The man was in a group of four skiers who left the resort at the Peak 6 backcountry access point just before noon, according to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center.

The group was planning to ski the K Chute of the Sky Chutes, which are steep avalanche paths on the west side of the Tenmile Range.

After the man triggered the avalanche, he was swept down the path for about 1,100 feet and lost his skis, according to an accident report from the CAIC.

He was able to escape the still-moving debris field as the avalanche slowed down and was helped off the mountain by the other skiers, one of whom skied down the mountain, found an extra pair of skis and hiked back up so the injured man could ski down.

He was treated for unspecified injuries at St. Anthony Summit Hospital in Frisco.

Two other groups came across the avalanche later that day and called 911 after finding the man’s skis as they descended.

Six other people have been caught in Colorado avalanches so far this month, including two climbers at St. Mary’s Glacier, but none reported injuries, according to the avalanche center.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — With the Trump administration expected to reverse a controversial 2023 decision on the permanent location of U.S. Space Command, a review by the Defense Department inspector general could not determine why Colorado was chosen over Alabama.

The inspector general’s report, issued Friday, said this was in part due to a lack of access to senior defense officials during the Biden administration, when the review began.

The location of U.S. Space Command has significant implications for the local economy, given the fast growth in national defense spending in space-based communications and defenses.

In 2021, the Air Force identified Army Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, as the preferred location for the new U.S. Space Command due to cost and other factors. But a temporary headquarters had already been established in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and after multiple delays President Joe Biden announced it as the permanent headquarters.

Alabama’s Republican congressional delegation accused the Biden administration of politicizing the decision. But Colorado, which has Republican and Democratic lawmakers, is home to many other Air Force and U.S. Space Force facilities.

As recently as last week, Rep. Mike Rogers House, an Alabama Republican who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, told a panel at Auburn University he expects the decision to be reversed by the White House before the end of April.

The location of Space Command would be one of many decisions that have swung back and forth between Biden and President Donald Trump. For instance, Biden stopped the construction of the border wall that began during Trump’s first term, only to have Trump now vow to complete it. And Trump is again seeking to ban transgender troops from serving in the military, after Biden removed Trump’s first-term limitations.

The controversy over the basing decision began seven days before Trump’s first term expired, when his Air Force secretary announced Alabama would be home to Space Command, pending an environmental review.

That review was completed about six months into Biden’s term and found no significant impact with hosting the command in Alabama. But the new administration did not act on the decision.

Instead, a year later, the Biden White House said it was keeping the headquarters in Colorado Springs, citing the time that would be lost relocating staff and the headquarters to Huntsville.

The report said interviews has been requested with Biden’s Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to understand why Huntsville was not named, but the Biden White House would only allow the interviews if administration lawyers were present. The inspector general rejected that condition, saying it could affect its unfettered access to information.

For months, NFL evaluators have lamented the lack of top-end talent in this 2025 draft class. The pro: There’s an overwhelming amount of depth at tight end and running back, the playmaking spots head coach Sean Payton has targeted since taking a podium back at February’s NFL combine. The con: There’s a clear top tier at both positions that could be gone by the time Denver’s No. 20 first-round pick rolls around April 24.

Boise State RB Ashton Jeanty is a fever dream at this point, a candidate to be snapped up by the Las Vegas Raiders at pick No. 6. Denver’s gone mostly quiet on Penn State TE Tyler Warren, who the New York Jets are high on at No. 7, a source told The Denver Post. Even North Carolina back Omarion Hampton, widely connected to Denver, is seeing his public stock rise well into the first round.

The Broncos are stuck looking for a fit somewhere between their No. 20 and No. 51 slots. Their first-round pick is likely too low to land a top-graded RB or TE. Their second-round pick is likely too low to wait for the next tier to roll around.

The crop of receivers available in the first round, though, could be just right.

Arizona’s 6-foot-4 gamebreaker Tetairoa McMillan is the type of big-bodied receiver Payton loves. Ohio State’s Emeka Egbuka possesses toughness over the middle and as a blocker, that would be perfect for Payton’s system. The Broncos have done due diligence on Texas’ projected first-round pick Matthew Golden, a burner who the Broncos hosted on a top-30 visit recently, according to a source.

“Those are guys that I’m thinking, okay, right there at 20, would be in the conversation, ‘Are we going to take them or not?'” said CBS draft analyst Charles Davis.

