ferocious hunters, but in the spring they will hunt young deer, rodents, small animals, etc., until the berries start to ripen and vegetation begins to appear. An interesting factoid: bears have very flexible lips, sort of like monkeys’ prehensile tails, that can grasp and pluck, and when a bear finds a berry bush, she will sit there all day delicately plucking one berry after another.
Are our bears, really, really starving? Why are they all over town?

Bare bear feet. One of the local black bears napping up in the branches of a cottonwood tree.

Half the people in town saw the mamma and her two cubs sleeping in the trees at Andrew and Kim Martinez’s place across from the Town Hall. Akia Tanara saw a huge black bear asleep in a tree just east of Warren Stephen’s house on Carbonate, and Mark Talbot saw a big cinnamon bear stretching on one of the cottonwoods next to the porch by the Eagle office at 3:00 in the morning. Mark is 6’2” tall and when he showed the Eaglettes the bear’s claw marks, he could just barely reach the top one. This bear turned and gave Mark a throaty growl when Mark hollered at it to move on.
This summer was pretty lean up in the mountains, and they began coming down into the towns earlier than usual. The DOW (Division of Wildlife) had calls about them throughout the Valley all summer long. Now fall food crops are coming on strong and there is ample food in the mountains and there are no reports of major food shortages anywhere (the DOW people go around up there checking). Chokecherries, currants, juniper and service berries are ample in our area. There are acorns, more to the north, and it appears we’re going to have a piñon crop this year.
Thus bears, which are always in near starvation mode during the summer, were extra hungry this year, but now they should be able to recover sufficiently to make it pretty easily through the winter. Bears are territorial animals and they will only tolerate other bears when there is abundance; that’s why we have so many bears here—there’s more than enough food for one and all. This is good for the bears’ stomachs, but bad for us, and ultimately bad for them.

This bear cub was one of the two orphaned when their mother was shot by the Division of Wildlife.

Feeding bears is a bad idea
Once bears learn to associate food with humans—whether it’s in town or scattered around up in the mountains by kindhearted humans (they smell us on it and know where it came from)—they gradually lose their innate fear of humans and are likely to confront us to get it. Bears have not learned the social graces, and the way they ask is not always what we consider polite. While I was writing this story, a bear in the Aspen/Crater Lake area was hunted down and killed because he had become habituated to human food. He broke into two different tents in different areas while the campers were asleep. In both instances, the bear bit the camper on the leg. The first bite was minor, the second was worse, but the man could still hike out with his friends. The bear did not maul the campers, but (to my way of thinking) was just trying to get his attention—“hey, wake up” he was saying, “give me some food.” These campers had done everything right by putting their food up in the trees, etc., but not all campers do, and apparently this bear learned to associate food with tents. This bear was the innocent victim of human carelessness.
Our bears are getting bolder and more used to humans. Isadora Storey and Jeri McAndrews saw one at about 3:00 in the afternoon sitting in the middle of the spillway road not far from the last curve out of Crestone. They stopped the car and watched it for a while, then pulled up closer. The bear got up, walked around in a circle and plopped back down again in the road. Isadora and Jeri waited a while before pulling forward again. The bear got up and strolled off the road, where it moved casually through the trees as they drove past. Elizabeth Czhubirka and John Percival saw one at about noon 20 to 30 feet from their house standing behind a tree looking at them through the branches. Their dog Beau ran him off, but the bear came back several times and was seen on the steps just outside their patio door. Steve Anderson and Tom Whitehead watched the baby bears play in Tom’s yard during the middle of the day as mama bear sat under a tree looking on.

Mama and two babies had been visiting back yard at the Gripp house on West Galena/Cemetery Road, first sighting July 23 at 8am, second sighting August 15 10:30am. Interesting company with our morning coffee.

How many bears survive the winter during food shortages
Even in catastrophic food years, survival rates for adult bears are still high. Adults can go into hibernation a little skinny and still make it through the winter. Even during severe food shortages, 91 to 96% of adult females will make it through, and 82 to 92% of males. Tallying females of all ages, the numbers change to 84 to 96%, and 80 to 95% for males. Cubs and sub-adults are hit the hardest by food shortages.  They range from 30% during catastrophic food shortages to 85% at the best of times.
Babies and sub-adults (in every species) are always at greatest risk. First-year babies stay with their mothers. They have to put on even extra weight for the winter as they are still growing during hibernation, and if they don’t, they are at greater risk of dying during that time. Sub-adults (second year cubs) begin going off on their own. Bears are territorial animals and the young have to find their own territory. Most territories are filled, making it difficult for the young cub to find a territory and get enough to eat to make it through the next winter. This is the reason survival rates in hibernation are lowest in cubs. The young are also at risk from adult males who will kill cubs that come into their territory, as this will put the female back into estrus, giving them a better chance of getting their genetic material into the world. To us, this is all heart-wrenching; to the bears, it’s simply life. It is survival of the fittest—the way of nature.
What can we do to protect our property and town?

Bear in the cottonwood in front of Crestone Creative Trade. Perhaps not the best location to choose for your midday nap, Mrs. Bear!

