Crested Butte is bigger and better
CRESTED BUTTE – All ski resorts like to brag about being bigger and better. Crested Butte has figured out a way to puff up its size by nearly 25 percent without even moving a boundary rope.

The Crested Butte News reports that personnel at the ski area “found” another 380 acres of terrain within the gladed areas of the ski boundary.
“We realized we weren’t counting some of our skiable terrain,” explained John Sale, director of planning. “It is terrain all of us have skied for years … but was never included in our acreage.”

The resort will now report it has 1,547 acres of skiable terrain, which the resort believes might entice some visitors who shop for skiing vacations based purely on size.

Tornado second highest in the U.S.
IDAHO SPRINGS – Tornadoes usually bring places like Kansas and Alabama to mind. But they can occur in the mountains, and meteorologists say a funnel touched down at 11,900 feet on a mountain west of Denver on Saturday.

The tornado on Mount Evans was the second highest ever recorded in the United States, reports The Denver Post. The highest was in 2004, at more than 12,000 feet in California’s Sequoia National Park, south of Mammoth Lakes.

Drain no place for oils, grease and fat
BANFF, Alberta – Grease, fats and oils are fouling Banff’s wastewater treatment. It is, reports the Rocky Mountain Outlook, an expensive proposition for both the municipality of 8,200 people and for businesses who contribute the bulk of the wastes and then suffer the consequences of sewer lines blocked by giant grease balls.

Municipal officials say restaurants and other businesses need to understand how to properly use and maintain grease traps and interceptors. Store it, don’t pour it, they say.

When a stumble is not just a stumble
JACKSON, Wyo. – We often talk about stumbles in life. In most cases, they are just that, a lurch in our mission. But in Wyoming’s Teton Range, a stumble can be deadly.

 

Authorities in Teton National Park guess that Justin Beldin, 27, stumbled shortly after leaving the summit of Middle Teton. “My best guess it that this was a relatively innocent moment of inattention,” said Scott Guenther, the coincident commander.

The victim, described by friends as a “hell of a righteous dude,” tried to stop himself on steep rock for 5 to 20 feet before free-falling for “quite a ways,” Guenther told the Jackson Hole News& Guide.
Meanwhile, a family of climbers summited the Great Teton, and the 6-year-old among them became the youngest ever to stand atop the 13,776-foot peak. He is one of three pre-adolescent children in the family to summit.

Delivering messages to the richest of rich
SUN VALLEY, Idaho –This year, Idaho followers of the Occupy Wall Street movement added spice to the annual Allen & Co. meeting of media businesses, politicians and celebrities.

The conference has hatched all sorts of big business deals. Whether hallway conversations will yield news in future months is too soon to know, of course. But there was the usual stew of household names: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Newark Mayor Cory Booker.

TV talking head George Stephanopolous talked, and Oprah Winfrey interviewed billionaire investor Warren Buffet. Also attending were Google chairman Eric Schmidt and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft.

Greeting them, after a fashion, were representatives of the Occupy movement, positioned along the public roads with signs bearing pointed messages. “Size does matter. Too big has failed,” read the message of protester Alex Neirwith.

“I can’t speak for anyone but myself,” he said when asked by the Idaho Mountain Express what Occupy protestors hoped to accomplish. “I wanted to make a statement against the increasingly disgusting income inequality in the country. I wanted to communicate to the one-hundredth of 1 percent that business as usual is over.”

The Idaho Mountain Express, however, notes a certain irony. To organize the protest, Occupy Boise had used the technology invented by one of the 0.01 percent attendees: Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook.

Group business surges at resorts
PARK CITY, Utah – Group business is returning. Tourism officials in Park City report from 2010-11, the number of visitors attached with groups at the resort grew from 36,000 to 61,000. This year, an even greater surge is under way. Inquiries in the first half of the year were double those of the same period last year, the Park City Chamber/Bureau reports.

Sales agents for hotels tell The Park Record that the market has swiveled. Before, planners would commit as little as two months before an event. Now, in that constant teeter-totter between supply and demand, it’s becoming a seller’s market.

Debbie Batt, from the Park City Marriott, tells the newspaper that her hotel likes to balance group business with leisure travelers, each getting 50 percent of their books. Without group business, it’s virtually impossible to hit 100 percent occupancy, she says.
 
Aurora shootings ripple in Aspen
ASPEN –John Denver lived in Aspen, of course, and his funeral was held in Aurora, because that’s where his mother lived. Other than they’re both cities in Colorado, Aspen and Aurora would seem to otherwise have little in common.

Just the same, the massacre of 12 people in a movie theater loomed large in Aspen. Security at the Isis, the local movie theater, was heightened for a week, as patrons were required to open their bags and purses for inspection, reports the Aspen Daily News.

Elsewhere, the Aurora shootings came up in conversations at yet another of the talk-fests that now loom so prominently on the summer schedule of festivals in Aspen. Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum, a former national security official said that stopping the next James Holmes, the accused shooter in Aurora, would likely entail violating civil liberties.

Admiral Dennis Blair, the former director of National Intelligence, an advisory agency in the U.S. government, said government intervention has effectively prevented large-scale attacks, such as those by Al-Qaeda. To prevent the sort of mass shootings as have occurred in recent years would require a higher level of surveillance and would require government agencies to share more information, he went on.

“The cost in civil liberties and privacy that we would have to pay to get our intelligence to that level would (be high),” Blair said.

The Daily News says another speaker identified the best way to deal with the threat of home-grown gun violence would be to better train first responders in how to identify potential threats. While there are 12,000 FBI agents, there are 2 million first responders, pointed out Matthew Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

Tourism plants seeds for higher-pay jobs
VAIL – Tourism doesn’t deliver many well-paying jobs. But tourism can provide the seed that does deliver a pot of money.