Even after gambling significant resources to trade up and nab Troy Franklin in the fourth round last year, there’s ample reason for the Broncos to reach high on a wideout next week in Green Bay. They poked around at the available free-agent crop last month but didn’t sign anyone and also lost Payton favorite Lil’Jordan Humphrey to the New York Giants. There’s little WR1 production or potential in the room besides veteran Courtland Sutton, whose contract situation dangles in the balance.

On the flip side, though, Sutton told The Post Saturday he believed extension talks were “working in the right direction,” and he hoped to be in Denver the rest of his career. The organization, too, is high on the development of youngsters Franklin and Marvin Mims Jr. And the Broncos are looking extensively, well beyond prioritizing the first round, at a slew of potential mid-to-late-round fits at receiver.

The Post has reported Denver’s held post-combine conversations with Maryland’s Tai Felton, Georgia’s Arian Smith and Arkansas’ Isaac TeSlaa. Here are a few other sleeper names that the Broncos have checked in on.

Traeshon Holden, Oregon: Another former teammate of quarterback Bo Nix, the Broncos met with Holden at Oregon’s pro day in mid-March, a source told The Post. The 6-foot-2 Holden doesn’t have blazing speed, but he’s a solid red-zone threat.

Kobe Hudson, UCF: Hudson would bring proven production, with three straight years of 600-plus yards at UCF. He was excellent, too, at intermediate routes over the middle in 2024, a solid fit for Payton. Hudson did a Zoom with the Broncos on March 31, a source said.

Brennan Presley, Oklahoma State: A ready-made slot receiver who could fall undrafted because of his stature (5-foot-8), the sure-handed Presley caught 190 passes across the past two years at Oklahoma State. A source told The Post that a Broncos scout contacted Presley on Monday and told him the organization sees him as a late-round or priority free agent (PFA) talent.

Giles Jackson, Washington: A six-year veteran in collegiate football, Jackson’s another potential PFA option in the slot and is an extremely sure-handed target. He’s dropped exactly three passes in 205 collegiate targets, according to Pro Football Focus. The Broncos have had a video conference with Jackson.

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Even just a few weeks ago, the odds that he might play at some point in this postseason were still long. Now, the entire situation has flipped and the progress is happening at warp speed.

Landeskog returned to the Colorado Avalanche for practice Tuesday, ending a successful conditioning assignment with the Colorado Eagles where he played back-to-back games and collected two points as well. Now, the countdown to the captain playing for the Avalanche again could be days — not weeks or months.

“Suddenly, over the last month, the progression has been quick,” Avs forward Logan O’Connor said. “It’s been awesome. The locker room has sensed it. It has happened really quickly recently, but then you think about the whole journey and it’s really been a long time coming.

“It’s definitely been a wild journey. We’ve played a lot of games without him. A lot of guys have come and gone that never got to play with him. As bad as it is to say, you almost got used to him being out at some point and stopped asking questions about how he was feeling or what things were looking like because you didn’t want to harass him about it.”

Landeskog went 1,020 days without playing because of issues with his right knee. He had several procedures, the most recent major one being knee cartilage replacement surgery in May 2023.

No player has returned to NHL action after having this procedure. Lonzo Ball had it done in March 2023 and returned this season for the Chicago Bulls in the NBA.

Landeskog participated in the club’s optional practice Tuesday. The Avs have a full practice Wednesday, then are taking Thursday off. Game 1 against the Dallas Stars is likely to be either Saturday or Sunday.

“No. 1, it is exciting that he is back and playing,” Avs coach Jared Bednar said. “I’m really happy for him. I know it’s been a long road. No. 2, it is exciting for us because it may give us another option here when we get to the weekend. We’ll see how it responds this week and see how it goes.”

Avs defenseman Erik Johnson said, “it looks like we are going to have him around for Game 1” when he appeared on a Spittin’ Chiclets podcast episode that published late Monday night. When Devon Toews was asked if Landeskog will play in Game 1 on Altitude radio Tuesday afternoon, he replied, “tune in and find out.”

Toews was among several Avs players who went up to Loveland to see Landeskog play in the first AHL game of his career Friday night. He played nearly 15 minutes the first night, then looked even better on Saturday, collecting a goal and an assist.

