Hunter S. Thompson laid to rest

ASPEN – The big day came and went. Actors Bill Murray, Sean Penn and Johnny Depp were all there, as were former presidential candidates George McGovern and John Kerry, former “60 Minutes” newsman Ed Bradley, and 300 to 400 other close friends and acquaintances of the writer Hunter S. Thompson.

Thompson, described by aDenver Post columnist as perhaps the most influential journalist of the late 20th century, was canonized – literally – in a big party and funeral at his ranchette near Aspen. As per his wishes of nearly 30 years, half of his cremated remains were fired from a 153-foot canon as Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” played and guests sipped champagne.

The canon was absurd – steel cylinders covered with gray cloth to resemble a clothed arm, with a fiberglass clenched fist featuring two thumbs holding something meant to resemble a peyote button. All of this was 153 feet high, about two feet higher than the Statute of Liberty in the harbor at New York City. It was in accordance with what Thompson, in a 1978 interview with the British Broadcasting Corp., said he hoped would happen once he had died. In February, he committed suicide much in the fashion of one of his heroes, Ernest Hemingway, who killed himself with a shotgun in Ketchum in 1961.

Reports in papers from theAspen Daily Newsto theNew York Times described sex dolls in a convertible, a Richard Nixon mask, and Thompson’s personal literary solar system, his own photo surrounded by his literary heroes, Ernest Hemingway, Joseph Conrad and Mark Twain among them. They also reported some of the two hours of eulogizing. The writer’s widow, Anita Thompson, read Thompson’s favorite poem, “Kubla Khan,” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Thompson had assuredly touched a great many people through the years, many of them too young to have read his rants when they were first published. A great flood of these admirers had been expected, and indeed, some of them showed up. But the mayhem predicted byThe Aspen Times failed to materialize.

While there were throngs outside of Thompson’s gate, it was a peaceful assembly. Only one arrest was reported, and the upper Roaring Fork Valley had what theTimessuggested was an uncommonly peaceful weekend.

Boy miraculously survives fall

LEADVILLE – This story isn’t quite as wild as the one about a cat falling 10 stories and landing on its feet, but it’s close. It seems that Riley Silva, 17, was tossing rocks off a cliff near Hagerman Pass, in the Leadville-Aspen area, with the goal being to send larger and larger rocks into the abyss.

One rock was too big to budge, and so the boy jumped on it. He dislodged it – but that was the last bit of good luck he had for awhile, explains theLeadville Chronicle. Silva went sailing off the cliff just behind his rock.

Emergency personnel estimate he fell 80 feet before hitting a ledge, then fell 80 more feet before cart-wheeling 400 feet down a slope of talus and scree.

Luckily, a nurse was nearby to give first aid. Rapidly responding rescuers rigged ropes to avoid dislodging more rocks. Capping a tedious and perhaps courageous rescue, a helicopter arrived to ferry him to a hospital just before a deluge.

Said one rescuer, Pat Kaynaroglu, “That young man was meant to be on this earth.”

Time-share sells for $1.75 million

ASPEN –The Aspen Times reports a new record for a fractional ownership residence. A six-week share in a four-bedroom suite at a slope-side project called Residences at the Little Nell has sold for $1.75 million. Such shares, when sales started in early July, were priced at $1.35 million.

“Residences at the Little Nell is now the highest-priced private residence club in the world,” said Wally Hobson, of Hobson Real Estate Advisors, a consulting and development firm based in Portland, Ore.

The hotel has 24 suites available for fractional ownership. Some 75 shares have been sold at a total cost of $84 million since sales began less than two months ago. Prices for a six-week share of a three-bedroom suite started at $1 million but has already ratcheted up to $1.3 million.

The new record eclipses the $1.49 million paid for the single most expensive share of a three-bedroom suite at the St. Regis Residence Club in Aspen. That price is for four weeks per year: Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s and July 4th.

Altitude sickness hits men hardest

SUMMIT COUNTY – High-altitude pulmonary edema is serious business in the mountains. In Colorado’s Summit County, which is almost entirely above 8,000 feet, with Breckenridge nearing 10,000 feet, one to three visitors die from it each year.

Doctors see hundreds of other cases of edema, a condition caused when pressure in the head and lungs cause fluid to leak into the lungs.

Studying 29 cases, Summit County physician Jim Bachman found that while men and women get a milder case of altitude sickness in equal rates, men suffer from HAPE at 30 times the rate of women.

“My best guess is that the female hormone estrogen helps you, but it could be that the male hormone hurts you,” he told theSummit Daily News. “Other research indicates that men play harder (or ignore symptoms) and that women breathe deeper and faster.”

Bachman also studied the phenomenon of rising blood pressure, taking a look at what he calls “bi-landers,” or people who maintain homes both at seal level and at mountain resorts. In his study of 70 such bi-landers, he found that 30 percent of the patients experienced an increase in blood pressure.

Summit County aims for zero waste

SUMMIT COUNTY – Like Whistler, Colorado’s Summit County has set a goal of reducing waste to zero.

“We want to be on the side of the angels,” Commissioner Bob French said. “Zero waste is a goal you shoot for – we’re not going to get there this year or the next, but no matter how far we get, we can always do a little better.”

Last year, an estimated 15 percent of trash was diverted from the landfill through recycling efforts, reports theSummit Daily News. That compares with 3 percent overall in Colorado. Still, Summit County’s landfill received 51,250 tons of trash. Can that possibly be reduced to zero?

County officials are pinning their hopes on a new project, called the materials recovery facility, that they hope will at least double the recycling rate. One of the gains is that both the landfill and the facility will be operated at the same location and by the same entity, the county.

Casket from Iraq arrives at resort

EAGLE – As many parents had feared, the war in Iraq is coming home in the form of caskets. One such sad story comes from the Vail area.

A 22-year-old local man, Lance Cpl. Evenor Herrera, who graduated several years ago from Eagle Valley High School, was killed by a bomb in Iraq. A native of Honduras, he had immigrated to the United States in 1991.

The Vail Daily reports that more than 20 family members and friends spoke at his grave-side service. “My brother, he was a brave man who was not scared fighting over there,” said the victim’s brother Balmore Herrera, who is also a Marine. A grandmother, Maria Del Carmen Pereria, called on the U.S. government to reevaluate its role in Iraq.

AsNew York Times columnist Bob Herbert points out, the Army is targeting minority and low-income groups, talking about the various benefits of military service such as college education, health care and so on. The risks of military service, however, are not mentioned with equal prominence, if at all.

Affordable housing absent in Vail

VAIL – Evidence is trickling in that the housing situation in Vail and the Eagle Valley is back to the situation that existed previous to 9/11 and the bust in speculation on tech stocks.

“Tight as a drum” was the usual aphorism back in the day. Statistically, tight was defined as vacancy of less than 1 percent.

Then came the economic slow-down, when vacancy rates approached 20 percent. As the construction of speculative trophy homes slowed, hundreds of new housing units were constructed in the Vail, Avon and Eagle areas – to the protests of some who warned of a glut.

The glut is clearly gone. One property manager of several affordable housing complexes told theVail Daily that even in mid-August, his projects in the upper and mid-Eagle Valley are completely full. Also, there is evidence that prices for affordable housing will likely rise because of a general increase in wages.

– compiled by Allen Best