Avalanches plague the Rockies

BANFF, Alberta – Avalanches continue to plague transcontinental travelers in the Canadian Rockies as well as backcountry travelers in the Colorado Rockies.

In Canada, conditions are reported to be the worst in decades, forcing helicopter skiing operations to restrict their activities to a few moderate slopes and causing Parks Canada to reconsider how it alerts backcountry adventurers to danger. Meanwhile, along the Trans-Canada Highway, snowslides have stalled traffic several times, once for at least 10 hours. Approximately 3,300 trucks use the route each day.

The avalanche problem began with the negligible snowfall of early winter. That shallow snowpack became a sugary, weak base layer for the substantial snow that eventually arrived. In late January, seven heli-skiing clients died skiing near Revelstoke, and soon after, seven teen-age students from Calgary died near Rogers Pass. Both locations are near the TransCanada Highway.

In mid-March, the season’s death toll rose to 18 with the deaths of two skiers near Nelson, B.C., and a 39-year-old snowshoer near Lake Louise, in Banff National Park. All were American.

The March 20 Rocky Mountain Outlook reported that the treacherous avalanche conditions were having a negative impact on adventure-based businesses.

In Colorado, the most severe storm that has smacked the Continental Divide west of Denver in perhaps 90 years closed parts of the highway between Denver and Summit County for 61 hours.

During the closure, several avalanches occurred, one on a path that had not run since 1948. However, another avalanche descended Saturday night, after the highway was opened, downing electrical lines that power Loveland ski area, forcing the ski area to close Sunday and Monday. The highway was closed again Sunday morning for avalanche control.

In the midst of the storm, just off the highway corridor, four telemark skiers equipped with avalanche beacons and shovels set out from the Arapahoe Basin ski area into the backcountry to the west. They were aware of avalanche danger rated high/extreme and at one prickly spot chose to ski in two-minute intervals, according to a report posted on the Colorado Avalanche Information Center website.

The first skier descended the slope uneventfully. The second made it part way down before stopping. When the avalanche began, he quickly removed his skis and climbed up a tree. But the two skiers on top were swept into trees. One was killed and the other badly injured.

Telluride debates police in bars

TELLURIDE – The debate continues about whether Town Marshal’s officers are over-enforcing or under-enforcing Telluride’s municipal liquor laws. At least partly at the root of the dispute is a high turnover rate among police officers, reports the March 14 edition of The Telluride Watch.

One bar owner complained about new officers walking into bars in full battle gear without even acknowledging the bartenders. Others say Telluride’s blitz of summer festivals has created an atmosphere that tolerates excess consumption.

Target draws Steamboat dollars

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS – As expected, the new Target store in Silverthorne is routinely attracting shoppers from Steamboat Springs, 90 miles away.

It’s not as though Steamboat residents had been spending all their money at home. Far from it. But in a sense, the new store brings the city that much closer to Steamboat, and in doing so it sharpens the focus of a discussion that the Steamboat Springs City Council had been having since last summer.

The town’s main business district has been changing, losing the last vestiges of its roots as an agriculture supply center – which it was as recently as the 1950s – to a tourism-driven town, the kind where liquor stores and art galleries can be found on every corner but nary a hardware store.

Kathy Connell, president of the City Council, told The Steamboat Pilot (March 23) that the council’s No. 1 duty is to ensure that sales tax does not decrease and find ways for it to grow. Given the concern about maintaining small-town character, she observed, “That puts us in conflict with ourselves.”

Snow closes schools in Grand County

GRANBY – For the first time that anybody could remember, schools on the eastern side of Grand County closed down March 19 because of weather, the same storm that smacked Denver.

The Sky-Hi News (March 20) couldn’t find anyone who recalled a snow day at local schools, so it proclaimed it a “first-time-ever” event. As unlikely as that may be, given the short-term nature of memories, it was certainly a storm to remember longer than most. At nearby Winter Park, measurements revealed 77 inches, the most snow in one storm in 90 years.

