Colorado's Smiling Buddha Yaks Ranch Showcases Growing Yak Industry

Ruth Higdon, a retired cancer surgeon, runs Smiling Buddha Yaks on 120 acres of pasture in Ridgway, Colorado, near the San Juan Mountains. The ranch, described as a "little sliver of Nepal," houses a herd of yaks that Higdon has been raising for a decade.

Namgyal Sherpa, originally from Nepal's Khumbu region, manages the herd. He and his wife Pasang, a former Buddhist nun, live on the property with Higdon. After losing his parents, Sherpa was taken in by Higdon's former partner and eventually settled in the United States, working in Alaska and New York before moving to Colorado, which he says resembles his native landscape.

The ranch blends traditional yak husbandry—learned from Tibetan herders and India's National Research Center on Yak—with American ranching practices, making Ridgway an unlikely epicenter of yak farming in the United States.