Snowfall pounds the entire West

ASPEN - Snowfall during December was stingy in large parts of the West. In Avon, at the foot of Beaver Creek, devoted weather watcher Frank Doll reported the month was as dry as any since 1976, a notorious drought winter.

But the New Year began extravagantly. In Aspen, the first big snowfall was sufficiently heavy that classes at public schools were called off, something that happens about once a year. "Our buses can handle most anything," said Fred Brooks, the school district's transportation director. "This was a rare exception."

The Aspen Times reported that by midmorning all four Aspen Skiing Co. mountains were littered with snow-silly children, eager to cram in some unexpected fun.

In The Sun Valley-Ketchum area, the airport crew worked round-the-clock for five days to keep the airport runway cleared. "It was nip and tuck at times," reported the Idaho Mountain Express. The work was so incessant that it provoked a complaint form a neighbor of the airport, who wondered whether the big airport plow needed to beep-beep-beep through the night as they backed up.

In Silverton, the Standard observed that winter was beginning to look just like the winters of old. Roofs were sagging under the weight of 16 inches of heavy, wet snow, the newspaper reported, even as the highway north to Ouray was closed because of avalanche danger. It is not, reported the newspaper "expected to open anytime soon."

But is this really a winter like the winters of old? While rain happened occasionally in past decades, it has rained twice now in Vail during January. The warm temperatures also made slush of previous snow, creating the sort of mudluscious puddles not usually found until the normal late-February thaw.

While the Vail Daily had gleefully announced more powder days were ahead, the powder that materialized was decidedly on the droopy, wet side.

Avalanches kill two in Steamboat

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS - Routt County, where Steamboat Springs is located, had no avalanche fatalities for 30 years until 2001. This year it has already had two, and both avalanches involved skiers who used snowmobiles to gain backcountry terrain.

"They are going to more and more places into the backcountry, slopes we never touched 30 years ago," said Jeff Hirschboeck, who is the avalanche team leader at the Steamboat Ski Area.

In the most recent case, on Jan. 3, Michael Gebhart died of suffocation after lying for eight minutes under 3 feet of snow. The avalanche was relatively small, only 30 feet wide, running 200 vertical feet.

While Gebhart, 26, was described as both knowledgeable about avalanches and well equipped, no press reports have indicated he or his skiing partners dug pits into the snowpack to study its stability.

"If you don't do these tests, to say, 'I think the slope is stable,' it is no different than taking a coin and flipping it," Hirschboeck told The Steamboat Pilot.

Porn star selling Utah real estate

PARK CITY, Utah - In 1972, a pornographic movie abut a woman with a misplaced clitoris was released. Called "Deep Throat," the movie was arguably a signal cultural artifact in what has been called the sexual revolution in the United States

That's the argument of a new movie, called "Inside Deep Throat," which will be premiered soon at the Sundance Music Festival in Park City. And it seems that Harry Reems, the actor who played the lead in that movie, has lived since 1980 in Park City, where he sells real estate.

With the movie about to be released, Reems consented to an interview with The Park Record after 18 years of declining to answer questions about his past except at church groups and in support groups for recovering alcoholics.

"It is a story of recovery, of success, of redemption," he told the newspaper's Nan Cholat Noaker from his home along the Park City Municipal Golf Course.

After high school, Reems enlisted in the Marine Corps and then used his stipend from the GI bill to fulfill a dream - to go to acting school. He took bit parts in pornography movies, and in fact, was paid only $100 for his role in "Deep Throat," opposite that of Linda Lovelace (who died several years ago in suburban Denver).

The movie became a cult classic, even the stuff of Johnny Carson jokes. Reems, meanwhile, went on to make gobs of money. "I'd make a movie, and with the money I'd rent a private jet, I'd grab a bunch of girls, a couple of guys, we'd go to a private island and party."

In the process, Reems became an alcoholic, which continued even after he moved to Park City. "I was basically a blackout drinker. I would start drinking in Park City and wake up in L.A. with no idea how I got there," he said. He finally sobered up for good, he says, when he was in the back of a police officer's patrol car in Park City.

Reems told The Record that he does not regret his part in making "Deep Throat," as it began his tortured road to his greater spirituality. Nor does he regret the sexual revolution that he was part of. "Our sexuality, our bodies, should be discussed. There are gays who are scared to come out of the closet. The more dialogue we have the better chance we have of abandoning those feelings of fear," he said. "What's better than the truth, the truth about your sexuality, about who you are."

Nordic center builds luxury lodge

TABERNASH - A cross-country center at Devil's Thumb Ranch in Colorado is looking to Oregon for inspiration.

A 53-unit lodge is being planned, and the owner wants to create a building patterned after Mount Hood's Timberline Lodge. Timberline Lodge was constructed in the 1930s in a style called the Appalachian design. It is best known for its hexagon "headhouse," which includes a central stone chimney rising through the center, with openings on all floors.

Something similar will be done at Devil's Thumb, with an unusual twist, reports the Winter Park Manifest. The newspaper says a circular hot tub will be assembled around the chimney at the third-floor level.

Already constructed is a 25,000-square-foot activity center called the Broadax Barn, which in fact was a 125-year-old barn from a farm in Indiana that was taken apart piece by piece and reassembled in Colorado.

Devil's Thumb already ranked No. 7 in the U.S. among cross-country ski areas, expects to move up in the rankings with the completion of that and other projects, perhaps to No. 1.

New mystery novel set in Aspen

ASPEN - Ski towns of the West, from Telluride to Vail, have been the setting for several novels. Now comes a new mystery by part-time Aspen resident Patrick Hasburgh.

Called Aspen Pulp, it features Jack Wheeler, a former TV writer turned private eye, who is hired to find a local high school cheerleader, a bimbette-in-training, who has disappeared. The search uncovers a complex crime ring that lies deep within the old mine shafts of Aspen Mountain.

"There's enough raunchiness to put off readers who prefer their mysteries on the mild side, but through it all, Jake spouts a cynical line of humor that will have the rest laughing out loud," says reviewer Jane Dickinson, writing in the Rocky Mountain News. She says Hasbaugh provides "lots of funny insights on the town and its denizens, from the trustafarians to the ski bums."

Graduate school eyes Jackson Hole

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. - Two state lawmakers propose to establish a graduate business school in Jackson Hole. The idea of a college in Jackson Hole has been bandied about for decades, and two institutions - the University of Wyoming and Central Wyoming College - already have outreach programs.

The new plan would use existing state land near the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort as well as Wyoming's state budget surplus (the result of stepped up energy extraction) to create a "breeding ground for investment bankers and venture capitalist," a brochure for the idea explains.

"An awful lot of details have to be worked out, but it's the right concept, I think," Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal told the Jackson Hole News & Guide. The proposal envisions a "core group of world-class thinkers" that would include "two or three renowned professors."

- compiled by Allen Best