The obvious. Don’t put food trash in your dumpsters until the morning of the pick-up, no bird feeders, etc. Keep windows closed anywhere near food. Cindy Santi and Chris Botz had a fryer full of oil in their mudroom and had left a small window open. A bear, probably a baby, skinnied through a window I could just barely have gotten through, drank the oil and left greasy footprints on the flagstones outside. Someone else told me about a bear reaching through a window to take a banana. Keep refrigerators and freezers out of the bear’s line of sight; they have learned to recognize them and will walk around a house until they see one, break in right there, and have a nice snack. The less food that is available, the fewer bears we will have. If the food supply dries up, one bear will take this over as his territory and run the rest of them out. Then we will only have one bear, and if that bear learns it’s best to stay away from humans, our town will be safer for us and for them. Meanwhile, it’s not a good idea to go walking around town at night, not even so much in the daytime as they are out and about at all hours—remember this is the time they can eat up to 22 hours a day—be careful.
Should I call the DOW with my problem bear?
Yes. Even though their policy is two strikes and the bear is out, calling about a bear in your garden or garbage does not constitute a strike. They don’t want to kill bears; they want to help us control them so we can all live in peace. They will come out and provide the information and techniques needed to bearproof your property. The earlier we call them, the better for the bears; the sooner they learn to stay away from humans, the better for us and them. When bears start getting strikes against them is when they have lost their fear of humans and, for instance, come into your home and then don’t run away even though you are shouting and banging pots and pans. Putting down bears is not a decision the DOW makes lightly; it is only when they lose their fear of humans and become a threat to us that they do it.

This bear was up a tree with her 2 cubs on 7/31/11 right across the street from our very own Crestone Eagle headquarters, no doubt parched from the heat. She was shot the night of August 27/28. photo by Lori Nagel

The responsibility is ours. If we make our neighborhoods inhospitable, we will have fewer problems, and the bears will leave us alone. If we think we’re helping them by leaving something in our garbage for them, taking them food, or letting them get into our dumpsters, the bears will get bolder and bolder and eventually they will be shot. It’s really not even a good idea to let them hang out in your yard looking cute. If they’re hanging out, bang pots, yell at them and run them off. They are huge, strong animals that can hurt our children, or us, and not even mean to. The less comfortable they are around human habitation the better.

Mama Bear, with one of her cubs, in a tree in downtown Crestone. photo by Sarah Anderson

Call the DOW for help with problem bears at 587-6900. After hours, in case of emergency (bear home invasions, children at risk) call the CO State Patrol at 589-5807.

Followup story: Breaking News about Mama bear of 2 young cubs shot by DOW near Crestone

A bear got through this window at Cindy Santi and Chris Botz's house to get to into fryer full of grease in their mudroom.

There have been a series of earthquakes this week in southern Colorado.  Monday (8/22) night a 5.3 tremor was felt in Trinidad, CO, east of Crestone across the Sangre de Cristo Mountains from Crestone.  Read more at http://huff.to/soco_nonmquake.

A walk in the park with some ‘old goats’

story & photos by Larry Calloway

I was privileged in mid July to take a long walk with a team of five remarkable retirees. They are fierce in their love of mountains and their defiance of the inconveniences of aging. Median age: 69.

The five-day backpack was 37.6 miles long and 8,870 feet high. Our GPS tracking map came out in the form of a Zen circle beginning and ending at Liberty Gate.

Four of the group—Tom DeWitz, petroleum engineer, the youngest at 60; John Stevenson, purchasing agent; Gerald DeYoung, music professor; and Kent Keller, Presbyterian pastor—drove down from Estes Park, where they have hiked and climbed together in their beloved Rocky Mountain National Park for the better part of a decade. The fifth was their host, art professor Steve Andersen, who moved to Crestone-Baca but is still drawn to Estes Park.

Most of them have climbed all 54 Colorado fourteeners, plus most or all of the 130 named summits in Rocky Mountain NP. But they are not about statistics (or testosterone), and their big outing every year now for six years has been a week’s backpack trip through somewhere wild, new and, as often happens, adventurous. Steve and I enticed them here with a prospectus (mine) promising sand to snow, dune to cornice, rapids to tarns, prickly pear to elk thistle, grama grass to alpine tundra, pinyon pine to alpine fir …

We parked John’s van and sidestepped with 30-to-50-pound packs through the vehicle barrier at 7:00 on a Monday morning. “We’re free!” I suggested, although we all knew Liberty road is named for a town site, not a state of mind. The sand of the road was glued by an overnight rain, making the 9.4-mile first day easier. Deadman Creek was running clear through green grass. Swallows worked the swarms of mosquitoes in the grove of the cottonwoods. The Duncan cabin further on lay in numbered pieces awaiting another weekend of volunteer restorers. The plain of Liberty was baked and barren except for its abandoned ranch buildings.

We pitched our light tents in a thicket of lower Sand Creek canyon in mid afternoon, and some walked a mile to the foot of the dunes while others went looking for the new approach to the Sand Creek trail. We had left the road and therefore missed the trail markers.

