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This year was one of healing in the forests and rivers of Northwest Colorado. Streams rebounded from a year of drought to fill area reservoirs, and new growth took hold in forests scarred by wildfire a summer earlier.

As January snow piled up on the edge of the Flat Tops Wilderness Area south of Yampa, snowmobilers and visitors were returning to Trappers Lake and discovering the newly rebuilt Trappers Lake Lodge. Cross country skiers visiting the lodge enjoyed an abstract landscape changed for decades to come by the forest fires of 2002.

The original Trappers Lake Lodge was built in 1918 and burned Aug. 16, 2002, when the Big Fish Fire swept down from Himes Peak.

The fire burned the lodgepole pines and spruce right down to the shoreline of Trappers Lake, but by late July, a profusion of wildflowers was blooming beneath the scarred tree trunks.

February brought Winter Carnival as it always does, and with it came the 29th annual Muzzleloading Biathlon, an event that can't be found in many other places but Ski Town USA.

The event requires contestants to be accurate shooters as well as cross country skiers. Athletes in the biathlon are encouraged to ski on old wooden skis -- the older the better -- and arm themselves with black powder rifles and flintlocks. Contestants skied four laps around a figure-eight, stopping after each lap. They had a total of 12 shots to hit as many of nine targets as they were able. No one hit all nine targets.

In terms of snowfall, February got off to a slow start but sprinted to the finish line and wound up ranking among the top seven Februarys in 20 years. Five feet of snow in the last week of the month pushed the total to 93 inches. The ski area would see another 50 inches in March and 20 in April to finish with 344 inches for the season. That amount topped the 20-year average by more than 2 feet.

Officials with the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest formally acknowledged in February that they needed to take a fresh look at their winter recreation plan because of the increasing difficulty they were experiencing in meeting the needs of growing legions of snowmobilers traveling to the Steamboat area. The Bears Ears/Hahn's Peak District ranger said she hoped to produce a draft of a new Winter Recreation Travel Plan by October 2004 to identify areas of the forest that are not open to motorized recreation.

Springtime signs of life

A crew of 40 volunteers with the Colorado Division of Wildlife tramped along the banks of the Yampa River near Hayden in March and found indirect evidence that a former resident of the valley is back after a nearly 70-year absence.

The volunteers found snow slides, tracks and scat confirming what wildlife officials already believed -- river otters reintroduced into the Green River had expanded their territories upstream into the Yampa. DOW official Jim Hicks said most of the otter evidence has been found between the Nature Conservancy's Carpenter Ranch east of Hayden and the Moffat County line. In addition, he had received a few reports of sightings within Steamboat city limits.

It was no April Fool's joke came ice fisherman Chad Kurtenbach went eye to eye with a monstrous fish at Stagecoach Reservoir. Kurtenbach, a 12-year employee of the Yampa Ranger District of the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest, had a 30-pound, 14-ounce female northern pike on the other end of his hand line. The fish, which would have set a new record had Kurtenbach not released it, had to be squeezed back through the angler's hole in the ice. He caught the monster using a hook tipped with sucker meat.

Rising water, lessening drought

After Stagecoach Reservoir failed to fill during the drought of 2002, it was welcome news when the South Routt impoundment filled May 12. By Memorial Day weekend, a spate of warm weather caused a major spike in the annual runoff, and Soda Creek was over its banks in downtown Steamboat. The Yampa River peaked at 5,000 cubic feet per second at 10 p.m. June 1 after a half-inch of rain fell in the valley that morning.

The boisterous runoff should have been nothing but good news for kayakers. However, there were mixed emotions when it was discovered the heavy flow had washed out a relatively new kayak play hole just downstream from the 13th Street Bridge. The D-Hole, as it was known, was built specifically to provide paddlers with a standing wave to play in at peak runoff. It was reconstructed in October with hopes it will withstand runoff in 2004.

June brought further confirmation that the Yampa River's resident trout population survived the drought of 2002. While the fish were scattered in October 2002, fishing guides reported healthy trout throughout the section in town by the following summer.

June 29 marked the return of Steamboat's commercial tubing fleet to the Yampa River. Operators were in a buoyant mood as they anticipated the return of revenues after a 2002 season wiped out by drought. Tubing companies took themselves off the river the previous summer after no more than two weeks of operation because of extremely low flows in the Yampa.

Plagues on the wing

The grasshoppers that plagued Yampa Valley during the 2002 drought returned this year, but in less force. A wet spring combined with a prepared populace helped lessen the insects' impact on agriculture and recreation.

Another insect, however, made headlines and caused worries. July and August brought fears that the mosquito-borne West Nile virus would curtail outdoor activities in Yampa Valley. There were 450 human cases in Colorado last summer, but there was no confirmation of any human cases originating in the Yampa Valley. A sustained dry period in late summer discouraged succeeding generations of mosquitoes form hatching here.

Winter starts slow, picks up

In late summer, elk hunters reported seeing bulls with unusually robust antler growth. However, unseasonable heat that continued into October made slim pickings for big-game hunters in the first two rifle seasons.

Snow in early November improved hunter success ratios.

The snow carried on into the beginning of ski season. The Steamboat Ski Area began tallying accumulated snow on Halloween and received 5 feet during the first three weeks in November, including a foot on the weekend of Nov. 22 and 23, just days before it opened as scheduled Nov. 26.