Aspen requests X Games for life

ASPEN - Aspen wants to host the Winter X Games permanently, says David Perry, senior vice president of the Aspen Skiing Co. Aspen has the event contractually locked through 2007, but Perry told a recent gathering that he believes Aspen can get the games - now in their ninth year - for far longer.

One of Aspen's virtues is that it has four ski areas, which means it can allocate one ski area, Buttermilk, to the preparation and then the event for a total of three weeks without hurting the company's income stream.

The event has been steadily growing. ESPN estimates that 66,500 spectators attended the four-day event last year, up from 58,700 and 36,300 in the two preceding years. This year, in the days before the event, Aspen and Snowmass were booked to 90 percent of capacity.

However, Perry warned that if Aspenites want to hold onto the X Games far into the future, hoteliers must avoid the temptation to gouge attendees, particularly the ESPN crews, reports The Aspen Times.

Jackson trophy home found illegal

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. - A district court judge has come down on the side of Teton County in the case of a couple who expanded their already massive log home beyond what county regulations permitted. The judge fined the couple, Thomas and Carol-Ann Crow, $363,000.

The case, explains the Jackson Hole News & Guide, goes back to the mid-1990s. The couple built their house but then wanted to expand it. They were told that county regulations limited homes to 10,000 square feet of total floor area and 8,000 square feet of habitable space. They expanded as they wished anyway, to a total of 13,000 square feet of total floor area.

The judge said the Crows failed to prove that the term "habitable space" was voided because of its vagueness. He also ruled that the county can regulate the use and size of interior space with a completed dwelling.

The couple may yet be required to remove the offending portion of the house. It contains a bedroom and several bathrooms.

Avalung and beacon fail skier

REVELSTOKE, B.C. - For those who think that an avalanche beacon represents safety against death by avalanche, yet more testimony to the contrary was offered during January in the Selkirk Mountains near Revelstoke,

There, a 20-year tradition turned tragic when Stephen M. Butts, the principal owner of a large real estate firm in Telluride, died in an avalanche. The annual trip to Canada had begun when Butts was still living in Aspen and had grown to include a large number of people from both Aspen and Telluride. Skiing immediately before him was John Pryor, mayor of Telluride.

Avalanche conditions had been rated high to extreme in the Revelstoke area, sufficient to force cancellation of skiing the previous day. But guides decided the risk was sufficiently low if they kept to the trees. All wore transceivers and carried shovels, and the Revelstoke Times Review said they also were equipped with Avalung, a new device that, if employed before the snow stops, allows a person to continue breathing while buried under the snow.

Several people had skied the run before the avalanche struck. The companions and guides of Butts found and then dug him out within five minutes, and a helicopter with medical gear was on the scene within 10 minutes, but all to no avail.

An autopsy later indicated that he had died of a fractured spine, most likely causing his immediate death as he was dragged through stands of small trees.

Butts had been recruited from Aspen in 1982 by Ron Allred, then CEO of the Telluride ski company. Ironically, Butts has recently restructured Telluride Properties to allow brokers to buy in, freeing him to take more time off.

Foreign tourists return to Colorado

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS - One of the bigger stories of the year at ski areas in Colorado is the return of tourists from foreign countries. It's happening in Aspen and Vail and also Steamboat and probably elsewhere in the United States.

Foreign tourists are at the highest mark in a decade in Steamboat, says Andy Wirth, vice president of marketing for the American Skiing Co.'s resorts in the West. Even including the locals with season passes, foreign tourists account for almost 10 percent of skier visits at Steamboat, he told The Steamboat Pilot.

The reason foreigners are skiing U.S. resorts is the weakened dollar in international exchange rates. The dollar has dropped in value 20 percent in just the last year and a quarter.

All this has Jeff Thredgold, a corporate economist for Vectra Bank Colorado, predicting more foreign investment in resort real estate. He also predicts a renewed surge of Californians moving to Colorado as Colorado's economy, while lagging behind those of other states in the Rocky Mountains, gets back to its usual robust proportions.

Although the Federal Reserve Board is raising interests, which is expected to cool the hot real estate market, he does not see that effort cooling mountain real estate sales.

"Sales of real estate in places like Aspen, Park City, Steamboat and Keystone have little to do with interest rates," he said. "It's very much about exercising of stock options." He said he's optimistic about the stock market's prospects this year, with repercussions for real estate in resort communities.

Hemingway home creates debate

KETCHUM, Idaho - Forty-four years after he killed himself with a shotgun in his home in Ketchum, the novelist Ernest Hemingway is still in the news. At issue is whether the house will be opened to the public.

Although living primarily in Cuba and the Florida Keyes, Hemingway had spent portions of 22 years in Ketchum, where he fished and hunted. Beset by mental illness in later years, he tried to kill himself several times and finally succeeded in 1961.

Several neighbors and others scorn the idea of making the house a public museum, and argue that the house was relatively unimportant in the writer's life, Hemingway scholar, Martin Peterson, in a piece published in the Idaho Mountain Express, argues otherwise. He says that Hemingway did important pieces of writing in Ketchum, including portions of For Whom the Bell Tolls.

There are other arguments - that Hemingway drank a lot, that he didn't get along with members of his family, and so on. Finally, there is the matter of the suicide. "But that doesn't make the house any less worthy of appreciation and respect than the cemetery (in Ketchum where Hemingway is buried)." Hemingway should be remembered for his life that was "generally lived well and enthusiastically."

Snow shortage strikes Northwest

KETCHUM, Idaho - Already subpar snowpacks in the Pacific Northwest have been shriveling in the embrace of record-high temperatures. At the summit of Sun Valley's Bald Mountain, the 100-inch snowpack had shrunk to 50 inches in three weeks of January.

While that left the snowpack in the Ketchum area at 77 percent of average, it was even worse in other parts of Idaho, reports the Idaho Mountain Express.

This mid-winter thaw has been so uncommonly warm that some ski areas, including Idaho's Schweitzer Mountain, had to close. In Washington, climatologist Philip Mote said he does not ever recall snow melting at an elevation of 6,200 feet during the middle of winter.

This is part of a drought that has now continued in the Pacific Northwest for five years, the longest stretch of persistent drought in 100 years.

Rain continues to pound Whistler

WHISTLER, B.C. - Indoor rock climbing got big last week in Whistler. So did dream-catcher workshops, sessions at the spa and day trips to outlying communities. What else is a poor tourist to do on a ski vacation when it is raining, sometimes torrentially?

Whistler, like much of the Northwest, has endured going on two weeks of warm weather and rain. On-mountain crews were waiting by to begin making snow, but it was much too warm. As a result, Whistler-Blackcomb was discounting the cost of group ski lessons by 50 percent, with a similar price reduction offered at on-mountain restaurants.

Some lodges were calling those with reservations to inform them of the conditions, but few seemed to be canceling - after just a week of wet, reported Pique newsmagazine. If the warm weather continues, however, tourism officials in Whistler expect more substantial repercussions.

- compiled by Allen Best