Tuesday was the longest day, 12.1 miles (recorded on Tom’s GPS) up Sand Creek through several life zones. Steve found the ruins of a stamp mill from the hard-rock mining days. Hundreds of tons of dark satanic steel lay strangely in a strange land.

The lower reach of the river was lush with foliage and full of bird songs, but it was slow going because the well-worn trail from the private-property days made 13 difficult crossings. We were now in the Preserve, so there were no bridges, just shaky saplings slung across slippery rocks. Sand Creek was running full, and even these guys were surprised by the force of the current. Two pair of sunglasses now sleep with the fishes. Three trekking poles were snatched heroically from the deeps.

Towards the Music Pass junction the trail stays high on lovely rolling meadows at river left. We camped in the grass in the monumental presence of Pico Aislado. Here we met the first human in two days, a uniformed National Park Service ranger who lives in a big tent. He said he had been picking up dog food chunks that some fool scattered on the grass. “It’s like an invitation to bears—an appetizer.” But we had our act together, the ranger said. The five all carried bear-proof food canisters, which are mandatory in Rocky Mountain NP, and we were camped more than 300 feet from the water.

Now we were on the threshold of the high country, as if coming out of the sea on the shore of a pure island, where flowers profess their beauty as fast as they can between the June snow melt and the September frost—red skyrockets, blue harebells, purple larkspur, yellow cinquefoil, pale alpine daisies ….

And mountains. I once asked Kent, the minister, about mountains. He said they are—to religious leaders through the ages, to the biblical Psalmists, to him—symbols for God. (“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills / From whence cometh my help.”) He wrote a paper for a gathering at Yale, in which he told of being reduced to “awed silence” in the Alps, the Himalaya, the Rockies. Mountains inspire awe, which he proposed is a composition of fear and wonder. Derald, the musician, sees music in the peaks. He once recalled that Gustav Mahler, living in the Dolomites, told a friend there was no need to come view the mountains: “They are in my compositions.” Steve, the artist, often called our attention to the play of colors and lines as we ascended. John has the eye of a photographer, Tom an eye for botanical and geological detail.

Wednesday was the most adventurous day, with more awe than fear thanks to a significantly improved trail. There’s a fork about a mile above where we broke camp. Left is Upper Sand Creek Lake, right is “Cottonwood Pass,” according to a new metal sign. But we were looking for “Milwaukee Pass.” No problem. The pass north of 13,522-foot Milwaukee Peak carries both names. Tom quoted Yogi Berra: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it!”

Following the new line of Park Service cairns, we skirted a lake and wetlands and passed into a high green basin, trudging toward 13,000 feet. “Follow the cairns,” a new sign instructed, even though these well-placed piles of rocks seemed to lead in the wrong direction. They took us to the basin rim, where we appreciated the awesome profile of Crestone Needle and the dizzying plunge to the South Colony Lakes.

We were in dangerous terrain, and so it was a relief to discover a new Park Service trail contouring and switchbacking southward toward the pass. Three hours from camp we crossed it on the remnants of an old rock livestock road, out of the park and into the Sangre de Cristo Wilderness. At lunch on the other side, with the San Juans and “El Valle” on the far horizon, we discussed the big unknown in my prospectus: getting to Cottonwood Lake from a high saddle that looked promising on the topo map but was otherwise unreckoned.

After a cliffed-out false start, we scrambled into another high basin, and within two hours of lunch we looked down on the mirror of Cottonwood Lake far below the south face of the Needle. The descent on a green carpet dotted with yellow and blue flowers took a half hour. We had arrived.

On Thursday the Fierce Five climbed the 14,197-foot Needle from Broken Hand Pass while I backtracked in search of a lost tent pole (finding wildflowers and sunlight and silence instead). They returned in the afternoon, having thoroughly enjoyed the summiting in perfect weather. They are experienced not only individually but as a group. They know their mountains and they know each other.

And their experience was lucky for two lost young men who had taken a wrong route off the Needle in late afternoon. “What’s the easiest way down?” came a voice from the unforgiving cliffs directly above our camp up from the lake. The two, with light packs and wearing walking shorts, were looking nervously down from a ledge more than 200 vertical feet above us.

There was no easy way down. A few dozen feet more and they would be on a concave face. In the summer of 2008 a lone climber got in the same trap and fell to his death. “Go back!” Tom yelled. They persisted, searching for the saving crack or gully that was not there. “Go back the way you came!” Steve thought he could call them and explain, but they had no cell phone. He yelled for the names of who should be notified, which may have sobered them. Eventually, without a word, they turned around and disappeared.

At evening the bighorn sheep, females and juveniles, came down to the lake, one by one, from their day jobs. Soon nine of them were gathered, drinking and grazing. Unlike the sheep at other more frequented lakes, these kept their distance. They were thinking, Kent supposed, that they did not want anything to do with a bunch of “old goats.”

On Friday we walked down Cottonwood Creek, 6.3 miles in six hours, and Tom and Steve went the extra 7-tenths of a mile to get the van. It was a hot walk on a wilderness track that gets no maintenance from the Forest Service. The deadfalls, slickrock ramps and multiple-choice cairns were frustrating. But we had been to the mountains.