Snowfall abundant across the West

ASPEN – The snow is so deep in Aspen this year that several people have skied Red Mountain, which is opposite the valley from the main ski mountain.

The sun-drenched slope, which is full of rocks and scrub oak, holds little snow most winters. This may have been the first winter anyone has skied it since 1983-84, reportsThe Aspen Times.

“It was fun,” said one of the skiers, Neal Beidleman, who co-enlisted fellow adventurers Chris Davenport and Ted Mahon for the feat.

Beidleman summited Mt. Everest some years ago, while Davenport has skied from the summit of all of Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks. With snow on it, Red Mountain isn’t exactly in the same league.

“It’s not a long ski. It wasn’t hard. It’s just novel,” said Beidleman. “It’s one of the bellwether events that shows how good the snow is.”

Several new records have been set at Aspen’s ski areas, and the storms continue to arrive into February almost without so much as a break for popcorn. City crews in Aspen, now deep into the overtime budget, are struggling to find places to dump the snow. However, down in the valley, at the town’s water plant, 1957 still remains the year against which all others are measured.

Meanwhile,avalanches big and small were evident across the Ketchum, Idaho, area after a storm deposited 20 inches of snow.

In the town’s Warm Springs neighborhood, near the base of the Sun Valley ski area, an avalanche swept over one home, the second time in a month the house has been hit. An avalanche wall absorbed most of the impact, and no damage was detected in the house, but an outlying garage got knocked about.

TheIdaho Mountain Express states four other homes were hit, but reported no damage. However, emergency services personnel were worried enough about the potential to human health that they evacuated all homes in that area.

In Steamboat Springs, the snowfall total this season has now pushed past 300 inches, with additional snow falling rapidly in the early days of February.

TheSteamboat Pilot & Today found both people who love and hate the prodigious powder. Brian Bonsell, a hotel worker and avid surfer, had decamped Hawaii several weeks before. “In order to leave there, I had to come to a place like this,” he told the newspaper. “I always wanted to live where it just snows every day.”

Riding that much powder was, he said, like riding waves.

But Bob Wakefield, who came from Kansas, really would prefer corduroy. “I’m not really to the point where I can ski in the deep snow like this,” he said. “Powder days are not my favorite.”

Snow fell on 80 percent of the first 73 days of the ski season at Steamboat.

Global warming now a selling point

REVELSTOKE, B.C. – Climate change is now becoming a real-estate selling point.

That’s the observation of Toronto’sGlobe and Mail after visiting the new Revelstoke Mountain Resort, which opened in late December and expects next year, after extension of the gondola, to have the most vertical of any ski resort in North America.

The newspaper notes that the ski area gets an annual average of 15 meters of snow, or nearly 600 inches. “If, 20 years from now, we only get half the snow, it’s still much more than anyone else,” says one of the four developers, Hunter Milborne, the managing director of Sotheby’s International in Toronto.

Zul Haji, a Calgary-based investor, tells the newspaper he was intrigued by the concept of climate change real estate. He paid $450,000 for a condo last March. That same day, Revelstoke sold $70 million of real estate in its first offering.

“With global warming, as we get less and less snow at lower elevations, a lot of ski hills will be out of business,” says Hahi. “That was my main motivation.”

Don Simpson, a Denver-based developer of apartment buildings, is another of the four major developers. He has heli skied in the mountains around Revelstoke for 20 years. “Snow in Revelstoke is just so dependable,” he says. “It’s always abundant.” It is, he says, the best snow in the world.

The resort is near Rogers Pass, about five hours west of Calgary and six hours east of Vancouver.

Vail grows desperate for workers

VAIL – The employee situation in Vail has come to this. Even during winter, Vail’s Sweet Basil, renowned as one of the town’s best restaurants, will remain closed two days a week during lunch.

The shut sign – the first during ski season in 30 year of operations – was posted after many of the kitchen staff worked an 84-hour work week during the holidays.

This, reports theRocky Mountain News, is despite wages that for some positions have increased nearly 40 percent during the past two years, plus health insurance and ski passes.

Alas, while the restaurant has 70 employees during peak season, it has employee housing for only four.

While employee housing is being added in Vail and elsewhere in the Eagle Valley, it’s not keeping up with the growth in jobs. The newspaper notes that 1,500 new jobs are being added as a consequence of redevelopment in Vail now under way. Another 2,115 jobs could result from other pending development projects. Plus, down-valley in Avon and Edwards, another 7,400 jobs are expected in the next decade.

Building booms in Eagle County

VAIL – Construction permits for nearly a half-billion dollars were pulled last year in Vail, most at the base of the ski lifts. About 70 percent of the total was explained in four projects, and a majority of it falls under the heading of redevelopment.

The largest project is a $110-million condo and fractional project called the Ritz-Carlton Residences being built by ski area operator Vail Resorts Inc. The next largest is a $104-million project called Solaris, which is replacing a late-1960s style condo, office and retail complex. Down the list further is an $89-million Four Seasons, which is to have condos and fractional units.

TheVail Daily explains that there’s more where that came from. For example, Vail Resorts is briskly moving forward on plans for a new $1 billion project called Ever Vail, which would replace a gas station, an aging office building and other properties. Several other major redevelopment projects are also in the planning and review pipeline.

People contacted by the newspaper agreed that Vail needed to redevelop. “To remain a world-class resort, we needed improvements to our town,” said Kim Newbury, a Vail councilwoman since 2003.

Telluride sets new real estate record

TELLURIDE – Buoyed by several sales of large ranches on the mesas above Telluride, the real estate market in the Telluride last year reached $756 million. Although paltry by Vail and Aspen standards, where sales last year remained above $2 billion, it nonetheless is a 4 percent gain over Telluride’s previous record year.

Just the same, some real estate agents are thinking that 2008 could be lower. “The national slowdown hasn’t flushed people out of our market by any means,” said Jim Lucarelli of Real Estate Affiliates, although “phones aren’t ringing as steadily or robustly as we may be used to.”

The view from Telluride is that, relative to Vail and Aspen, it still remains a bargain. All things are relative, of course. The lowest priced single-family home in Telluride during the last several years was $1.1 million.

Autosock could replace tire chains

VAIL – Truckers are excited about a new product called Autosock, which is a high-tech fabric that can be slipped over a tire, delivering the same traction in snowy and icy conditions that now require chains. The Autosock can be installed on tires of tractor-trailer trucks in about five minutes, instead of 35 to 40 minutes, product representatives tell theVail Daily.

The product still hasn’t been approved for Colorado highways, although the state is developing reviewing criteria for approval.

For Vail, this new product would have substantial benefits, as trucks commonly are lined up in chain-up areas, belching diesel smoke, before crossing Vail Pass. As well, notes the newspaper, chaining up has been dangerous to truckers in Vail. One trucker died of a heart attack recently while chaining up, and another was hit and killed in October.

– Allen Best