“It was awesome. I didn’t know what to expect, but I thought every shift out there he looked better,” Avs center Nathan MacKinnon said. “In game two, he looked better as well. He almost played 20 minutes or something like that. He’s in a good spot. Hopefully he can keep progressing and we’ll have back here this weekend.”

For so long, there were vague timelines for Landeskog on his road to recovery. Then, as the process dragged on there were no timelines at all.

Now? All signs point to him playing this weekend, assuming his knee has no issues through the next few days.

“He’s Gabe Landeskog at the end of the day,” MacKinnon said. “Obviously there’s going to be some rust. Three years is a crazy amount of time off, and he hasn’t been practicing that much either. … I think he looks great. In game situations, you can still see those instincts are there. He’s still got it for sure.”

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How likely do you think the Broncos will trade out of the No. 20 spot? I’m in the best-player-available camp after the pickups this offseason. If someone wants to give us several picks to move down, I think we have to jump on it. I’d love to have another third-rounder if that means we drop down to the bottom of the first or into the second round. What do you think?

— Mike, Denver

Hey Mike, thanks for writing in and for getting us going this week. The draft is, at long last, almost here. Next week, we settle in for three days that promise to be fascinating. The Broncos are set at quarterback, but this is a critical draft nonetheless — really, they all are.

Denver’s got its first four picks still in hand, the first time that’s been the case since 2021, George Paton’s first draft as the general manager. You’ll remember that class started out with Pat Surtain II, Javonte Williams, Quinn Meinerz and Baron Browning and finished with Jonathon Cooper in the seventh round. Two All-Pros, a cornerstone edge rusher and two now-departed regular starters beset by injury. Not too shabby.

Put simply: Denver’s got capital to move around the board with.

Do I think they’ll move out of the No. 20 spot? Impossible to say from here — there are so many moving pieces ahead of the Broncos on draft night — but there’s an interesting set of conditions brewing.

First, this is a good time for the caveat that teams have substantially more information than we do and, of course, they’ve got an entire staff of scouts, coaches and executives tasked with putting together a plan independent of whatever consensus is out there. We talk to as many people as we can, think through scenarios and possibilities, rely on people we trust, etc., but we still, at the end of the day, are looking in from the outside.

All that being said, let’s look in.

The Broncos could just stick and pick at No. 20. That’s probably the most likely scenario.

There’s plenty of reason to go your direction, Mike, and trade down. Several talented draft analysts think this is a year light on elite, top-end guys but filled with quality players. So at 20, if you’re past the top of the bell curve and into a pool of players that are graded similarly, it makes sense to want to move back a few spots, get a player of similar caliber and also pick up picks.

But if other teams have the draft pegged along a similar track, then why would they want to move up? That’s the practical inhibitor to moving back. It takes two to tango. The best bets from here seem like a team that is either quarterback or tackle needy and gets itchy to move up (or back into the first round) to get their guy.

Denver’s situated just ahead of Pittsburgh in the draft order and the Steelers could be in the QB market. So perhaps if a team wants to jump ahead of them, they’d at least call the Broncos and see what it would take.

Here’s the other inhibitor to moving back: Sean Payton. He’s never traded back in the first round. Not in Denver. Not in all of those years in New Orleans. Nada. Zilch.

The Broncos also haven’t traded back, period, since he’s been here. They moved up for Marvin Mims Jr., Riley Moss and Troy Franklin, but they haven’t moved back.

Heck, general manager George Paton last year said he would have had a cake ready to celebrate the occasion if Denver had traded out of No. 76, a move they were considering if Jonah Elliss hadn’t been available.

Paton likes the darts. Payton prefers to focus almost solely on the target.

So, long story short, the conditions ahead of the draft look ripe for teams around Denver’s position to want to try to trade down. History tells us a Sean Payton-led organization is much more likely to trade up.

I’ve seen several mock drafts that have Quinshon Judkins going to Denver in the second round. If we go that route, who would you like to see us pick in the first round?

— Marvin R., Fort Collins

Hey Marvin, that’s an interesting way to look at it. Let’s assume no trades and Judkins is the pick at No. 51. Cool, he’s a good back. There are a ton of them in this class.

In that scenario, conventional wisdom would be that you’re talking about having drafted a tight end or a defensive lineman in the first round. Maybe a surprise like safety Nick Emmanwori out of South Carolina.