While cities in the West routinely close down when it snows a foot or two (although Denver’s storm last week was admittedly more substantial), mountain towns usually take pride in their ability to keep shuffling on after big storms. The Sky-Hi News reported, “Some people were seen to be muttering that it was somehow disgraceful for a mountain area like East Grand to cave in to the snowstorm of 2003 in such a way.”

Dogs killed after chasing elk

ASPEN – A state wildlife officer shot two dogs on the outskirts of Aspen after he said he saw them put a cow elk “through hell.”

“I had no choice. I had to shoot the dogs,” said Kevin Wright of the Colorado Division of Wildlife. He told The Aspen Times (March 17) it was the first time he had shot dogs in 19 years.

The elk’s lower, left-front leg was chewed off by the time the elk died, and a gash was torn in its underbelly. Being quicker than the elk, the dogs also had the advantage of being able to stay atop the pockets of deep snow where the elk was postholing. The breeds of the dogs were not identified, although there was some speculation they had chased wildlife on the mountain before.

Mary’s nipple draws complaints

GRAND TARGHEE, Wyo. – Amid war, terrorism and drought, the naming of a tipple of rock in the Tetons has been getting international attention. A small promontory called Mary’s Nipple for several decades is unnamed.

The name appears in only a couple of signs at the Grand Targhee Ski and Summer Resorts, but those signs are being redone after complaints. A backlash, including formation of the Nipple Liberation Front and widespread graffiti, have met the decision with derision, reports the Jackson Hole News & Guide (March 19). “What is a Teton without a nipple?” asked one 36-year-old construction worker.

Jackson Hole holds its geography close to its bossom. The word “Teton” is French for breasts. Nearly the only agreement the paper reached in seeking out the memories of mammaries was that Mary had worked at Targhee in the 1970s and had red hair. Some further recollect a streaking night, others a session of skinny dipping. BBC and Radio Europe have called for details about this case, but Targhee spokeswoman Susie Barnett-Bushong dismissed the complaints as being full of falsities.

“People are accusing us of trying to change a mountain range, of being a corporate giant, of imposing our morality,” she said. “We’re changing two of our private industry signs. It’s much ado about nothing.”

Not now found on maps, Mary’s Nipple is likely to remain that way, because it straddles a wilderness area and the U.S. Board of Geographic Names rarely accept new names inside wilderness areas.

Protests hit Rumsfeld and Cheney homes

TAOS, N.M. – Two of the principle architects of the war in Iraq have homes in resorts of the West. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfield has a home north of Taos, while Vice President Dick Cheney has a vacation house in Jackson Hole.

At various times in recent months, war protesters have converged near their houses. Last Saturday, about 150 people staged a “die-in” on the road leading to Rumsfeld’s house. They were met by more than 30 law enforcement officers, reports the Taos News (March 22).

In Jackson Hole, 200 residents held a candlelight vigil, but it was not near Cheney’s home. Meanwhile, Teton County commissioners declined a resolution calling for more work with the U.N., with John Carney saying international affairs was not within the board’s purview, reported the Jackson Hole News & Guide (March 19). Commissioner Bill Paddleford said Teton County leads Wyoming, if not the United States, in preparedness for a natural disaster or terrorist attack. Of protecting Cheney’s home, he said, “We’re still taking that situation very seriously.”

Bear-proof containers cracked open

TRUCKEE, Calif. – Bears have emerged from winter hibernation in several resort towns, and in Truckee they’re already hungry enough to rip apart supposedly bear-proof metal trash cans.

Bear-proof metal enclosures for new construction sites have been required by ordinance in Placer County since last July. But a couple reported a bear had so little trouble figuring out the $800 enclosure that they slept through whatever commotion there was.

It’s not the first time bear-proof trash cans have failed, says the Tahoe Daily Tribune (March 24). Campground hosts throughout Lake Tahoe have been stumped over how bears can seemingly rip through the metal containers, manufactured by Bearicade, as if they were cardboard.

