Disabled ski champ didn’t dwell on past
BISHOP, Calif. – You think you had a bad day? Think about Jill Kinmont Boothe, whose early life you may have seen depicted in a movie, “The Other Side of the Mountain.”

One of her first loves, skier Dick “Mad Dog” Buek, died in a plane crash, and a second, Buddy Werner, died in a an avalanche. Steamboat’s Mt. Werner is named after him.

Then, the person who inspired her passion for academics at the University of California at Los Angeles, Lee Zadroga, died just a few years after she met him.

And, of course, there was the accident. She was a national ski champion and had been on the cover of Sports Illustrated – when, in the winter of 1955, a skiing accident left her a quadriplegic.

She didn’t spend much time looking over her shoulder. After moving to Seattle with her parents, she obtained her teaching credentials and got her first job as a teacher of remedial reading. Then, she returned to Bishop, where she had learned to ski, on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada about 30 miles from Mammoth, and taught from 1975 - 1996 while pursuing an avocation in art.

Dave McCoy, the legendary founder of Mammoth ski area, refused to answer the question put to him by The Sheet of whether she was the best skier he had ever coached. “I don’t think you should say things like that,” he replied. “She worked like crazy to make herself better. She didn’t want to beat anyone else particularly. She just wanted to better herself. She was that kind of person – every day she had to be better. And she helped other people be what they wanted to be.”

Kinmont died in February, a passing observed by the New York Times and a host of other publications. But the choicest quotes were most local. Her husband, John Boothe, who married Kinmont in 1976, told The Sheet that he never looked at her as disabled. “I didn’t look at it that way. She came off as normal in a minute.”

Snowmobiler, 18, season’s 24th fatality
MOAB, Utah – As unluck would have it, both the first and most recent fatal avalanches in the United States occurred in Utah this winter. The first was at Snowbird, when a snowboarder died from trauma suffered in an avalanche before the ski area was opened.

The most recent occurred Saturday, when an 18-year-old snowmobiler riding in the La Sal Mountains, near Moab, was caught in a slide that began about 1,000 feet above him.

The Utah Avalanche Center reports that the victim’s party had just one beacon, one probe, and two shovels. His companions dug where they believed he was buried, but after digging for 6 feet found nothing. By then, an hour and 45 minutes had elapsed.

Their meager tools were insufficient for the circumstances. It took much better probes – and plenty of digging by 50 volunteers – before the victim’s body was found about a day after he was buried. He was under 12 feet of snow.

The victim, who was still in high school, was the 24th victim this season of an avalanche in the United States as of Monday: 11 skiers, eight snowmobilers, four snowboarders and one on a snow bike. Colorado and Montana led in the death toll, with six each, followed by five in Utah and 4 in Washington. Four have died as a result of avalanches in Canada this year.

It’s a measure of how shaky the snow is that even in-bounds avalanches at ski areas have occurred. The Salt Lake Tribune reports that a slide caught one person on a run known as Blackjack, located on a west-facing slope that separates Snowbird and Uinta. Although avalanche control work had been done several hours before, the slough was enough to cause minor injuries to a 24-year-old man.

“It’s extremely rare to have a slide after avalanche control work has been done and after the slope has been well skied on all day,” Snowbird spokeswoman Emily Moench told the Tribune.

Rapidly-warming temperatures following weekend storms likely contributed to the avalanche, she told the newspaper.

Beacons get new life in South America
KETCHUM, Idaho – What to do with your old avalanche beacon? A group called the South American Beacon Project is collecting them for use by ski patrollers and other ski resort employees in the Andes.

The old beacons can be sent to the South American Beacon Project at 3434 East 7800 South, No. 263, Salt Lake City, UT 84121.

Among those collecting old beacons is Miles Canfield, a member of the Ketchum Fire Department. “I like knowing that a tool that was once valuable to me can be passed on to someone to appreciate it,” he told the Idaho Mountain Express. “When you have nothing, you are happy to have anything.”

Wolves too close to houses for comfort
JACKSON, Wyo. – Wolves have been somewhat commonplace in a subdivision on the edge of Jackson, just five minutes from town. To the dismay of some, federal wildlife officials expected to kill the animals.

The Jackson Hole News&Guide reports that one of the homeowners in the Indian Trails subdivision posted footage on YouTube of the wolves traveling within 30 feet of his home. James Peck told the newspaper that the wolves seemed to be using his property to travel from one space to another.

“They appeared to avoid humans,” he said. “They weren’t sniffing around the deck.”

