Ski resorts enjoy banner holiday

Ski Country U.S.A. - Helped by badly needed snow storms, the financial news from the biggest business week of the year ranged between good and great in many ski towns of the West.

Locally, Durango Mountain Resort enjoyed one of its busiest holiday seasons in a decade. Resort officials announced that holiday skier visits were well up from last year. The resort also had its biggest day in 10 years on Thursday, Dec. 30, when more than 6,000 skiers were recorded as being on the mountain.

"We had a very strong holiday season and an excellent month of December," said Matt Skinner, DMR communications director. "We were up 10 percent for the month of December overall compared to last year. Mother Nature has arrived with perfect timing, and we hope the rest of the season stays strong."

The Breckenridge Resort Chamber reported 95 to 100 percent occupancies in the town during the New Year's weekend. "We're having the best month ever in our company's history, a representative from one 13-year-old property management firm told the Summit Daily News.

In California's Mammoth Lake, the town's visitors' bureau reported that 99.9 percent of lodging rooms were projected to be booked during Christmas week.

In Aspen, buses were full, streets crowded, and the line for the gondola was the longest in recent memory after 11 inches of fresh snow fell. "At 10 a.m., the line was the longest I've seen since the mid-'80s," local skier Phil Pitzer told The Aspen Times.

Telluride reported its busiest day on record on the Thursday before the New Year, with 7,763 skiers.

Newspapers in several ski towns reported crushes of holiday shoppers. "There are just lots of people here that seem to be spending quite a bit of money," merchant Leon Rinck told The Steamboat Pilot. Stores in Vail and its suburbs were likewise crushed with customers this year. While tourists were undoubtedly part of the story, the Vail Daily connects the boom to the real estate boom of the last 17 months. Buyers of vacation homes have been retrofitting their new properties, serving as Santa Claus for some months now.

Colorado resorts experience rain

VAIL - Again this ski season, it has rained during mid-winter in the ski towns of the Colorado Rockies. Rain was reported in Durango, Telluride, Aspen, Steamboat Springs and Vail in the week between Christmas and New Year's, if only briefly - and then followed by powder.

While mid-winter rain is not previously unknown, it is rare. But during the last several winters it has rained several times during winter in the Colorado resorts.

While this is not proof that man-caused global warming is occurring, it does fall in line with what has been predicted. Scientists say that winters will warm more than summers, and nights more than days. Snow season will become shorter, and the snow line will climb, with resorts in lower-lying elevations having increasingly less reliable snow.

As is often the case, there was a silver lining in the news. In Steamboat, merchants reported the rain caused local shoppers to flood into local stores.

Uphillers and groomers butt heads

ASPEN - As they have elsewhere, ski groomers and "uphillers" have been butting heads recently at Buttermilk, a small ski area near Aspen. The full moon particularly turns out uphill skiers, who skin up or hike up the ski trails to get a good cardiovascular workout. It takes those who are reasonably fit about an hour to go up Buttermilk.

But snow groomers recently lectured several hikers who left footprints in the fresh corduroy of the terrain park, causing bruised feelings. "I've been doing this for 20 years," one hiker told The Aspen Times incredulously.

"They've been doing it for years, and we've not been happy with it for years," responded Hans Hol, who manages mountain operations and the ski school at Buttermilk. "Our cat operators take great pride in the work they do," he added. "On a full-moon might, the whole mountain is covered with footprints."

Ski area operators could close the access to the uphillers. Not only does the Aspen Skiing Co. own the lower portion of the mountain, but the permit from the U.S. Forest Service on the upper portion allows the ski area operator to exclude nonpaying customers. They have chosen not to do so.

But the ski area managers say that especially those tracks left in the new corduroy during evening, when the snow is still soft, detracts from the experience of paying customers the next morning. Ski area managers also fear accidents, especially with the winch cats used to groom terrain parks and steep places.

Similar antagonisms have been voiced in Breckenridge, where mountain managers have appealed to community members to show more discretion, especially when taking dogs.

Knitting boom hits Steamboat

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS - Looking for a business niche in a ski town? Two new businesses in Steamboat Springs are catering to knitting, which is currently enjoying a nationwide boom.

Cynthia Zitell, who has a Steamboat-based wholesale needlework business called The Drawn Thread, knew Steamboat was too small to support a retail store catering to needlework. But knitting is much easier than needlework, and so in mid-December she opened a store at the ski area's base village. It nearly sold out in the first week.

The Steamboat Pilot reports that her premise in choosing the base area was that the ski area had almost exclusively ski shops, real estate offices or restaurants. She figured people would like an alternative to skiing and eating. One customer, a lawyer from New York, bore her out. "Best vacation I ever had," said the lawyer.

In the older part of Steamboat, Jodee Anderson has opened a fiber arts studio in what was formerly an automotive garage. She is hoping to use an upstairs loft for classes in fiber arts, attracting visitors from elsewhere. In a world of destination skiers, could these be called destination students?

Great Basin pikas in steady decline

RENO, Nev. - Further evidence of the decline of the American pika has been found, possibly due to increasing temperatures.

Erik Beever, an ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, surveyed mountains in the Great Basin, which is located between the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountains. In his first survey, conducted during the late 1990s, he found seven of the 25 sites no longer had pikas. A follow-up survey of several sites found that two more now lack pikas.

The hamster-like animals are found in rocky areas above treeline. Previous research suggests American pikas are vulnerable to global warming because they live in areas with cool, relatively moist climates. They've been shown to be unable to survive just six hours when temperatures rise to 77 degrees. Temperatures are rising across most of the world, but particularly in some alpine areas.

Beever's previous research suggested climate change might be interacting with other facts, such as increased road building and smaller habitat areas, to increase risks of extirpation.

Vail considers flights to Chicago

EAGLE COUNTY - Several resort valleys of the West have been subsidizing direct flights during summer months in an attempt to broaden their economies to make them less reliant on winter. Crested Butte, Telluride, Steamboat Springs and Sun Valley/Ketchum have all added flights.

In Eagle County, which is anchored by Vail, county commissioners partnered with merchants and real estate developers two years ago to post $475,000 to ensure profits on direct flights from Dallas. The flights had so many passengers that the airline needed only $20,000.

Last summer, the program was expanded to include a flight from Denver, and there were enough passengers that the consortium of locals had to pay nothing.

This year, reports the Vail Daily, the business community wants to add direct flights from Chicago, the third largest tourism market for Eagle County during summer. For their part, merchants, hoteliers, and developers are willing to post $350,000, leaving county government with a $200,000 liability. However, the county commissioners have been hesitant, as they fear the Chicago flights would hurt the Denver flights.

Wells run dry in Summit County

SUMMIT COUNTY - One family in rural Summit County ate its Christmas dinner on paper plates. The reason? Dropping water levels in the well serving the family's home

Such stories are becoming more common owing in part to continuing sub-average precipitation. Experts also tell the Summit Daily News that new wells drilled for new homes in the rural neighborhoods are tapping a finite resource. Some homes are now connecting to central sewer districts, meaning that septic fields are no longer being used, resulting in less precipitation finding its way into groundwater.

- compiled by Will Sands & Allen Best