The Platte River Basin is expansive and diverse. One of my favorite parts of this geography is Phantom Canyon, a small preserve nestled into the land where the mountains meet the plains, in the Laramie Foothills of northern Colorado. Driving in, we nearly always spot pronghorn moving across the land, their soft brown eyes and […]

My first experience at Wilderness Park is one I will never forget. Roughly four autumns ago, a couple of my friends asked me if I wanted to join them on a day adventure at the park. I assumed that we were going to a park where there would be picnic benches, freshly cut grass, and […]

Earlier this summer I drove a 1,756 mile loop up, down and around the edges of a tilted tabletop in the heart of North America. Born high in the Colorado Rockies, the Platte River Basin loses 12,000 feet in elevation west to east, draining 90,000 square miles across the plains until it flows into the […]

Last week, Peter Stegen and I drove a 730-mile loop through the northern Great Plains, following the North Platte River from its descent from the Rocky Mountains to its eventual arrival on thirsty fields in the Nebraska panhandle. Water makes this journey annually as winter snowpack melts from the high reaches of the mountains and […]

On a May Monday in 2013, I traveled to the Sandhills of Nebraska with Michael Farrell and Michael Forsberg, PBT’s co-founders. We visited our cameras at University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Gudmundsen Ranch and the Switzer Ranch to update units and download images. During our adventure I took some pictures. Here are a few.

Lake Agnes is the location for PBT’s highest elevation time-lapse camera, an alpine lake nestled in the Never Summer Range of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. It is also the beginning of the Platte River’s story. In late January the PBT team trekked up 11,000 feet to the camera on the edge of the lake […]

Rushing out of Kortes Dam, fluctuating currents run through the rugged Seminoe Mountains and out into the arid Wyoming plains until the North Platte River’s waters reach Pathfinder Reservoir. With a beautiful landscape surrounding the river, and swift, cold water filled with brown, cutthroat, and rainbow trout, this five and half mile stretch of the North Platte River has earned itself the name, “The Miracle Mile.”