Newborns and oxygen put to test

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS – A study being done at Yampa Valley Medical Center in Steamboat Springs and other hospitals seeks to determine exactly how much oxygen is needed by newborns.

After neonatal nurse practitioner Tracie Line began working seven years ago in Steamboat Springs, she noticed many newborns were being sent home with supplemental oxygen.

“I previously worked at sea level, where home oxygen use was not as common. My question was, ‘What is normal at this altitude?’”

The elevation of Steamboat is about 6,800 feet. Researching past studies, she found studies at 5,280 feet and below. She found studies at higher locations, including Colorado’s Frisco and Leadville, 9,000 and 10,200 feet respectively, as well as from higher yet, in Peru and Tibet. But she found no studies from the middle-elevation band of 5,000 to 9,000, where many of the resorts in the West are located.

After talking to researchers, she finally lined up Dr. Patricia Ravert, a nursing educator at Brigham Young University, in Provo, Utah. She has contacted hospitals in Aspen and Vail, and invites interest from other mountain town hospitals.

“We cannot run a research study by ourselves at our little hospital,” Line told theSteamboat Pilot & Today. “But we can participate, and I am inviting hospitals in other Colorado mountain towns to join the study.”

The research involves testing healthy newborns, to find out what the baby’s oxygen saturation is. So far, 35 parents have consented to the testing, although data from about 500 babies will be needed.

The end result will be a better standard for differentiating between “well” babies and those who require special care during their first few hours, days or weeks of life. And by knowing that, doctors and nurses may learn if they can reduce the number of tests and treatments.

“This could have an impact on all babies born in the Rocky Mountain West, and at similar altitudes around the world,” said Line.

Groups try to block new Sierra resort

WESTWOOD, Calif. – Three environmental groups have filed suit to stop development of a major ski- and golf-anchored resort near the small town of Westwood, which is located in the Sierra Nevada near Lassen National Park. This is about two hours from either Reno or Sacramento.

The groups – the Mountain Meadows Conservancy, Sierra Watch and a branch of the Sierra Club – claim that the governing jurisdiction, Lassen County, in approving the resort, failed to provide sufficient analysis of the impacts caused by the resort. The resort would include 4,000 housing units, three golf courses and a ski resort. It is being called the Dyer Mountain Four Seasons Resort.

Steve Frisch, president of the Sierra Business Council, questions the location. The northern Sierra is expected to be severely affected by climate change with reduced snowpack and early runoff. “Putting a new resort at 6,000 feet and calling it viable is a little difficult to believe,” he told theSierra Sun.

Meanwhile, the development partners are recapitalizing. They tell theSunthat they have a potential dozen investors. Sara Duryea, one of the three managers, said she and her partner have almost $47 million invested in the project.

It will, she said, be the only master-planned community in the Sierra. “We get to see what’s happened in Tahoe and learn from the mistakes of others,” she said.

Telluride tries to emulate Austria

LECH, Austria – For a model of how to do it right as a mountain resort, you could do worse than Lech, located in the Arlberg region of Austria. Dave Riley, chief executive officer of Telluride Ski and Golf, notes that Austria’s first ski lift opened at nearby Zurs in 1936.

In trying to preserve a balance between the economic goals and the beauty of the natural environment, Lech focuses on high-end lodging but also decreed that no second-home ownership would be permitted.

He also notes that Lech installed a biomass heating plant to reduce air pollution. Local biomass is transported from a conveyor system directly to a biomass oven, where it is heated to 1100 degreesC and distributed as warm water in pipes

to 90 percent of the hotels, households and other buildings in the village.

“While I’m sure Lech has its issues,” says Riley, writing inThe Telluride Watch, “it appears they may have found a model which drives environmental protection, economic prosperity, and cultural stability – without sprawl.”

DIA beefs up snow-removal ability

DENVER – Denver is spending $31 million in an effort to preclude anything remotely resembling the 45-hour closing of its airport just before Christmas last year.

Among the acquisitions, reports Denver’sRocky Mountain News, is a new type of machine, a snowmelter, which is said to be more efficient than plows because the snow doesn’t have to be hauled away. In addition to new equipment, snow-removal crews have been augmented, and software has been improved to allow travel plans to be more easily modified.

Altogether, airlines had to cancel 4,000 flights in and out of Denver during last winter’s shutdowns. United Airlines said it lost $40 million in revenue because of storms in Denver and, to a lesser extent, Chicago. Frontier lost $16 million.

More than 40 percent of the overall traffic at DIA comes from connecting passengers, such as in flights to Aspen, Steamboat and Jackson Hole. Denver is now concerned that some of the fly-through business could be diverted to Dallas and other airports.

Denver officials had bragged that the airport could operate in anything short of a total whiteout. Money to upgrade snow removal, however, formerly was diverted by concerns about terrorism in the wake of 9/11.

