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Aspen requires helmets of employees Aspen operates Aspen, Snowmass and two other ski areas. Intrawest operates Winter Park and owns Steamboat. This is the latest major pricing salvo since Winter Park fired the first shot across its bow in 1999. Emulating a resort in Idaho, it began discounting its season ski pass. Vail Resorts soon responded, creating various packages good at its four ski areas along Interstate 70 and a fifth, Arapahoe Basin. Vail’s most extensive offering, the Epic Local Pass, costs $519 and provides unlimited access to Breckenridge, Keystone and Arapahoe Basin, along with 10 restricted days at Vail or Beaver Creek. Projectile points found at the site have established that the site was used at about 13,000, as glaciers were receding. The oldest human habitation in the Americas has been established only to a little more than 14,000 years, although some archaeologists are convinced humans arrived several tens of thousands of years earlier. The Rocky Mountain Outlook reports that the divers found burnt bones, stone flakes and other evidence that pointed to human habitation 9,000 years ago. “These were prehistoric hunters that were adapted to hunting, primarily sheep,” said Bill Perry, an archaeologist with Parks Canada. But if the newspaper seemed to have little to report, it did suggest that plenty of people in Colorado are thinking hard about what it will take to put together a strong bid. Competition from Lake Tahoe and possibly Salt Lake City is likely, the newspaper said. The newspaper, however, made one keen observation: If Denver is to go for the games, it will have to figure out everything from the figure skating venue to media headquarters by next year. The newspaper reported it was unable to interview most people associated with the effort, but did get an impressive vote of confidence from former Gov. Dick Lamm. As a young legislator in 1972, Lamm had led a successful effort to ban state funding of the games. The backlash was partly a response to ineptitude on the part of Denver’s Olympic Organizing Committee. But since 1984, Olympic hosts no longer end up getting stuck with huge costs – and the situation in Denver has changed, too. “The circumstances have changed,” he told the newspaper. “I have confidence in these organizers.” A shrewd deal-maker, Blixseth rose from humble origins in Oregon’s timber country to billionaire status. Retired, he grew bored and found an even better deal in Montana. With two partners, he purchased 164,000 acres of land owned by a timber company in the Big Sky area. Splitting off portions, then achieving consolidated holdings through land exchanges with the U.S. Forest Service, he emerged with 15,000 acres of relatively cheap land that became the Yellowstone Club. Buyers included Bill Gates. Things began souring in 2006 when he and his wife, Edra, divorced, and he lost control of the club. It later went bankrupt. Blixseth told the Daily Chronicle that he has remarried and wakes up with a smile on his face every day. His father, he related, was an immigrant from Norway who had come here for the “American dream.” “My father’s American dream never came to fruition, I don’t think, but mine sure has,” he told the Chronicle. “I’m thankful I was born in America.” “I asked her because she’s awesome!” Parker McDonald told the Vail Daily. On her Facebook page, Vonn described her date as “cute, nervous and very polite.” She added: “All through school, growing up I never got the chance to go to a school dance, so I’m excited for tonight!” Vonn, who trained in Vail while in high school, had returned to her roots for a training session. The Associated Press reports that here and there, the snow remains through what was an uncommonly dry and warm September. At Arikaree Glacier, located on the Continental Divide between Granby and Boulder, a scientist found 2 to 3 feet of snow from last winter remaining as of late September. But against that gain must be countered with the shrinkage during the hot, dry summer of 2002, when the glacier lost 9 feet. |