That was among the points made by Richard Wobbekind, executive director of a program within the business school at the University of Colorado. Wobbekind was on a panel held in Vail convened to talk about international business.

Wobbekind said higher-paying jobs are essential to building the economies in relatively expensive places, such as Vail. Health and wellness do create those jobs, and those higher-paying jobs often start with a tourist’s visit, he said.

Another speaker at the forum covered by the Vail Daily said that 80 percent of all businesses that relocate to Colorado come because someone associated with those companies came here on vacation. That’s why the state needs to continue its tourism marketing efforts, said Richard Scharf, chief executive of Visit Denver.

Colorado is pinning some hopes on new direct flights from Tokyo and Reykjavik, Iceland. While the population of Iceland itself is small, it provides a more direct link to cities of Europe.

Wildfire threat ebbs, but rivers still shallow
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS – Wildfires in Colorado, so much in the news during a searing hot and bone-dry June, have receded as a threat. At the center of the drought, Steamboat Springs received almost double its average rainfall for July, reports the Steamboat Today.

Despite the rains, river flows remain modest. To help boost supplies, city officials in Steamboat instituted mandatory conservation measures. Outdoor lawn watering was banned altogether on Wednesdays and during mid-day. Remaining watering is allowed only every other day.

Snowmass hesitant about plastic-bag ban
SNOWMASS VILLAGE – Elected officials in Snowmass Village are approaching the idea of banning plastic shopping bags with far more caution than their counterparts in the nearby towns of Aspen, Basalt and Carbondale.

The Aspen Daily News reports that the Town Council in Snowmass is looking to put an advisory question on the November ballot. They want to know whether voters think the ban should also include all retail outlets, and not just the town’s lone grocery store, and whether a 20 cent fee should be levied on plastic or paper bags, or both.

There’s some heartburn in response to the council’s cautious approach. One council member described the council’s majority approach as “disingenuous.” Another council member said that the cost is not the point.

Visitors buying food may feel they’re being “fined” because they don’t know about a ban on plastic bags ahead of time. “Why don’t we ban dog-poop bags,” he said. “They’re also a one-time use. I’m concerned where this is taking us.”

Ashley Cantrell, the senior environmental health specialist in Aspen, told the council that the ban sharply increased use of reusable bags. Before, an estimated 30 percent of shoppers used them, and now 80 to 90 percent do.

The bans enacted by the governing bodies in Aspen and Carbondale stand, but voters in Basalt overturned their town council’s action.

Hotels encouraged to invest in efficiency
ASPEN – In 2005, Aspen municipal officials announced the Canary Initiative, an effort to quell the town’s own complicity in accumulating greenhouse gases while using the community’s prominence to advocate for broad solutions to the problem.

The first goal has been a slog, a matter of small steps. The latest effort is a contest among lodges in the town to improve their energy efficiency. “Most energy saved per square foot,” is one category. “Most energy saved per dollar spent,” is another.

Five hotels have signed on, competing to earn the prizes of $2,500 and $3,000 while consulting with local energy efficiency experts.

Aspen Square, for example, invested $900,000 in new, high-efficiency LED lighting. Warren Klug, the general manager, told The Aspen Daily News that he expects the investment can be recouped within three years in terms of lower energy costs.

But hotel managers are not willing to swallow all up-front costs. Aspen Square considered installing solar thermal, but Klug said the investment would take too long to recoup.

Even the Aspen Skiing Co., widely noted for its advocacy on climate change, has a limit on how much money it will invest in energy efficiency. It is willing to spend $10,000 to improve controls on the boilers, with a seven-year payback. But it will not replace the boilers, which are only 80 percent efficient.

One problem in the past has been historic preservation regulations which limit alterations of exteriors, including upgrading to double-pane windows. But Chris Brendon, the city’s community development director, said significant advances in technology have made energy efficiency more compatible with historic preservation.

Among the hotels planning to participate is Hotel Durant, which came to life in the mid-1960s – and hasn’t changed much. Brian Schaefer, the general manager, told the newspaper he hopes to learn the options in energy efficiency in planning a renovation.

Delivering lower-cost lodging is problematic
ASPEN – Despite the massive construction in Aspen during the last decade, the amount of lodging available to the general public has slipped.
From 2009, the overall bed base declined 0.5 percent, according to a study commissioned by city officials. The sub-sector of condominiums, which includes fractional-ownership units, dropped 4.5 percent. The only gain was in the number of homes available for rent. But they mostly are in the category of deluxe accommodations.

City officials would like to see more lower-priced lodging options. The Aspen Skiing Co. concurs but is dubious about the financial bookends.
“It’s hard to do economically because of cost of construction and price of land,” explained David Corbin, vice president for planning. “That said, we like the idea of having entry-level products so that a younger generation of skiers, not yet affluent, could come and enjoy Aspen and begin to make it their lifelong destination. We support that but acknowledge that it’s difficult to do.”

The ski company does see a niche for properties, such as its Limelight Lodge, that have limited service, relatively low numbers of employees compared to super-high-service hotels, and moderate prices but with pleasant and upgraded rooms.

“Aspen could use more of those kinds of beds,” said Corbin. “There is a lot of guest demand for that. It doesn’t have to be five-star.”

The company hopes to see another study, to better understand what type of new properties would be a best fit for the community.

Aspen has 10,085 visitor beds, compared to 8,772 in Snowmass, according to the study done by Mountain Travel Research Program.

 

– Allen Best