Ann Bryan, founder of an organization called Bear Preservation League, said intelligent, nimble-pawed bears have figured out how to gain access to the enclosures. She suggests enclosures have locks and keys, with the keys removed by people. “The bears so far haven’t figured out how to pick up a key and put it in a lock,” she added.

There also seems to be some experimentation with chemical additives, such as Pine Sol, which deter the ambitious bruins.

Cloud-seeder takes credit for snow

SUMMIT COUNTY – Larry Hjermstad is willing to take credit for 10 to 15 percent of the snowpack in Summit County and other places between Winter Park and Salida where he has been seeding clouds with silver iodide particles.

“It’s pretty hard the way the winter has gone and the snowpack has been accumulating to say there hasn’t been some effect,” Hjermstad, manager of Durango-based Western Weather Consultants, told the Summit Daily News (March 22). However, if he has a good argument for this claim, it didn’t show up in the newspaper.

For a fact, higher elevations in Colorado where he has seeded have been near normal, until the huge storm that hit Colorado’s Eastern Slope last week, washing over into a few Western Slope valleys, including Summit County and Winter Park. But given how much snow fell far into the plains, where his generators aren’t located, it’s hard to see how cloud seeding had much to do with that storm.

Still, Denver Water’s manager, Chips Barry, who earlier in the winter said he didn’t know whether cloud seeding worked, at this point thinks it’s money well spent. He stopped short, however, of saying that Denver will continue to pay for cloud seeding.

Breck searches for town fool

BRECKENRIDGE – Under the headline of “March of the April Fools,” the Summit Daily News (March 24) tells about competition for the position of Town Fool.

C.J. Mueller, a 33-year resident of the town and renowned speed skier in his salad days, said he deserves the award for having passed up on an opportunity to move to Florida. Another contestant, Jay DeeBaggio, tells about dancing on the bar in his underwear when he fell off, luckily to be caught by his loving constituents.

Winning the coveted title involves collecting $1 votes. Funds go to Breckenridge Elite Athletes, a nonprofit organization for Olympic-caliber athletes.

Banks foreclose on Beaver Creek billionaire

BEAVER CREEK – Albert Vilar, a billionaire venture capitalist who has given $300 million to building performing arts halls, now calls himself “paper rich, but cash poor.” And because of that, three banks in the Vail area are foreclosing on two homes at Beaver Creek and another home at nearby Edwards.

The Vail Daily (March 22) reports that the foreclosures are for loans totaling $2.74 million. The full value of the real estate in question was not given, but Vilar himself estimated the value of one of his Beaver Creek homes, a 16,000-square-foot structure, at $9 million.

“My generosity to the Vail Valley is unmatched, which has helped our bank and which makes it unfortunate that I have not been given the benefit of the doubt,” said Vilar in a letter to an officer at one of the banks. The letter was filed in Eagle County District Court as part of the foreclosure proceedings.

Vilar added that he felt unappreciated by the community. “For you to foreclose at a time when there is a financial problem is about as brutal and insensitive as it gets,” he wrote.

An immigrant from Cuba, Vilar had pulled himself up the financial ladder before investing heavily in high-tech stocks 20 years ago, among them Microsoft, Oracle and Cisco. With a fellow investor he started Amerindo Investment Advisors, a tech-oriented company once valued at $9 billion.

School kitchen emits deadly gas

CRESTED BUTTE – Five kitchen workers at the Crested Butte Community School took sick after two common household chemicals, ammonia and bleach, were mistakenly allowed to commingle in floor drains over a period of weeks. The combination produced chloride gas and ammonium chloride, a deadly combination when inhaled in sufficient quantity.

A local physician, Lee Lynch, saw the second of the five victims when she began wondering if the commonality of symptoms – skin irritation and respiratory problems – was more than coincidence. All five women were expected to fully recover, reports the Crested Butte News (March 21).

– compiled by Allen Best