Suzanne Stone, from the Defenders of Wildlife, said that hazing has succeeded in chasing wolves from residential areas near Ketchum, Idaho.
Hazing, which involves driving wolves away with helicopters and loud noises, such as firecrackers, rarely succeeds in such situations, said Mike Jimenez, the wolf manager of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He said his agency will use a helicopter and tranquilizer darts to track and capture three or four wolves that have been near homes.

Residents of the subdivisions where the wolves were seen say they don’t like to see the predators killed, but understand that Jimenez made the decision to err on the side of human safety.

“If the goal is the long-term recovery of wolves, then I think they need to avoid these kinds of public relations nightmares (such as) if a wolf jumps onto somebody’s porch and rips somebody’s dog to pieces,” Jimenez said.

Wildlife managers say that acceptable ecosystem niches for wolves are already occupied in the region, and hence there is no place to transplant the too-close-for-comfort wolves.

From Ketchum, meanwhile, comes a story about a wolf that did get into somebody’s driveway. But the emaciated wolf was suffering from parvovirus, an intestinal virus. Barely able to raise its head, it died in the driveway, reports the Idaho Mountain Express. The condition can also affect domestic dogs.

Aspenites protest inclusion in Chamber
ASPEN – The Aspen Chamber Resort Association is staying in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, despite protests of some locals.

“The very fact that we’re affiliated with them is embarrassing,” said David Perry, senior vice president for the Aspen Skiing Co. He said that 55 percent of the U.S Chamber’s budget comes from anonymous donors, and speculated that the money comes from the oil and gas industry.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has lobbied against legislation that seeks to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.
Membership in the national organization costs the local group $800 a year, reports the Aspen Daily News.


Linking of Utah ski areas advances a bit
PARK CITY, Utah – For decades, ski areas that straddle the Wasatch Range in Utah have mused about the potential to become linked. They’re relatively close together, with the resorts around Park City lying just a few miles east from Solitude, Snowbird and others.

Now a bill that would make that easier to acheive has passed a committee in the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill would allow the U.S. Forest Service to sell 30 acres of land deemed essential to allow this interconnection to occur.

While promoters last autumn proclaimed the idea had little opposition, significant doubts are now being voiced. Not only does a key environmental group object, but so does the mayor of Salt Lake City, which draws its water from the canyons. He argues that expanded ski area development along the Wasatch could degrade municipal water supplies.


Dog survives mountain lion attack
CANMORE, Alberta – A large cougar attacked a dog near downtown Canmore recently, just after midnight.

Police tell the Rocky Mountain Outlook that a man was walking his two dogs when a cougar emerged from the darkness and attacked the smaller, 35-pound dog he had on a leash. The man fought off the cougar, and the dog escaped with just a few scratches.

Last year, a cougar attacked a dog in the Banff-Canmore area, and another attacked a child.

Colorado counties weigh drilling rules
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS – It’s not all that far from the ski slopes to the drilling rigs in Colorado. In Aspen, Crested Butte and other communities, discussions are under way about how county governments should regulate unsavory aspects of natural gas drilling.

Routt County, where Steamboat Springs is located, already has 43 active wells, and 10 more permits were issued last year, reports the Steamboat Pilot & Today.

The core issue is the adequacy of oversight, according to Rodger Steen, co-chairman of the Community Alliance of the Yampa Valley’s Oil and Gas Committee.

“It’s like your police force,” he says. “The more people you have, the better your compliance is going to be.”

By all accounts, Colorado has too few inspectors to look over the shoulder of all the drilling operations.

A second issue is whether local governments should be able to impose regulations that go beyond those of the state. Gov. John Hickenlooper has said he thinks the state should have the ultimate say. Colorado has 64 separate counties, and that’s too many potentially varied regulations, he says.

But Gunnison County, where Crested Butte is located, asserted its right to oversee drilling within its jurisdiction, which includes several coal mines near Paonia.

Barbara Green, a land-use attorney who represented Gunnison County, said a judgment handed down in January shows counties have the right for a louder voice in the regulation of oil and gas exploration.

On the other hand, no county has the authority to ban oil and gas operations completely, and their power to regulate the industry is derived from their land-use codes.

What is not yet clear is whether counties can ban oil and gas operations from certain zoning classifications. Or should state law trump local regulations?

A representative of one drilling company, SG Interests, tells the Pilot & Today that the state needs to define the regulatory line. “If it doesn’t, there’s going to be more and more litigation, which doesn’t answer the question,” said Robbie Guinn, vice president of the Houston-based company.

– Allen Best