Along the Elk River, earlier springs and more uncertainty

Jay Fetcher faithfully records the date the last snow disappears from the ranch meadow. This year was the earliest by a matter of weeks.

by Allen Best

In 1949, when Jay Fetcher was two years old, his parents left Philadelphia behind for a ranch located in a remote valley in northern Colorado. The next spring, his father, John, began marking in his diary the day each year that the winter snows had disappeared from the central hay meadow of the ranch.

It’s a tradition that Jay has continued, including this year of sparse snow and summer heat by the first week of spring. This year’s first snow-free day was the earliest by a margin of several weeks in the 76-year record.

The ranch lies 16 miles from Steamboat Springs and along the Elk River. It draws water from

the Park Range, well known for often having Colorado’s deepest snows. At one notch in the range, Buffalo Pass, enough snow has fallen annually for an average of 50 inches of water.

Snow had strongly influenced why John Fetcher and his brother Stanton chose the ranch in the Elk River Valley. They had previously shopped for ranches near Gunnison and Pueblo along with properties in Wyoming and Montana. In Steamboat’s favor was Howelsen Hill, the small ski area created in 1915. The Fetchers were avid skiers. They arrived on Oct. 30.

Jay credits his mother with being a hero, moving from Philadelphia in October with three little boys just as the snow began flying hard in Colorado’s high country. “She must have been shaking her head,” I suggested when I met with him recently.

“Oh, she did,” Jay said. “I asked her once, ‘How did you put up with John Fetcher?’ And she said, ‘I’m a Quaker.’ That explains why he wasn’t dead,” said Jay. “They’re gentle people.”

As for ranching, it wasn’t central to John’s passions. “He didn’t know which end of a cow got out first,” says Jay. A partner in the enterprise was John’s brother, Stratton, a trained biologist. He took care of the cow part of the ranch while John, a professional engineer, crafted ditches that more efficiently delivered the water needed to grow hay.

John scratched his engineering itch in co-founding the Steamboat ski area in 1963. The ranch was indirectly part of the creation. The Fetchers sold a portion of the ranch located near Hahn’s Peak, also along the Elk River, to the state of Colorado, which created a reservoir there for fishing opportunities. John Fetcher used the money to go to Switzerland to buy a gondola for the new ski area. It put Steamboat on the skiing map.

In the Elk River valley, though, Harvard-educated John Fetcher became best friends with a neighboring rancher named Orval Bedell. “He never finished eighth grade, but John Fetcher and Orval Bedell became best friends because they had to work together and share.”

As for Jay, he went to the University of Wyoming, returning to Colorado to run the ranch. “I kind of consider myself lucky,” said Jay. “Because he was so busy building a ski area, he wasn’t that patriarch looking over my shoulder and saying, ‘You’re doing everything wrong, son.’”

The Ek River runs 40 miles long altogether, producing more water for its length than any other river in the United States, said Jay. It sounds like local boosterism. For example, given the prodigious volumes of rain and snow in Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, wouldn’t the rivers there surpass the Elk? But at least in the context of Colorado, it’s an easy claim to believe.

With that much water — and being that remote from the Front Range and farmers of eastern Colorado — the traditional accounting of water in the Elk and the broader Yampa Valley was long lax.

That changed several years ago. A water commissioner’s job is to administer the pecking order of water rights under Colorado’s prior appropriation system. The oldest water rights get the first calls on the river. In the Yampa Valley, though, there was enough water to satisfy everybody. A new water commissioner, Ern Light, set out to make the Yampa, including the tributary Elk River, accord with state law. This requires keeping records.

“We were lazy in our water management, until she came along and said, ‘You got to put measuring devices to monitor everything,” said Jay.

For some years, Jay had complaints about the location of the ranch. Participating in the Colorado Agriculture Leadership Program, he told other ranchers of his need to feed his cattle six months a year. Then one day, the instructor pointed to the Clark location of the Fetcher ranch, on a state map. That area, he said, had Colorado’s most stable weather patterns.

Jay realized in that moment his challenge. It was when, not if. Snow always arrived and, after it melted, the water that grew hay. It was enough water to mostly feed his 220 cow-calf herd.

“After that, understanding the difference between when and if, I quit cussing my dad, because ‘when’ is easier to manage than ‘if,’” said Jay.

In 1993, the Fetchers put a conservation easement on the ranch with the American Farmland Trust. The ranch properties consist of two parcels, 1,400 acres at Clark and 700 acres at Hahns Peak, about 8 miles farther north.

The national group asked Jay to travel around the country to talk about the project, why they wanted to do a conservation easement, and how it was working with the neighbors and local government.

In turn, Jay decided to approach the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association to do the same. The Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust now has helped create conservation easements on 810,000-plus acres in Colorado. Headquartered in Lakewood, it has branch offices in Steamboat, Del Norte and Carbondale.

As for his father’s diary, John recorded the day’s events in a red diary. His style was sparing of words. “April 8. Five calves born today. Snow today.”

The entry for June 2, 1952, was similarly brief. “Cut off Jay’s finger,” it said.

“I was out in the field with him, and he was leveling the meadow, and I stuck my finger in part of the machine,” explained Jay. “He took me to the neighbor, and the neighbor drove me down to mom, and mom took me to town.”

We talked politics just a little bit, who he favors for the Democratic nomination for governor in 2026 and how he came to be a Democrat. He had made a run for the state Legislature at one point. Ranching country generally runs dark red, although Routt County – where Steamboat is located — long had a strong Democratic presence, likely because of the coal mines. Coal miners were, back in the day, strongly Democratic, because Democrats were more friendly to labor.

“Well, I married a Democrat. That helped. She was home-grown,” said Jay. “But you know, there are really good Republicans. But what’s going on is something else. It’s just immoral. It’s sad.”

We had gathered at the library in Steamboat, which overlooks the Yampa River. It looked to have a healthy flow. But, of course, this was during the time of runoff. By that standard, the Yampa’s flows were modest at best, or worse. Kayakers were mostly absent.

The last snow on the hay meadow of the Fetcher ranch has varied greatly over the last 76 years. Often the snow has remained into May. The general trend has been to earlier snowmelt. March 24 became the earliest-ever just a few years ago, perhaps in 2018, a hot and dry year.

This year was earlier yet; March 2.

Just three years ago, the snows were so deep that in the middle of March they covered the tops of fence posts. Winter — and water — are becoming more variable.

The Fetcher ranch is becoming more like other ranches in Colorado. Ranching is becoming more a matter of “if” and not “when.”

“’If’ is a lot harder to manage than ‘when,’” said Jay.

Now, it’s a matter of whether they can get enough water to grow hay.

Jay no longer oversees the ranch. He had a top lieutenant, Liz (who asks for no last name), and she has given indications she was ready to move on. To what or where, she didn’t seem to know.

“I said, ‘What can we do to make you stay.’ And she said, ‘Stay out of my hair.”

The deal was struck. He lives in Steamboat, in what had been his dad’s house.

“Now, I go to the ranch for joy, not jobs.”

Top photo, Jay Fetcher in October 2020.