Little Bighorn warriors honored

CANMORE, Alberta – Most newspapers make a point of honoring war veterans on Nov. 11, called Veterans Day in the United States and Remembrance Day in Canada. Usually the stories are about veterans of the world wars, or possibly the Korean action. But theRocky Mountain Outlook this year carried an unusual story, about the six locals who went off to help Sitting Bull fend off Custer in the Battle of the Little Bighorn in June, 1876.

“We are proud of them now,” says Wilfred Fox, an elder of the Nakoda, a First Nations group from the Banff-Calgary area. “They were protecting their land. They were protecting their food supply (bison).”

One of those veterans was a short man who stood only 4-foot-10, named Little Big Man. That is the name of the chief character in the 1970 movie staring Dustin Hoffman, which was filmed in part near Morely, a town between Calgary and Banff. A grandson of Little Big Man died fighting the German Army in France in 1944.

Idaho town allows limited pot use

HAILEY, Idaho – Voters in Hailey, located downvalley from Sun Valley, just approved three measures to decriminalize marijuana.

Proposals to legalize industrial use of hemp and medical use of marijuana passed by modestly wide margins, and a proposal to make enforcement of marijuana laws the lowest police priority passed by a more narrow margin.

However, voters denied a proposal that would have legalized marijuana altogether, by regulating and taxing its sale.

The election results come three years after an activist named Ryan Davidson tried to initiate petitions for legalization to the cities of Hailey, Sun Valley and Ketchum. But all three municipalities denied his petitions. He sued, and won. The Idaho Supreme Court last year ruled that the towns did not have the right to determine the constitutionality of proposed initiatives.

He hopes to take similar measures before voters in Ketchum and Sun Valley next year.

Developer plans ‘Aspen’ in Utah

HEBER CITY, Utah – A developer from Park City says he intends to develop a skiing-based resort near Heber, located south of Park City. His name for it: Aspen. The developer, Dean Seller, told theDeseret Morning News that he owns 5,700 acres of the 8,366-acre property, which has mostly been used for grazing. Speaking with the Associated Press, he said he has the resources to build the ski town from scratch, with the backing of investors he declined to identify. His experience was as a developer in Arizona for 37 years.

Aspen real estate party continues

ASPEN – Despite the real estate meltdown elsewhere in the country, it’s the same-old, same-old in Aspen. Citing research from the Land Title Guarantee Co., theAspen Timesreports that real estate sales this year have topped $2 billion in Pitkin County. The number of transactions was down 30 percent, but the dollar volume through September was up 8.7 percent. This will be the third straight year that Pitkin County has exceeded $2 billion in real estate sales.

Meanwhile, downvalley in Garfield County and the communities of Carbondale, Glenwood Springs and Rifle, sales dollar volume is 27 percent higher than last year. However, the market cooled during the summer. Those communities offer lower-cost – but not necessarily cheap – housing, and are in demand from those both engaged in the resort and real estate economy, and those in the oil-and-natural gas economy of Northwestern Colorado.

Whistler boasts 890-pound pumpkin

PEMBERTON, B.C. – They grow pumpkins so big in the Whistler area that they need to use forklifts. So says Whistler’sPique newsmagazine, which even shows a photo of the 890-pound pumpkin harvested this year at the farm town of Pemberton, located a 25-minute drive from Whistler.

Pemberton is a gardening delight, especially if you like potatoes: the region grew an estimated 12,000 tons of seed potatoes this year, mostly for export to California and Idaho. And since most of Idaho’s spuds end up as french fries at McDonalds, it’s hard telling where those potatoes end up.

Just the same, there seems to be quite a bit of talk in Whistler about eating local. “The least distance your potato travels from the farm to your fork means the least negative impact it’s had on the global environment,” says Kevin Kamaskie, sustainability coordinator for Whistler’s city government.

Still, the larder of Pemberton is such that Whistler seems to get quite a lot of its food there. The food, notesPique, has fewer frequent flyer miles than its diners.

Taos makes major snowmaking upgrade

TAOS – Taos seems to be a place of extremes. Winters are either epic or no-snow affairs. Accordingly, the big change over the summer at Taos Ski Valley was the upgrading of snowmaking, with the hope that it will keep the bulk of the mountain’s intermediate terrain covered.

Of course, snowmaking requires cold, and there hasn’t been all that much in New Mexico, notes theTaos News.

Still, it’s not even Thanksgiving. “We all panic that we’re not going to open,” Taos spokeswoman Adriana Blake said. “And then we do.”

Snowmass puts ban on public smoking

SNOWMASS VILLAGE – The smoking ban in Snowmass Village, already in existence for all indoor public spaces, has been extended to all outdoor public land. As such, smoking will be prohibited in lift lines, at music concerts, and on the mall.

“Some 3,800 people will die next year due to second-hand smoke,” said Councilman John Wilkinson.The Aspen Times reports there was only one dissension in the council vote.

 - Allen Best