But if you’re asking for ideal scenarios, let’s say Michigan TE Colston Loveland or Oregon DT Derrick Harmon.

With Judkins going at No. 51, the Broncos won’t be able to bank on getting a TE like LSU’s Mason Taylor or even Littleton native and former Oregon standout Terrance Ferguson in the third round. Maybe, but no guarantee. Loveland’s more of a pass-catcher than a blocker and he dealt with a shoulder injury last fall. All the same, he’s widely considered one of the best players in the class. Putting him in the same room as 31-year-old Evan Engram gives you security long term, and in the short term, it turns a weakness last year into a potentially serious strength this fall.

Harmon’s just a high-quality, disruptive defensive lineman. Denver’s stacked there this year but will almost certainly have significant reps to replace after the 2025 season. There are other defensive linemen who could go in a similar range if the Broncos prefer a slightly different flavor.

Is there any shot we land Ashton Jeanty or Omarion Hampton without having to trade up? Their stocks have been rising like crazy!

— Ryan, Lakewood

It’s possible, though almost assuredly not with Jeanty. He’s likely to be long gone by the time the Broncos pick No. 20.

You’ll find consensus that Hampton is a really good prospect and less agreement on exactly whether he’s a bonafide first-round grade or whether he’s more in line with the second wave of backs. Remember, there might only be 15 players in a draft class who any given team grades as a true first-round talent. This year, there could be even slightly fewer than that.

All the same, Hampton could well be gone by 20. Or he could be there and then you’re weighing him against a defensive tackle, tight end or traditionally premium position that’s more of a current strength on the Broncos’ roster like edge or corner.

Predictably, there’s been a lot of buzz about quarterbacks as the draft gets closer. If Miami’s Cam Ward goes No. 1 and Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders goes somewhere in the top 10, it will be interesting to see if teams decide they don’t want to risk waiting until Day 2 for Ole Miss’ Jaxon Dart, Alabama’s Jalen Milroe or even Louisville’s Tyler Shough.

Quarterbacks always go early. The fifth year of control is important. And the value is so outsized if you find your guy. The higher and higher second and third contracts go, the more incentivized teams are to keep swinging in the draft, even with an elevated rate of misses.

The ideal situation for the Broncos is a mini run on quarterbacks either early or in the middle of the round. If the Giants go position player at No. 3 and want to get back into the first round? Great. The Los Angeles Rams want to move up from No. 24? Terrific. New Orleans wants to go that route at No. 9? The more the merrier. Any of that would push talent down toward Denver at No. 20.

Jeff Schmedding was announced as the new Broncos inside linebackers coach by The Denver Post and others on May 21, 2025. As of this writing, they have yet to officially acknowledge him on the Broncos’ own website. Why is that, and do we actually have him as a coach?

— Areferee, Greeley

Hey, Ref, you’re right that the Broncos haven’t officially acknowledged Schmedding’s hire online as of Tuesday afternoon, but I’m told he’s on staff and working as expected.

Payton didn’t directly talk about Schmedding at the NFL owners meetings because he wasn’t asked about him, but he did in a way point to the hire when he said, “I think we’re full” on the staff.

There were a lot of moving pieces this offseason for Payton, who said last month, “I felt like every time I left town, when I came back there was another coach gone.” Now the group’s in place and working with the front office and scouting departments to finalize the draft board.

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Bystanders called 911 about 10:23 a.m. after finding the man “in medical distress,” Manitou Springs officials said in a news release. He was approximately 150-200 steps up the Incline, spokesperson Cassandra Hessel said.

People on scene started CPR, but the man was unresponsive when emergency crews arrived. He was later pronounced dead.

The man’s cause of death is under investigation, city officials said.

The Incline is a famously challenging hike with more than 2,000 feet of elevation gain in less than a mile. It draws an estimated 250,000 hikers every year, according to the city.

“City officials remind all climbers, especially those traveling from out of state, to thoroughly assess their physical condition, understand the difficulty of the climb and come properly prepared,” Manitou Springs officials said in a statement.

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NEW YORK (AP) — The latest government waste touted by billionaire Elon Musk’s cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency is hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent unemployment claims it purportedly uncovered.

One problem: Federal investigators already found what appears to be the same fraud, years earlier and on a far greater scale.

