Robbers come and go on I-70

VAIL - In case you never heard the slogan "crime doesn't pay," two stories from Colorado's

I-70 corridor this past week testified to that notion.

First came the bumbling bank robbers in Vail. The BB-gun brandishing duo made no effort to disguise their accents when relieving a bank of $130,000 in deposits. With that linguistic clue, Vail police quickly reviewed the list of recent troublemakers. Bingo: a couple of 19-year-old seasonal workers who had grown up on Australia's Gold Coast had been previously suspected of shooting paintballs at a local house.

With names, accents and everything else in an all-points bulletin, guards working at Denver International Airport several hours later snagged the pair, who had round-trip tickets to Mexico. Instead of spending spring vacation on the beach, the two men - who the Vail Daily reports are being called Dumb and Dumber in their native Australian haunts - are biding their time in jail.

Several days later, a swat team descended on a cabin south of Breckenridge after being informed that a 43-year-old Denver man suspected of robbing 24 banks along Colorado's Front Range was hiding out there. For all the commotion, says the Vail Summit Daily News, some neighbors thought it was just another peaceful morning in the mountains.

Name game under way for C.B.

CRESTED BUTTE - Crested Butte wants to create a new ski area across the road from the existing one on a mountain called Snodgrass. But ski area owners Tim and Diane Mueller want a more inviting name for when they begin buying magazine advertisements announcing that Crested Butte is "new, bigger and better." To that end, reports the Crested Butte News, they are mulling some 200 proposed names.

Something similar happened at Vail, where the ski area in 1999 was expanded onto an adjoining mountain called Battle Mountain. The expansion area was called Blue Sky Basin.

As for Snodgrass, nobody wants to change the official name. It was named after Perry Snodgrass, a Forest Service ranger who was struck by lightning while riding a horse on the mountain in 1915 and died several days later of his injures.

Breck bucking for highest lift

BRECKENRIDGE - Mountain Gazette, a magazine, has a motto printed each issue on its front page: "When in Doubt, Go Higher." That would also seem to be the philosophy of ski areas, including Breckenridge.

Breckenridge ski area wants to install a new lift that would give it the highest lift in North America, bumping it ahead of Loveland Ski Area. If approved by the U.S. Forest Service, the new lift would provide access to expert terrain on Peak 8, an area currently reached only after a 45-minute hike.

While the Forest Service has not yet said yes, the agency's studies show no precluding environmental impacts. The Environmental Protection Agency, however, frets that the lift could impair wetlands as well as alpine tundra, creating a loss greater than its gain.

Colorado Wild, the ski industry watchdog that nipped at the heels of Vail in the 1990s, says this is just another example of the ski area "arms race."

The Forest Service disagrees, arguing that there is need for more terrain at Breckenridge and Summit County in general, which records 4 million skier days annually and expects more yet as metropolitan Denver and other Front Range communities in Colorado grow.

Meanwhile, in the Aspen area, Snowmass wants to build a new lift and improve access to 500 acres of what the Forest Service says will amount to "semi-backcountry" skiing. In other words, it will take a bit of hiking to access. That plan for bigger and higher does not seem to have drawn the same attention as the plan at Breckenridge, although it did cause local environmental watchdogs to raise their eyebrows.

Vail's numbers man passes on

VAIL - One by one, the founders of Vail are passing on. Latest to go was George Caulkins, who was one of the numbers guys behind Pete Seibert's vision.

Caulkins grew up in the affluent Detroit suburb of Grosse Pointe and got a degree from Yale and a masters in business administration from Harvard. After service during World War II, he moved to Oklahoma, where he got in the oil business, and then moved to Denver.

An accomplished athlete in everything from golfing to tennis, he was one of the original investors in Vail. When puzzled bankers in New York City turned down their requests for loans, they hit the road in a Porsche, traveling to country club and other likely spots from Chicago to New England to Texas. But even the promise of four life-time ski passes to the planned new resort produced too few takers.

