Mammoth mulls new welcome message
MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif. – Mammoth Lakes has decided that it needs a more conspicuous greeting to visitors in the form of a monument at the town’s entrance.

From the 100 or so entries, organizers have culled the following three finalists: 1) Welcome; 2) Gateway to the Heart of the High Sierra; and 3) “The mountains are calling … .” John Muir.

In reporting this, The Sheet newspaper impishly offers its own proposal: “Please Spend Lots of Money.”

Train traffic picks up in Montana ski town
WHITEFISH, Mont. – In addition to being a ski town, Whitefish is a railroad town. It has a large railroad yard, and train crews on the BNSF Railway’s Hi-Line Route switch there. The route connects Chicago with ports in Seattle and Portland, shuttling wheat, corn, televisions and cars.

Freight volume dropped 30 percent when the recession hit, but it has returned to 90 percent of the peak levels. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway purchased a controlling interest in the railroad in 2009 for $34 billion, and it looks to have been a good investment. Company officials tell the Whitefish Pilot that they expect traffic to return to pre-recession levels by 2013.

The railway is currently running more than 30 trains a day through Whitefish and Glacier National Park, and the resumption of business has spurred the hiring of 41 employees in Whitefish. Salaries for the jobs are relatively good, with a diesel mechanic getting $25 an hour, notes the Pilot.

Energy is the most significant component of BNSF’s freight. Twenty-seven percent of its freight is coal, most from Wyoming’s Powder River Basin. The railroad is also picking up business hauling oil from the Bakken shale region of North Dakota, while delivering drilling equipment and fracking sand. BNSF also hauls turbines and other equipment for wind farms.

Brightening economic times in Aspen, Vail
ASPEN – Sales tax collections in Aspen through October suggest a recovering economy, at least among the economic elites. Town officials tell The Aspen Times that retail sales were up 5.9 percent. At least part of the increase was due to more people staying in hotel rooms.

From Vail also comes news of increasing economic activity, this time in the real-estate sector. Land Title Guarantee Co. in its monthly report found that the average price per square foot for a single-family home in Vail Village went up by one-third during the last year. The village encompasses slope-side real estate.

However, the price per square foot of homes elsewhere in Eagle County has dropped an average of 23 percent. The raw numbers suggest that the rich are recovering nicely from the recession, and the foreclosures at the bottom and middle ends are working their way through the system.

Healthy and wealthy but high in suicides
ASPEN – Two restaurateurs, one aged 50 and the other 47, committed suicide in Aspen in recent months. Their deaths drew attention once again to the abnormally high suicide rate in Aspen and Pitkin County. The irony is that the county also consistently ranks among the highest in the nation for fitness and income, notes the Aspen Daily News.

More mountain towns weigh bag ban
JACKSON, Wyo. – To the list of mountain towns considering bans on plastic bags add Jackson, Wyo.

Greg Miles, a town councilor in Jackson, has urged adoption of a measure, still unspecified, to persuade shoppers at the town’s grocery and convenience stores to use reusable bags.

“As a community trying to be sustainable in so many ways, it’s high time we really start this conversation in earnest,” said Miles, according to a report in the Jackson Hole News&Guide.

The newspaper notes efforts have been under way through the last three years to publicize the issue of plastic bags. Most end up in landfills. The local Albertsons grocery store estimates it distributes 10,000 to 12,000 plastic bags per week.

The Jackson Town Council will likely be splintered when it takes up the issue in 2012. Mayor Mark Barron calls plastic bags “horrendous” but objects to imposing a municipal mandate.

Earlier this year, Telluride banned plastic bags and imposed a 10-cent tax on paper bags at the town’s two grocery stores and one hardware store. Mark DeMist, general manger of Clark’s Market, said 75 percent of customers now bring in their own bags and few tourists this past summer objected.

The catalyst for concern about plastic bags is the swirl of plastic fragments trapped by ocean currents in the North Pacific. By some estimates, this Pacific Trash Vortex, as it is sometimes called, is twice the size of Texas.

Taking stock of what he has learned about weather since taking a high school science class in 1940, former filmmaker Warren Miller speculates that the plastic in the Pacific has altered the jet stream. This change, he writes in a column published in the Vail Daily, could explain the tornadoes, ice storms and floods in the Eastern United States.

Ketchum to adopt green building rules
KETCHUM, Idaho – Ketchum officials last year decided they wanted to follow the path of other local governments and adopt mechanisms that will yield new buildings that are more energy efficient and environmentally friendly. Now, after some months of deliberation, a blueprint has been delivered.