In a post last week on X, the social media site Musk owns, DOGE announced “an initial survey of unemployment insurance claims since 2020” found 24,500 people over the age of 115 had claimed $59 million in benefits; 28,000 people between the ages of 1 and 5 collected $254 million; and 9,700 people with birthdates more than 15 years in the future garnered $69 million from the government.

The tweet drew a predictable party-line reaction of either skepticism or cheers, including from Musk himself, who said what his team found was “so crazy” he re-read it several times before it sank in.

“Another incredible discovery,” marveled Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who repeated DOGE’s findings to President Donald Trump in a Cabinet meeting last week.

Chavez-DeRemer’s recounting of the alleged fraud, including claims of benefits filed by unborn children, drew laughter in the Cabinet room and a reaction from Trump himself.

“Those numbers are really bad,” he said.

But Chavez-DeRemer needn’t look further than her own department’s Office of the Inspector General to find such fraud had already been reported by the type of federal workers DOGE has demonized.

“They’re trying to spin this narrative of, ‘Oh, government is inefficient and government is stupid and they’re catching these things that the government didn’t catch,’” says Michele Evermore, who worked on unemployment issues at the U.S. Department of Labor during the administration of former President Joe Biden. “They’re finding fraud that was marked as fraud and saying they found out it was fraud.”

The Social Security Act of 1935 enshrined unemployment benefits in federal law but left it to individual states to set up systems to collect unemployment taxes, process applications and mete out support.

Though states have almost complete control over their own unemployment systems, special relief programs — most notably widely expanded benefits enacted by the first Trump administration at the outset of the COVID pandemic — inject more direct federal involvement and a flood of new beneficiaries into the system.

In regular times, state unemployment systems perform “very well, not so well and terribly,” according to Stephen Wandner, an economist at the National Academy of Social Insurance who authored the book “Unemployment Insurance Reform: Fixing a Broken System.” With COVID slamming the economy and creating a flood of new claims that states couldn’t handle, Wandner says many more were “quite terrible.”

Trump signed the COVID unemployment relief into law on March 27, 2020, and from the very start it became a magnet for fraud. In a memo to state officials about two weeks later, the Department of Labor warned that the expanded benefits had made unemployment programs “a target for fraud with significant numbers of imposter claims being filed with stolen or synthetic identities.”

That same memo offered an option for states trying to protect a person whose identity was stolen to fraudulently collect unemployment benefits. To preserve a record of the fraud but keep innocent people from being linked to it, states could create a “pseudo claim,” the memo advises.

Those “pseudo claims” led to records of toddlers and centenarians getting checks. The Labor Department’s inspector general tallied some 4,895 unemployment claims from people over the age of 100 between March 2020 and April 2022, but another departmental memo explained that the filings stemmed from states changing dates of birth to protect people whose identities were used.

“Many of the claims identified … were not payments to individuals over 100 years of age, but rather ‘pseudo records’ of previously identified fraudulent claims,” the 2023 memo says.

A Labor Department spokeswoman did not respond to questions about Musk’s findings and DOGE gave no details on how it came to find the supposed fraud or whether it duplicates what was already found.

Though DOGE ostensibly looked at longer timeframe than federal investigators previously had, it tallied just $382 million in fake unemployment claims, a tiny fraction of what investigators were already aware.

In 2022, the Labor Department said suspected COVID-era unemployment fraud totaled more than $45 billion. The Government Accountability Office later said it was far worse, likely $100 billion to $135 billion.

“I don’t think it’s news to anyone,” says Amy Traub, an expert on unemployment at the National Employment Law Project. “It’s been widely reported. There’ve been multiple congressional hearings.”

If DOGE’s newest allegations have an air of familiarity, it’s because they echo its prior findings of about Social Security payments to the dead and the unbelievably old. Those were false claims.

That makes DOGE an imperfect messenger even when fraud has occurred, as with unemployment claims.

Jessica Reidl, a senior fellow at the conservative think tank The Manhattan Institute, is a fiscal conservative who so champions rooting out federal waste she has written 600 articles on the subject. Though she believes unemployment insurance fraud is rife, she has trouble accepting any findings from DOGE, which she says has acted ineffectively and possibly illegally.

“When DOGE says impossibly old dead people are collecting unemployment in huge numbers, I become skeptical,” Reidl says. “DOGE does not have a good track record in that area.”

