Stories in this list received the most page views on SummitDaily.com from May 25 – May 31. 

1. Water managers give updates on Dillon and Green Mountain reservoirs, including what rafting season could look like on Summit County’s Blue River 

Both the Dillon Reservoir and the Green Mountain Reservoir are expected to reach capacity this summer, Colorado Division of Water Resources division engineer James Heath said at the State of the River in Silverthorne on Thursday, May 22.

The Dillon Reservoir, Denver Water’s largest reservoir, supplies water to Denver and the Front Range through the Roberts Tunnel, which crosses beneath the Continental Divide. The Green Mountain Reservoir, located north of Silverthorne, includes a hydroelectric power plant and delivers water to Colorado’s Western Slope.

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An about-normal snowpack in Summit County this winter means both reservoirs are expected to “fill and potentially spill,” Heath said. While the snowpack levels were close to normal, the runoff has been slightly below normal because the county went into last winter with dry soils, he said.

Summit County was one of the few places in the state where the snowpack was at- or above-normal, Heath said. He noted that further to the west of Summit County, the snowpack peaked between about 50% to 70% of the 30-year-median, and was even worse in places further south, where the snowpack has “probably already melted out.”

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The snowpack in the Colorado River Headwaters Basin peaked April 7, about a week earlier than normal, Heath said. At 89% of the 30-year-median, the peak snowpack was “not bad but not good,” he said.

The Blue River Basin — a subbasin of the Colorado River Headwaters Basin — fared “a little bit better,” peaking April 8, at 108% of the 30-year-median, Heath said. The peak was also about a week earlier than the median peak, he said.

The Dillon Reservoir is expected to fill around the Fourth of July, Heath said. As of Friday, May 23, the Dillon Reservoir was about 86% full, according to Denver Water. But Heath said that the reservoir levels could rise quickly “with the warm conditions that we’ve got the last couple days and over the next couple weeks.”

— Ryan Spencer

2. Colorado author’s new book recalls the ‘truly remarkable’ story of how Leadville built an elaborate ice palace 129 years ago

More than 125 years ago, decades before Colorado became the popular tourist destination it is today, the people of Leadville dreamt up a grand vision to attract visitors from around the world: building a palace out of ice.

In her new book, “The 1896 Leadville Ice Palace,” Colorado author and historian Afton Rorvik describes how Leadville city leaders decided to build an elaborate ice palace, constructed it in a matter of weeks and invited the world to see it.

“It’s really quite a story — and it’s a true story,” Rorvik said. “It’s almost hard to imagine that it really did happen.”

Born in Fort Collins, Rorvik fell in love with Leadville after first visiting the historic mining town with her mother nearly 50 years ago. She said the mining town’s old buildings, like the Tabor Opera House, and its rich history, “drew me in.”

As a teenager, Rorvik said she would use her allowance money to purchase pamphlets about Leadville’s history and, for years, her mother would send her books about the town’s mining days for her birthday.

Rorvik said she settled on the ice palace as the subject of her book because “it is a wonderful tribute to human ingenuity and the spirit of Leadville.” The book relies on primary source documents, including original newspaper articles published in the Leadville newspaper, the Herald Democrat, between 1895 and 1896.

“It might seem a little odd to our modern minds ,but they were building ice palaces in several cities in the U.S. and around Europe,” Rorvik said. “So, in 1895, Leadville decided ‘We’re going to build an ice palace and it’s not going to be any little thing. It’s going to be the biggest and the best the world has ever seen.'”

— Ryan Spencer

3. Breckenridge officials worry about some of the town’s workforce housing units ‘sitting unoccupied,’ suggesting change 

Consistent reports from the local workforce about struggles with housing affordability spurred Breckenridge’s elected officials to make it a top priority — one that has cost millions. 

Breckenridge’s 2025 budget document detailed expenditures from its workforce housing fund totaling around $15.7 million in 2022, around $38.4 million in 2023 and around $28 million in 2024. This year’s expenditures are forecast to total $22.7 million. 

At a May 27 Breckenridge Town Council meeting, officials expressed a desire to see changes to their approach to workforce housing after hearing reports that some of the units the town built are sitting empty.

Housing needs assessments have guided elected officials as they shape housing goals and subsequent initiatives. The most recent iteration, the 2023 Housing Needs Assessment done for Summit County by the Root Policy Group, is a comprehensive document taking into account local, state and federal data. 

While formulating the town’s goals for 2026-28 at the May 27 meeting, officials raised concerns about this key document. 