Rebecca Bundy, a planner, says the proposed ordinance would create a “cultural shift” in the way the community views building design and construction. She emphasized that builders and architects will have flexibility in how they improve their buildings.

The Idaho Mountain Express reports that the ordinance being envisioned would adopt the National Green Building Standard.

Idaho valley seeing new housing needs
KETCHUM, Idaho – A new affordable housing-needs assessment finds that Ketchum, Sun Valley and surrounding areas of Blaine County need 480 additional units. That compares with a 2006 estimate of 1,200.

The new study also finds that more rental housing is now needed as compared to before. It also notes that the Hispanic population doubled from 2000 - 11.

The Idaho Mountain Express also reports agreement that some lower-income housing built in the past decade has lacked good management and had a “ghetto-style.”

Hardware store rebuilds after rampage
GRANBY – More than seven years after a bulldozer operator destroyed their store and a half-dozen buildings in a day-long reign of terror in Granby, the owners of a Gambles hardware store are preparing to rebuild.

“The crazy thing is that I liked Marv,” said Casey Farrell, in an interview with the Sky-Hi News.

He was referring to Marvin Heemeyer, who became incensed when the Town Board – which included Farrell at the time – approved of a batch plant across the street from his muffler shop. Vowing revenge, Heemeyer clandestinely armored a Komatsu bulldozer, creating a cocoon around the cockpit to make him impervious to bullets, and set out on a sunny, spring morning to wreak havoc.

Heemeyer succeeded. He first rammed the bulldozer into the house of the mayor, then tore out the Town Hall and library, eventually pushing into the front of the newspaper office as the editor, Patrick Brower, ran out the back door. Nobody died, but it wasn’t necessarily that Heemeyer intended it that way. He even took shots at propane tanks, but was unable to penetrate them.

Finally, he came to the Gamble’s. He plowed into it, but after hours of destruction, the heavily-weighted bulldozer was finally overheating. Heemeyer then shot himself.

After that, Farrell and his wife, Ronda, set up their Gambles store in a business plaza.

As for Brower, now retired from the newspaper business, he has completed work on a book that he calls Killdozer.

Monarch Mountain hopes to expand a bit
SALIDA – Monarch Mountain, small but successful in recent years, hopes to keep growing bit by bit. The Forest Service has accepted a plan that calls for a new chair lift in ski terrain on the back side of the mountain, plus additional parking, an expanded base lodge and other adjustments as needed to push the annual skier days to 200,000. The resort has been logging 175,000, says the Mountain Mail.

Ridgway hydroelectric plans churns ahead
RIDGWAY – Plans continue to install hydroelectric equipment at the Ridgway Dam. Half the electricity produced would be created between June and September, officials from a water district tell the Telluride Daily Planet.

Among those parties interested in buying the hydroelectric component is the City of Aspen. Aspen, in the 1980s, similarly paid for installation of a hydroelectric component into a local dam at Ruedi Reservoir. Ridgway town officials pointed out that while the installation cost a lot of money then, it should be producing electricity for almost no money for the next half-century, maybe longer.

Aspen, meanwhile, continues to work on another hydroelectric plant within the town, harnessing Castle and Maroon creeks. As envisioned, it would expand the carbon-free component of the city utility’s electrical supply from the current 75 percent to 83 percent.

While 72 percent of voters in 2007 approved a $5 million bond issue to pay for the hydro plant, opposition has grown. New studies by outside groups claim that the project will lose money for many years under the best of situations. City officials stoutly reject that contention, but concede that the estimated price of the project has increased.

After seven hours of talk on the subject, the City Council on Monday night voted unanimously to move forward. It’s not a final decision, however, and it depends upon getting a permit from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The soonest that electricity could be produced is 2014.

Aspen considers zipline, slide offerings
ASPEN – Like most other ski-area operators, Aspen Skiing Co. is considering how to best use its new authority from the federal government to generate additional nonskiing income.

“We think that enhanced activities like ziplines, for example, through the forest canopy would be a really wonderful addition,” said David Perry, senior vice president for the company. “It’s low impact. It would get people to appreciate the national forest for its beauty and its diversity and the ecosystem.”

In an interview with The Aspen Times, Perry also said that the company will consider an alpine slide. Although environmentalists have been wary of such amusements, Perry points out that it uses gravity. “It’s not a motorized activity, and it’s people enjoying the outdoors in a family environment. So we think that’s probably OK.”
– Allen Best