Traub said the burst of pandemic-era unemployment fraud led states to implement new security measures. She questioned why Musk’s team was trumpeting old fraud as if it’s new.

“Business leaders and economists are warning about a national recession, so it’s natural to think about unemployment,” says Traub. “It’s an attack on the image of a critically important program and perhaps an attempt to undermine public support on unemployment insurance when it couldn’t be more important.”

Matt Sedensky can be reached at msedensky@ap.org and https://x.com/sedensky.

Culshaw’s company, Shea Properties, purchased the four-story, 124,000-square-foot building at 4340 S. Monaco St. in the Denver Tech Center for $12 million on Thursday, according to public records.

The deal, for about $97 a square foot, paves the way for the region’s first post-pandemic conversion of a large office building into residences.

“Call me crazy,” Culshaw quipped.

The deal is the culmination of a year and a half of securing financing, finalizing plans and even warding off some opposition from neighbors. But with the building under his firm’s ownership, Culshaw now expects to fashion it into 143 income-restricted apartments in about a year.

The deal is financed through a combination of private equity, $29 million in Denver-issued private activity bonds and an additional $4 million in federal and state tax credits. Culshaw said he sold the bonds at the start of April, right before markets were jolted by President Donald Trump’s April 2 tariff announcement.

“I think it’s a mixture of luck, and we thought it was a good time to do it,” Culshaw said.

The building lends itself well for a conversion, he added. It has few columns and wide-open spaces with huge glass windows that host what he called great views.

“You’re starting with kind of a blank slate, which I think makes it a whole lot easier,” Culshaw said.

It’s not the first time the developer has worked with a blank slate at this site, though. Culshaw said he sold the land for development in June 2000 for $7.2 million. The property traded hands a couple of times thereafter. It last sold for $69.3 million in March 2006, though that deal included another office building next door. By the time Culshaw got around to buying the 4340 building, it was entirely vacant.

“I knew that building was empty, and I knew the broker that was trying to lease it really well, and so I called him up and said, would they sell it and give me a year to convert it or to plan a conversion? And we made a deal,” Culshaw said.

That arrangement includes a first right of refusal for Shea Properties to buy the office building to the south at 4350 S. Monaco St., public records show, which was rezoned along with Culshaw’s 4340 building last summer.

The Monaco project is the furthest along of the 10 proposed office-to-residential conversions BusinessDen has reported on since the pandemic. Proposals have been submitted for a slew of downtown office towers, including most recently for the two at 621 and 633 17th St.

Denver’s most recent residential conversion, which was initiated before the pandemic, was Nichols Partnership’s transformation of the former Art Institute of Colorado building in Cap Hill.

This story was originally published by BusinessDen.

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Through 13 spring practices, the Colorado football team doesn’t have much clarity on its quarterback competition, but that’s just fine with offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur.

“I’d like to see them both be doing things where, at the end of it, it would be a flip of the coin who plays,” Shurmur, who also coaches quarterbacks, said Tuesday. “That’s what I’m looking for.”

CU will wrap up spring practices with its annual Black & Gold scrimmage at Folsom Field on Saturday (2:30 p.m., ESPN2). It’ll be the first opportunity for fans to get a live look at the players battling to replace star Shedeur Sanders, who is a little more than a week away from getting his named called during the NFL Draft.

Senior Kaidon Salter, who transferred to CU from Liberty, and true freshman Julian “JuJu” Lewis are the frontrunners for the job, although third-year sophomore Ryan Staub is battling also.

“I see them challenging each other,” Shurmur said. “It’s a super healthy quarterback room, too. They’re just all trying to do the best with the plays that I give them. I’m getting a feel for the ones that Kaidon can do that fit his skill set, and I certainly know the ones that JuJu can execute.

“That’s part of coaching, too. I mean, you got to play to the strengths of the guy that you have, so that allows our offense to kind of grow wide and deep.”

CU was one of the most prolific passing offenses in the country last year with Sanders, who shattered single-season school records for completion percentage (74.0), passing yards (4,134) and passing touchdowns (37).

How the Buffs look in 2025 will be different, but Shurmur said the basic goal remains the same.