Finally, a little more than a year from the planned opening, they hit on a new idea. They threw in a slope-side lot for an additional $500. "People in Texas and other places, too, had no idea what the value of lift passes might be worth" Caulkins said later, "but they had no doubt about the value of land."

In other words, while the prospects of a new ski area remained dubious, they figured they would at least be guaranteed a nice summer cabin.

Monday's hire no-show by Friday

SILVERTON - Most everybody who has ever had a remodel knows how difficult it can be to get plumbers, plasterers and others to show up when they say they will. Apparently this hard-to-pin-down trait exists even among building inspectors. The Silverton Standard reported that Monday's hire at the local courthouse had quit by Friday.

Caddyshack time for Telluride

TELLURIDE -The Denver Post took a hard look at Telluride and found that Chuck Horning, the real estate titan from California who purchased the ski area along with his son, Chad, has been acting like something of a buffoon, socially and in the way he has been operating the ski area.

While none of the local media in Telluride had reported the story beforehand, they noted the Denver Post story without quibble. One source in Telluride told Mountain Exchange that the Post got the story exactly right. "It's Caddyshack," said the source, alluding to the Rodney Dangerfield character, a loud, vulgar, twitching condo developer. "Essentially the ski area is being run by Rodney Dangerfield."Critics do not necessarily disagree with Horning's vision for the ski area and the community. Like the new owners of Crested Butte, he thinks Telluride must increase skier days to about 600,000, to better compete with larger resort areas like Aspen, Vail and Summit County. Locals are questioning his administrative abilities. He has already dismissed two ski area managers in little more than a year and seems to have put all remaining employees on edge. The real question, says one individual, is how much money Horning brings to the table to implement his vision given his lack of people skills.

One music festival down, another one on the ropes

WINTER PARK - A music festival that was long a highlight of Winter Park's summer schedule has been killed, and another major festival is on the ropes.

Clear Channel Music, the primary sponsor of Rockfest, also known as the American Music Festival, has declined to renew its contract to produce the festival. Performers want more money and their own concerts, but for that matter, outdoor summer festivals didn't do very well last year. The festival had attracted up to 12,000 people per day.

Still possible, if a major commitment of local money is made, is the Winter Park Jazz Festival, which also dates to the 1980s. Still on the summer table are the Winter Park Folk Festival and the Blues From the Top, which is actually held at nearby Granby.

The Winter Park Manifest interpreted the news as a message to de-emphasize special events. "Perhaps now resort communities will start to come to depend less on special happenings and more on the special characteristics, the people, the character of the area and special environmental features, such as healthy forests and streams, to attract visitors."

In some resorts, it's just like the good old days

ASPEN - More reports are coming in that it's the good-old days once again at ski resorts - at least those resorts that have snow.

A complete tally on the month's success will not be known for some time, but in Aspen it's being described as the best March in "recent memory." Recent memory in this case seems to be since 9/11.

But except for the more southerly resorts, it's by no means a banner winter for snow. In the Vail area, the snowpack in late March stood at only 84 percent of average, the sixth straight winter of subpar snow conditions. Unlike last March, however, some timely March storms have kept the skiing reasonably good.

Park City may ask for more open space money

PARK CITY, Utah - Park City officials have spent $17 million since the late 1990s in acquiring open space, and they have $3 million left for future purchases. Mindful of how rapidly open spaces in and near the town are disappearing, they may ask voters in November for another allocation.

"We are down to some of the last significant parcels that are not developed around our town," Mayor Dana Williams told The Park Record. "Over the next couple of years, these opportunities will be gone."

Inclusionary zoning gets broad push at Sun Valley

SUN VALLEY, Idaho - Support has been building for regulations that will mandate affordable housing as a component of new development in Sun Valley.

