Quake may have snuffed mastodons
DENVER – The reservoir site at Snowmass Village, not more than a quarter-mile from the ski slopes, might be viewed as a mass grave for mastodons. In paleontological digging that was under way for 18 fast-paced days a year ago, then resumed for six weeks in spring, scientists and volunteers turned up 41 species, many of them now extinct, including a bison that was half-again as big as bison of today, and a ground sloth the size of a grizzly bear.

But the most impressive bones belong to those of mastodons, a now-extinct elephant-like creature that stood 11 feet at the shoulder and had teeth adapted for nibbling on tree branches. Scientists uncovered bones of at least 30 individual mastodons. But how did the mastodons end up there?

Months ago, scientists began assembling a hypothesis: the mastodons were happily doing whatever they might in the ancient lake when suddenly an earthquake hit. The shaking liquefied the sediments in which the mastodons were standing, trapping them in quicksand from which the beasts were unable to escape.

The process can be seen as similar to the physical process that occurs in a snow avalanche. As snow cascades down a hillside, the friction of even light, fluffy powder produces heat that transmogrifies the snow into an icy concrete-cast that imprisons those within the snow. People buried to their necks have been literally unable to free themselves.

Slowly, according to this hypothesis, the mastodons starved, and once dead, their bones disarticulated. More earthquakes further interred the bones deep into the lake sediments – to be found more than 45,000 years later. Scientists are using various dating techniques to get a firm bead on the remains of the mastodon and other specimens. The remains are too old for radiocarbon dating.

How can the scientists prove or disprove their hypothesis? Kirk Johnson, chief curator at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, says one test will involve an examination of the tusks of the mastodons. Tusks are somewhat like tree rings, except far more detailed in their record of growth. They can leave also a daily record of growth – and seasons. In winter and spring, they commonly would have darker rings.

So, if all the adult mastodons who died did so in the same season, that might support the earthquake theory. Juveniles presumably would not have survived without food as long.

Johnson says it may take several years to assess all the evidence collected in the digging. Based on the quality of quantity of mastodon bones, plus the diversity of ages found in species, it’s the high-elevation Ice Age site in the world, says Johnson. Keep in mind that in the context of geological time, we’re technically in an Ice Age now. The time when the species ended up in the Snowmass lake was, he says, both warmer and colder than the times we have now.

Real estate market gets a bit stronger
JACKSON, Wyo. – The real estate market has continued to improve this year in Teton County. In their quarterly report, researchers Devon Viehman-Wheeldon and David Viehman tell of continued strong sale of distressed properties costing below $500,000 but also construction in the valley’s toniest neighborhoods.

“In the aftermath of 2009, real-estate watchers said the market was bouncing along a ‘soggy bottom.’ Recent activity points to improving conditions,” says the Jackson Hole News&Guide.

The newspaper talked with Ed Liebzeil, president and chief operating officer of Jackson Hole Sotheby’s International Realty. “The market is stronger than in 2010, stronger than 2009,” he said. “Buyers are looking for bargains. Sellers who have adjusted prices to reflect today’s market conditions are having some level of success in selling their properties.”

Donor pockets shallow for candidates
JACKSON, Wyo. – Sifting through reports of political donations, Jonathan Schechter finds lackluster giving as compared with 2008 and other presidential election years.

Writing in the Jackson Hole News&Guide, he concludes that maybe local donors – Teton County has among the highest per-capita incomes in the nation – find nothing that excites them.

“Local Democrats aren’t wild about President Obama, but have nowhere else to turn. Similarly, local Republicans aren’t wild about their choices, either. Even (Mitt) Romney has raised less local money to date than he did in 2008, and from fewer donors to boot.”

Schechter also notes that last year’s Supreme Court ruling allows big-ticket donors to political causes to be more shielded from public disclosure. “As a result, we’ll never know how much locals – or anyone else for that matter – are spending to support their favorite candidates and causes,” he says.

Mammoth holds out hope for visas
MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif. –Mammoth Mountain Ski Area is making another run at getting H2-B visas for 45 nonstudent foreign workers, mostly to work in the ski school.

None of this is particularly a surprise. With the unemployment rate edging above 9 percent, the U.S. government has been increasingly skeptical of claims that ski area jobs can’t be filled by U.S. citizens. Indeed, Mammoth has trimmed its hiring of foreign workers a great deal already, as it once had 200 employees under the program working in everything from housekeeping to ski grooming.
Pam Murphy, director of human resources, tells The Sheet that Mammoth will reapply to get visas for its employees, some of whom have worked seasonally at Mammoth for up to 15 years.

“We really believe in the program and believe in the benefit of what employees have brought, not only to the (ski) mountain, but to the community,” she said.

For whatever reason, Squaw Valley, another resort in California, this year again got H2-B visas for certain employees. Other ski areas, however, quit applying several years ago. Such is the case at Aspen, while Deer Valley and Vail stopped this year.

Nordic-Track inventor dies at 80
MONTROSE – Ed Pauls died recently, and although you probably never heard of him, you’re likely seen or even used his invention: the Nordic-Track.
In an obituary, the New York Times explains he was working as a mechanical engineer in Excelsior, Minn., in the early 1970s, when he got the idea. He was training for a cross-country ski race, running on roads around his house in the early evening. Slipping on ice, he imagined an indoor training machine that he could use to replicate the workout but without the risk of falling. At first, he had no intention of the contraption being used by others, and when he did, he initially called it the Nordic Jock.

Renamed and broadly marketed to people who had no direct experience cross-country skiing, his family sold 500,000 before selling the company. He died of Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 80 in Montrose, near Telluride, according to the Times.

Banff reintroduces native cutthroat
BANFF, Alberta – Non-native brook trout are to be removed from a creek in Banff National Park, to allow the reintroduction of westslope cutthroat trout. The cutthroat were extirpated from Cascade Creek following construction of a dam near the town of Banff in 1941.

Parks Canada says the dam reduced flows 99 percent in the creek, eliminating both the cutthroat and another native species, the bull trout.
If all goes as planned, reports the Rocky Mountain Outlook, the brook trout will be eliminated through electro-fishing during the next year. That task completed, genetically pure westslope cutthroat can be introduced.

Scottish troops trained in Canada
JASPER, Alberta – Much has been made of the 10th Mountain Division, which trained during world War II near what later became Vail. The troops went on to use their mountaineering and skiing skills in the Apennine Mountains of Italy.
But the Columbia Icefalls of Alberta were also a training site for soldiers preparing for mountainous combat. The Rocky Mountain Outlook, citing a book called Powder Pioneers, explains that 600 soldiers from Scotland arrived in late 1943 for training. They remained at the glaciers until March 1944, climbing a number of mountains, learning to ski, and otherwise preparing for an expected assault of German forces that then occupied Norway.

Instead, the Scots were shipped to Italy, where they fought alongside Canadian soldiers in the fierce effort to drive the German army from the peninsula.

– Allen Best