Adventure tourism continues to rise

BEAVER CREEK – “Experiential adventures” are a growing trend in the travel business, according to a speaker at a recent tourism conference.

Daniel Levine told attendees at the conference that a hotel in Finland has glass-topped “igloo” suites so guests can lie in bed and watch the Northern Lights. A guide company in Lisbon, Portugal, offers tours in which customers wear blindfolds and are led around the city by blind people to experience the sounds, smells and feelings of the city.”

“You’re creating brag-ability,” Levine said. But the key, he added, is to provide adventure without too much danger or effort.

Levine also cited several other major trends in the travel sector, reports theVail Daily, including “sustainability” initiatives. But companies claiming to be green, he explained must be able to show proof of their good deeds.

Meanwhile, Parks Canada, the federal agency that administers Banff, Revelstoke and other national parks, is assessing whether to allow thrill-seeking activities such as zip-lines, canopy tours and via ferrata.

Via ferrata is a mountain route equipped with fixed cables, stemples, ladders and bridges. First assembled by soldiers in the Dolomites during World War I, via ferrata – Italian for “iron road” – allows large numbers of people and climbing abilities to safely use exposed routes.

Canopy tours, explains theRocky Mountain Outlook, allow people to slide along cables through treetops. Zip-lines consist of pulleys suspended on cables mounted on an incline.

Ski hills located within Banff National Park are interested in offering these devices, as is Pacific Rim, a park in British Columbia located west of Vancouver.

The review by Parks Canada is drawing mixed opinions, reports theRocky Mountain Outlook.

“These are adventure activities that are attractive and fun, but have absolutely no place whatsoever in a national park,” said Jim Pissot, executive director of Defenders of Wildlife Canada. “They are the kinds of activities that can be done elsewhere.”

But another group, the Association for Mountain Parks Protection and Enjoyment, a business alliance, endorses redrawing the lines of what’s permissible.

“We’re solidly behind this because it fits in with visitor experience,” said Rich Leavens, the organization’s executive director. “It will have benefits for the sort of the person who may not have the courage to go in the backcountry, but this is a way to get them to understand about national parks.”

A similar discussion is also simmering in the United States, where a Colorado congressman, Mark Udall, agreed to introduce legislation that would give ski areas greater authority to provide nonskiing recreation within ski-area permit legislation.

Generation X passes up ski towns

KETCHUM, Idaho – Generation X – an age group spanning from roughly their mid-20s to mid-40s – has been emptying out of ski towns for much of this century, moving to cities where housing costs are lower and better paying jobs exist.

This comes during a time when ski towns are distinctly grayer, a result of baby boomers who arrived in ski towns during the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s staying in place; independent, location-neutral entrepreneurs arriving; and retirees moving in for their golden but still active years.

The statistics are rather jarring. Consider Idaho’s Blaine County, where Ketchum and Sun Valley are located. Those aged 65 and older increased 47 percent in recent years, while the number of boomers increased 32 percent.

But those aged 15 to 44, reports theIdaho Mountain Express, declined 3 percent.

Other ski-based mountain towns have similar statistics.

Some in Idaho think that Ketchum and Sun Valley are entirely too stodgy, Jima Rice, an economic consultant, tells the paper. “We still market a 1938 image,” she said. “It’s put us behind the curve. We’re not marketing to the right market.”

The story provoked several e-mail responses to the newspaper’s website. One correspondent, Rick Lethbridge, said he had left Ketchum for a well-paying job in the finance industry in Seattle. The money has been good, city life interesting, but he now wants to get back to the small community and lifestyle. “I need to get back to my roots and solidify myself in what really makes me happy.”

Another, unidentified blogger, thinks that ski towns have strengths that the outside world does not. People there are a lot more innovative and progressive, says the blogger.

“I’m not trying to knock the rat-race communities (OK, maybe I am), but people in major cities tend to take on the role of specialized ants and, there is little innovation over a long period of time with that sort of cube-rate culture.”

Ski towns, with their high costs of living, “force the community to smarten up and form a new reality that isn’t exactly one already created by generica.”

Transmountain diversion draws heat

GRAND LAKE – Few people now living can remember a time before major transmountain diversions from the headwaters of the Colorado River to the state’s Eastern Slope.

The largest of those 20^th century diversions – what Telluride native and historian David Lavender called a “massive violation of geography” – came in the 1940s and 1950s. That diversion, the Colorado-Big Thompson Project, diverts water via a tunnel from Grand Lake, at the western entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park, to a reservoir near Estes Park, at the park’s eastern entrance.

Benefiting from the diversion are cities from Fort Collins to Boulder and farms along the South Platte River as far as Nebraska.

But there have been costs, as several witnesses with first-hand experience testified in recent hearings held in Granby and Grand Lake. The greatest concern, reports theSky-Hi Daily News, is increased impact to the water quality of Grand Lake. Adjoining the lake is a resort town of the same name.

“The water quality has totally degraded,” said Gay Shaffer, who has spent 73 summers in Grand Lake.

The clarity of the water has been compromised by the series of reservoirs created to contain water from spring runoff. The inter-connected reservoirs allow the water to warm and accumulate organic material that sullies the water clarity in Grand Lake.

But quantity, not just quality, is also at issue as a consortium of cities and farmers propose to divert more water in a project called the Windy Gap Firming Project. Fishing shop proprietor Mitch Kirwin said the Colorado River system is already stressed. “Our economy is tied to our ecology.” Instead of diverting more water, the Front Range districts should take less.

Those testifying from the headwaters counties also feel aggrieved that more stringent conservation measures have not been embraced by the Front Range water districts. “A great deal more conservation needs to take place on the Eastern Slope,” said Sylvia Hines, who has vacationed at Grand Lake since the 1930s.

Another increase in diversions is also being studied by Denver Water, which owns water rights in the nearby Fraser River Valley, where Winter Park is located. It, too, is being protested.

Green trumps historic in Steamboat

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS – Across the nation, there have been disputes between the sometimes conflicting goals of historic preservation and environmental gains. Such a dispute became evident in a recent case reported by theSteamboat Pilot & Today.

Developers wanted to replace two stucco duplexes on the fringes of the town’s downtown with a much larger, 4,711-square-foot mixed-used development.

The city’s historic preservation staff recommended denial because the building would be larger and taller than normally allowed. However, the city planning staff recommended approval, based on the building’s environmental credentials. Developers plan to seek gold-level certification, the third highest of four levels in the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) process.

The citizen planning commission recommends approval, but the City Council has final say.

Renters get desperate in Whistler

WHISTLER, B.C. – Seasonal workers looking for housing in Whistler have taken to wearing cardboard sandwiches, such as you sometimes see in front of restaurants seeking to advertise their daily specials.

“26yo mature sales professional seeking accommodation,” read the script on the cardboard cutout worn by Kristian Waller, an Australian newly arrived for the winter. “I am clean, tidy, friendly and easy-going. Responsible and financially secure.”

– Allen Best