Each week we’ll run through the sublime, the trivial and profound issues, decisions and goings on that strike us as Hits or Misses. you can join in, too, by emailing your Hits & Misses to editboard@theunion.com.
HIT (from reader Ray Bryars): To The Union for the recent front page articles showing families hiking our local trails. The Hit extends to the historic cooperative development of trails by Nevada City, Grass Valley and local trails developers such as the Bear Yuba Land Trust. These gems are valuable legacies for future generations.
HIT (from Editorial Board member Paul Matson): To the Holbrooke Hotel, which reopened last November after extensive renovation and has been strictly following the governor’s pandemic safety guidelines. Hotel rooms are available for those on “essential travel,” and there is a 25% Heroes Discount for public safety and health care workers. The Holbrooke Hotel, like the National Exchange Hotel, has been carefully restored and is manage
Sactown Magazine
The Call of the Wild
Our region is a hiker’s paradise, but the one part that isn’t so heavenly is the pitiful state of restroom pit stops. One Colorado group has engineered a dignified solution.
January 13, 2021
In the Ridley Scott sci-fi movie
The Martian, Matt Damon’s character an astronaut stranded on the Red Planet realizes there’s only one way for him to survive. “I’m going to have to science the sh-t out of this,” he says. And that’s basically and in this case, literally the approach that Rick Sommerfeld, an assistant professor of architecture at the University of Colorado took in 2018, when the National Park Service approached the program he oversees, the Colorado Building Workshop. The challenge: Create durable, reliable and environmentally friendly restrooms for trails on Longs Peak, the tallest summit in the Rocky Mountain National Park. (Most trailside toilets are typically either nasty or nonexistent. When they’re nonexistent, a lo