“My only concern for our offense is when the ball goes down, we’ve got to go score touchdowns,” he said. “So we can run it across the goal line, we can throw it across, we can send it via text; I don’t care. We need to get the ball across the goal line. That’s the challenge. Last year we did it a certain way, and this year we may do it the same way, but my sense is it’s going to be a little bit different.”

Salter is the most experienced of the group, as he was a 29-game starter at Liberty, going 21-4 in his last two years with the Flames. He has thrown for 5,887 yards, 56 touchdowns and only 17 interceptions during his career, while adding 2,063 yards and 21 touchdowns as a runner. He was the Conference USA Most Valuable Player in 2023.

Lewis, meanwhile, is a five-star recruit who enrolled at CU a year-and-a-half early and is just getting his feet wet with college football. Staub is going into his third year with the Buffs.

“The three quarterbacks that are performing are doing a good job,” Shurmur said. “I see improvement every day. They’re all kind of on a different stage of their journey. Obviously, Kaidon’s got one year left, and he’s learning what we’re doing very well.

“JuJu is a young man with an amazing amount of talent that’s got a bright future, and he’s doing extremely well. And then Ryan Staub … we grade everything they do and Ryan is grading out very well each day. He’s making plays. And so we feel good about his progress, along with the other guys in the room, (walk-ons) Colton (Allen) and obviously (Dominiq Ponder), they do a good job as well.”

Shurmur added that he is “more and more impressed every day” with Lewis, adding he’s seen a lot of physical development, as well.

“He’s bigger and stronger, and every day he does something that shows you why he’s here and why we’re glad he is here,” Shurmur said. “Very, very, very talented young man. Really all the things you need to do as a quarterback, he can do. Now it’s just a matter of him growing in what we do and getting himself ready to play.”

NEW YORK (AP) — A strong solar storm headed to Earth could produce colorful aurora displays across more U.S. states than usual Tuesday night.

The sun earlier this week burped out huge bursts of energy called coronal mass ejections, leading space weather forecasters to issue a geomagnetic storm watch.

Northern lights were forecast in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. Parts of northern Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania may also get a view.

The strength of the light show will depend on how Earth’s magnetic field interacts with the solar bursts, said Shawn Dahl at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center.

Here’s what to know about auroras and how to spot them.

What are northern lights?

The sun is at the maximum phase of its 11-year activity cycle, making the light displays more common and widespread. Colorful northern lights have decorated night skies in unexpected places and space weather experts say there are more auroras still to come.

“This is going to kind of continue off and on throughout the year,” Dahl said.

Last spring, the strongest geomagnetic storm in two decades slammed Earth, producing light displays across the Northern Hemisphere. And last fall, a powerful solar storm dazzled skygazers far from the Arctic Circle when dancing lights appeared in unexpected places including Germany, the United Kingdom, New England and New York City.

Aurora displays known as the northern and southern lights are commonly visible near the poles, where charged particles from the sun interact with Earth’s atmosphere.

Skygazers are spotting the lights deeper into the United States and Europe because the sun is going through a major facelift. Every 11 years, its poles swap places, causing magnetic twists and tangles along the way.

Severe storms are capable of scrambling radio and GPS communications.

The sun’s active spurt is expected to last at least through the end of this year, though when solar activity will peak won’t be known until months after the fact, according to NASA and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

What do solar storms do?

Solar storms can bring more than colorful lights to Earth.

When fast-moving particles and plasma slam into Earth’s magnetic field, they can temporarily disrupt the power grid. Space weather can also interfere with air traffic control radio and satellites in orbit.

In 1859, a severe solar storm triggered auroras as far south as Hawaii and caught telegraph lines on fire in a rare event. And a 1972 solar storm may have detonated magnetic U.S. sea mines off the coast of Vietnam.

Space weather experts aren’t able to predict a solar storm months in advance. Instead, they alert relevant parties to prepare in the days before a solar outburst hits Earth.

How to see auroras

Northern lights forecasts can be found on NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center website or an aurora forecasting app.

Consider aurora-watching in a quiet, dark area away from city lights. NASA’s Kelly Korreck recommended skygazing from a local or national park. And check the weather forecast because clouds can cover up the spectacle entirely.

Taking a picture with a smartphone camera may also reveal hints of the aurora that aren’t visible to the naked eye.

“Enjoy it,” said Korreck. “It’s this great show … from the sun to you.”

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