At issue in Sun Valley are escalating house prices. For example, the average price of condominiums has increased 32 percent in the last four years. Echoing reports in years past from Aspen, Vail and other front-tier resorts of the West, school administrators in Sun Valley are reporting difficulties in retaining staff, while the volunteer firefighting department is reporting slower response times, because so few volunteers live in Sun Valley.

Town officials are looking at concepts called inclusionary zoning and linkages. In inclusionary zoning, 15 percent of the total number of lots in any new development must be designated for deed-restricted housing. In linkages, affordable housing is linked to the new jobs that will be created in any new commercial or residential development.

Biologists concede one underpass to pedestrians

BANFF, Alberta - The wildlife underpasses and overpasses along the TransCanada Highway in the Banff area may be the most vivid effort to accommodate migrating animals in North America. But there's another group of critters that have a hard time crossing the busy highway - people.

To expedite their safe passage, bicycle riders, pedestrians and horseback riders may be allowed use of one underpass, the Cascade underpass. Wildlife researchers are none too happy about this plan. It is a "bone of contention, to put it politely," one scientist, Davie Campbell, told the Rocky Mountain Outlook. He and other wildlife biologists prefer that bears, wolves and other animals have no competition, but will concede the one underpass as a vile necessity.

Crested Butte puts kibosh to night sky-polluting lights

CRESTED BUTTE - The Crested Butte Town Council has adopted what appears to be one of the most restrictive light-control measures. The new law mandates "full cut-off" lighting fixtures effective immediately on new construction and requires retrofitting out-of-compliance fixtures by 2010.

What does "full cut-off" mean? It appears to mean that the direct light itself cannot be seen from adjoining properties. That means that see-through, glass fixtures will be banned, as will spotlights. The exceptions are for historical lighting, illuminating of the U.S. flag, theater marquees, outdoor recreation lights, and street and safety lighting.

Although the measure passed by a 6-to-1 vote, there was some backlash in letters published in the Crested Butte News. One couple, 30-some-year residents, argued that they needed unshielded lights to ward off bears, drunken drivers and other things that go bump in the night. "How DOES a bare light bulb cause sky pollution?" they wondered.

The council discussed, but did not seem to come to grips with how to "educate" the intent of the new law, although there was some mention of having some demonstration lights.

Spanish-heavy school objects to sullied image

AVON - Three-quarters of the students in the elementary school at Avon, at the base of Beaver Creek, are Latino, and that is creating some image problems in enrollment. Fearing that their children will receive an inferior education because teachers are so busy trying to teach in two languages, many parents are instead sending their children to other schools.

All of this is causing parents and school officials to begin drawing up what the Vail Daily describes as a "rebranding plan." In fact, the kids are getting very good educations, say officials. Anglo students score as well as their counterparts at other public schools. And when the Latinos take their tests in Spanish, they do well also.

Next year, Anglo children will be offered Spanish as a second language in kindergarten and first grade, a concept that is the first step to making the school a fully bilingual institution.

Traffic heavy on the roads in Jackson Hole

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. - Jackson Hole is off the interstate highway system, which many people think makes resorts like Vail and Summit County less attractive and desirable. Just the same, Jackson Hole highways carry interstate-like traffic volumes - at least when compared with some lighter-used interstates of the West.

State transportation officials reported traffic on a local two-lane highway just outside of Jackson was only slightly less than that of I-80, the four-lane interstate passing through Rock Springs.

While a state traffic engineer argues that highway expansion is needed to accommodate those who are already in Jackson, a conservation leader argues that the Europeans don't just keep building bigger roads. One of the county commissioners agrees. "Thereno reason why we have to do something the way it's always been done," said Larry Jorgenson. And a letter writer likened widened roads to larger pants purchased to address a weight problem.

The Jackson Hole News & Guide may have adopted the more middle-of-the-road position: "Jackson Hole residents harbor the illusion that they live in a rural community," said the paper. "Heavy traffic, resulting from years of growth and development, challenges that illusion and brings reality into focus."