Keystone expands backcountry

SUMMIT COUNTY – The Keystone ski area continues to expand what is being called the “backcountry light” ski experience.

Last winter Keystone began ferrying customers by Snowcat into two bowls, called Erickson and Bergman, that are located above timberline. As a business proposition, it’s paying off for Keystone. Demand is not high, but neither is the cost.

Keystone wants to expand on the concept, adding 276 more acres of above-timberline terrain farther to the south on Bear and Independence mountains. This provides skiing around the top of Jones Gulch.

Chuck Tolton, Keystone’s director of mountain operations, told theSummit Daily News that he does not foresee erecting lifts to service this above-timberline bowl skiing for at least five to seven years. There is, he said, insufficient business to justify the cost.

In this above-timberline expansion, Keystone is inching toward what has been talked about for more than 30 years. Keystone, when it opened in 1972, had hoped to build a major downhill course on Independence Mountain for the Olympics that were held in 1976. (Vail Associates, as noted above, had different ideas). In more recent years, Keystone has talked about expanding into Jones Gulch.

However, Jones Gulch is considered a wildlife corridor, potentially of great value to Canada lynx that now frequent the area. While federal wildlife and land officials are still not certain about just how important the corridor is for lynx, Keystone is skirting the issue by staying high, above the trees. “We had very carefully drawn a boundary,” Tolton told theDaily News.

Beaver Creek celebrates 25 years

BEAVER CREEK – Beaver Creek turns 25 this month, and by almost any measure of financial success, it has been among the top resorts in North America during recent years.

Skier days have routinely increased in the double-digits, hitting 815,000 last winter, even as most ski resorts have faltered or bobbed. The real estate market bulges with sales of $6 to $10 million for homes. And the sales taxes collected by merchants would be the envy of most towns.

The resort would now be 30 years old if officials from Vail Associates, the developer of the resort, had had their way. They wanted it to be a premier venue in the 1976 Winter Olympics. However, Colorado voters in 1972 yanked the subsidy for the games, causing Denver to withdraw as host.

Slow-growth-minded state officials, meanwhile, insisted on a more methodical approach to the development of Beaver Creek. While some protagonists in the dispute remain adamant that they could have done it right, a story in theRocky Mountain News suggests a better ski area resulted from the greater patience.

The newspaper also notes rumors during recent months of a new bid by Denver and Colorado for the 2018 Winter Olympics. However, U.S. Olympic Committee representatives note that post 9/11 travel restrictions enacted by the U.S. government make any U.S. bid more difficult.

Colorado heads for record season

COLORADO – Despite all their hope, ambition and real-estate construction, Colorado’s ski area visitor numbers have been flat nearly a decade when it comes to people on the slopes. The record for skier days of 11.98 million skier days was set in 1997-98.

But forecasters see all the stars lining up for that record to topple. The economy is roaring, destination skiers began returning two years ago, and the dollar remains weak vis a vis the euro.

Now, the state’s largest ski areas have enjoyed extraordinary early season snows, driving reservations and also encouraging the sometimes-picky high plains metro skiers to throng to the ski areas.

All of this had analyst Chuck Goelder, former professor of tourism at the University of Colorado-Boulder, confidently predicting 12.05 million skiers this winter – a figure he tells Denver’sRocky Mountain News that he now believes could be conservative.

Bark beetles likely surviving cold

VAIL – The only sure way to stop the spread of bark beetles in the forests of Colorado is deep and extended cold. While the cold of early December was certainly the most extreme so far this century, with temperatures dropping to 30 below or colder, it might not have been cold enough to kill the beetles.

U.S. Forest Service etymologist Bob Cain told theVail Daily he thought it was cold enough to kill some beetles, but he wasn’t sure how many. Because the bark insulates the beetles from the cold, temperatures need to be more than 25 below, some studies have shown, he said.

Vail hit a mere 15 below zero, although other mountain towns in Colorado shivered through temperatures of 30 below – just like the good old days.

Climate change hurts ski area

WILLAMETTE PASS, Ore.– Business is looking sketchy at Willamette Pass, a ski area 60 miles southeast of Eugene. Three years ago, the ski area invested $3 million in a high-speed, six-passenger lift to the summit. Owners hoped the investment would push skier days toward 100,000. Instead, skied days have plodded along well below that, skidding in the drought of last winter to less than 30,000.

While some question the wisdom of spending that much money on a major lift upgrade, Eugene’sRegister-Guardsuggests that snowfall is becoming an issue. An Oregon State University study of climate change during the 20th century in the Pacific Northwest last year revealed that average temperatures increased 1.3 degrees. Temperatures are projected to increase another 2.7 degrees in the next 20 years, says the newspaper.

Thompson pals write book

ASPEN – Two chums of the late journalist Hunter S. Thompson plan to issue a book of their own containing their reminisces. Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis and local artist Michael Cleverly spent a great deal of time in Thompson’s kitchen, where he met guests.

They had joked about the book over the years, Cleverly toldThe Aspen Times, but after Thompson committed suicide in February, the two cranked out several sample chapters. They got 19 rejections, but the 20th publisher, Harper Entertainment/William Morrow, has forwarded what Cleverly called a “niggardly” advance.

“It’s about friendship, as far as I’m concerned,” Cleverly said of the book’s premise.

Wealthy to go on buying binge

ASPEN – A magazine that caters to the über-rich predicts that they will spend more money on their Christmas vacations this year.

Elite Traveler, which claims to cater to people with a net worth of $10 million or more, says a survey of 511 such individuals shows that they will be spending more money this year than last.

– compiled by Allen Best