“We’ve got (workforce housing units) sitting unoccupied for a long time, but the assessment says we’re desperately in need,” council member Dick Carleton said, referencing the most recent 2023 housing needs assessment that said the town would need 1,171 units. 

Town Manager Shannon Haynes confirmed there were empty units and said the Gorman and Co. workforce housing development Vista Verde II currently has 12 vacant units. The units went live in the fall and came with a requirement mandating that occupants work in Summit County for a minimum of 30 hours a week.

— Kit Geary

4. This beloved food truck with Salida roots just got a full-time home in Silverthorne

Gigi Sandoval-Long has a knack for supporting and bringing together the community around her. It’s always been her thing. 

Nursing seemed to fit that mold perfectly, so that’s where she started her career. Decades out from starting her professional career, she is still community building. These days, though, she’s not doing it from the inside of the hospital — she’s doing it from inside a hot-pink food truck sporting a Rosie the Riveter-inspired cartoon chicken. 

Her fried chicken earned her a reputation throughout Colorado and created a demand statewide. A stop in Silverthorne would end up adding a brick-and-mortar location to her two-truck business. It was an offer she originally shot down. 

GiGi’s Betchin Chick-N held a grand opening celebration on May 10 for its Silverthorne location, which is housed inside of La Quinta Inn & Suites, 560 Silverthorne Lane. 

Sandoval-Long said the hotel’s manager, Mary Wilbanks, tried the chicken during the truck’s stop at Murdoch’s Ranch and Home Supply in Silverthorne in July 2024 and immediately sent over a Facebook message. In the message, Sandoval-Long said Wilbanks gave praise to her product and identified herself as having Southern roots and a standard for chicken. She then proceeded to offer her the opportunity to move into a spot that previously housed the Old Chicago Pizza and Taproom, Sandoval-Long said.

Sandoval-Long said she and her husband, Arthur Long, found success in his idea to do “food truck tours” across Colorado. The trucks were sustaining them financially, and they didn’t need the income from a brick-and-mortar location. A second stop in Silverthorne changed that. Long toured the area offered up by Wilbanks and told his wife he had a vision for it.

 When she still couldn’t get behind the idea, he deployed another method. 

“He put a PowerPoint together around three days later after doing a market analysis of Summit County, Silverthorne, the I-70 corridor and of this hotel and said ‘here’s (how) we make it work,'” she said. 

— Kit Geary

5. Kindred Resort releases more details while pushing back opening date as officials cite need to ‘pivot and adapt’

The team behind the development set to alter the base area of Keystone Resort is now shooting for a winter 2025 opening as opposed to the previously planned summer 2025 opening.  

Talks around the development have lingered in Summit County for over 25 years before the Kindred Development Team began bringing the ideas to fruition in 2022. The project encompasses three buildings, including a 107-room hotel, three restaurants, 95 luxury condos, a ski school, event space and more.

Kindred’s General Manager Dan Dohner said there are many variables that impact building timelines, and one of the most significant ones for his team was tariff talks. He said they felt the impacts that much of the construction industry did in early spring amid economic uncertainty spurred by President Donald Trump’s talks around tariff proposals. He said they had the benefit of being well into construction by that time, and the teams had a good portion of the materials they needed to build. Pivoting from the original plans also prolonged the process, he said, such as the decision to expand the area where boot check for the hotel will be. 

He said the development team and the construction team, PCL Construction, had to “pivot and adapt” to the impacts the tariff talks threw their way and dial in on strategic planning to keep the project on budget and on a timeline that worked.

“When you’re dancing around a tariff, you know the arrival day of something can cost you $200,000, and so you’re just making sure that you’re playing that the right way,” he said. 

“In some cases, we’ve pulled back on orders and found stuff where we’ve had to pay a more expensive (price) but got it domestically because it was less than the tariff,” he added.  

Kindred head of marketing Amy Kemp said the project team is shooting to open the resort by the 2025-26 ski season. She said reservations are live now, with the earliest date to reserve currently set at Dec. 12. Dohner said a grand opening could come even sooner.

The two said while the project’s timeline has been altered, the approximate $300 million price tag hasn’t. 

Dohner said the hotel and 62 of the luxury residences, called the west tower, are on track to be completed first, and the east tower with the remaining 33 luxury residences will follow.

The construction team has made significant headway on many of the luxury residences, most of which are sold. Dohner said thankfully the team already had, or ordered, key materials to finish the inside of the residences ahead of tariff talks, so there weren’t many delays on that front.

— Kit Geary