Expansion mania as resorts vie for skiers
TAOS, N.M. – Bigger and better. That’s the perennial quest of ski areas. It’s also a good marketing angle, near as good as having excellent snow.
Now, the Taos Ski Valley has a lot to talk about. The Taos News reports that the U.S. Forest Service has approved expansion of expert terrain at the resort by 60 percent.

Maybe this will improve business. Taos has had good snow two of the last three years. Four years ago, it dropped the ropes to snowboarders. But while skier visits increased, they weren’t as much as was hoped, said Gordon Briner, chief operating officer. “That’s why we think these improvements are important.”

A Forest Service official said the improvements are needed to allow Taos to compete with other ski areas in the Rocky Mountains.
“I am confident that, collectively, the projects approved will help Taos Ski Valley to reclaim its competitive standing in the Rocky Mountain Region,” said Diane Trujillo, acting supervisor of the Carson National Forest.

“Taos Ski Valley is unique in the ski industry, where it is renowned for steep, adventurous terrain and uncrowded slopes.”

Other expansions of ski area are also going forward on federal lands. Aspen Skiing Co. is expanding 250 acres at Snowmass, the busiest of its four resorts.

Vail Resorts, meanwhile, now has the authority to move forward with an even larger expansion of 550 acres at Breckenridge. Unlike Taos, which the Forest Service says has uncluttered slopes, the Forest Service justified the Breckenridge expansion because of how many people are already skiing there.

In a column published in The Denver Post, local resident Steve Lipsher finds the justification for the expansion wanting. “More mediocre skiing at a resort that already offers a ton of mediocre skiing,” he writes.

Lipsher says he’s skeptical the expansion will thin out crowds. That, he says, would require new lifts. Rather than spreading out the crowds, each new expansion attracts only more people, the result of the resort’s marketing efforts and the public’s constant desire for newer, bigger, better.

Using special events to put butts in beds
It’s the shoulder season, the time when ski towns attempt to put butts in beds with themed special events.

While Crested Butte hosted a somewhat conventional Chili and Beer Festival this past weekend, Aspen held its Mac ‘N’ Cheese Festival. Last year, the event’s first, drew 1,500 people. Some 4,000 were expected this year. It’s believed to be the only such festival in the country.

Some local restaurants in this high-end town last year were skeptical about a special event built around a pasta dish generally considered at the lower end of the food order. Not so Tico Starr, chef at Rustique Bistrow, who won first place last year. This year he ordered 65 pounds of pasta, 45 pounds of mushrooms, 50 pounds of gruyére cheese, six gallons of cream and three bottles of truffle oil. The mushrooms are to be soaked in herbs and garlic and lemon zest.

In Whistler, the city government has appropriated money for the long-tenured Writer’s Festival and a new event called Spirit Within Festival. The latter will focus on First Nations peoples who live near Whistler.

Pique Newsmagazine reports that Whistler tourism leaders are still trying to nail down plans for what is described as a signature fall festival that is intended to integrate arts and culture, sport and activity.

“Signature events have been shown to have the most impact on room night sales in the resort,” explained Michelle Comeau, the communications manager for the resort.

Mammoth bounces high during summer
MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif. – It’s not how low you drop, it’s how high you bounce. That expression comes to mind in California after the nearly snowless winter created an economic thud in Mammoth. December remained average but then the economic slide was precipitous.

But the summer has been very strong, as it has in almost all of the mountain resorts of the West. The Sheet reports the “Best Summer Ever,” as July sizzled to an all-time record for sales tax revenues after giant surges in May and June. Businesses reported 15 to 20 percent boosts in business, according to the paper.

Why the big success? A local marketing official credited stepped-up e-mail and social media campaigns. Maybe so, but everybody else is doing the same thing and, it would appear, with equal success. Could rising waters be lifting all boats?

Scientists study how drought kills trees
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. – From British Columbia to New Mexico, many forests have been struggling. No news there. Trees, like people, grow and die.

But the intense droughts of 2002 and again of this year, combined with generally warming temperatures, have only exacerbated the pine beetle epidemics and sudden decline of aspen trees, which compose a fifth of trees in Colorado.

Sam Pankratz, a forester with the State of Colorado, told the Crested Butte News that it took until 2008 to see the full impacts of the 2002 drought.
Pankratz told the News that stress on trees is inherent to the landscape. But assessing the overall health of the forest is better done over the long term, and not just looking at individual droughts, such as 2002 and 2012.

“As forest managers, we’re managing a forest that can sometimes live 400 years,” he said. “And while anecdotal evidence suggests a drier trend, it’s important to remember there are other factors at play, including 100 years of fire and disease suppression,” he said.

But his takeaway message is that over the long term, warmer temperatures and drier weather can add up.

That’s also the message in New Mexico, where a study is under way at Bandelier National Monument.

“Combine drought with warmer temperatures, and it’s no surprise trees are croaking,” notes the Santa Fe New Mexican. “But how fast do they die? Does it depend on the species? Will some species survive no matter what? What will be the impact of massive tree die-offs on the climate, agriculture, watersheds and people?”

A team from Los Alamos National Labs is mapping out the exact process by which a tree dies when stressed by lack of water and prolonged heat.
The big question is how much of this change is driven by human-caused global warming.

Nate G. McDowell, from Las Alamos Labs, says that’s not clear.

“Carbon dioxide is rising, and that’s a fact. Temperatures are rising, and that’s a fact. Third, the rising greenhouse gas levels do drive a large, large part of the temperature rise. The only people who debate these things are contrarians or people who have an ulterior motive,” he said.
“Now, are trees dying because of (rising carbon dioxide and temperature levels)? That’s what we can’t say for sure,” he told the New Mexican. “But, there are a bunch of lines of evidence suggesting that they are.”

He added: “I can’t say this with absolute certainty, but I don’t expect there to be conifers in Los Alamos or Santa Fe County in 50 years.”

Aspen girds for debate on micro-hydro
ASPEN – The debate is heating up in Aspen about whether to move forward with diversion of two local creeks into a small hydroelectric plant.

Electricity produced by the plant would allow the municipal utility, which provides power for half the town, to displace carbon from its portfolio.

 

Currently, according to city officials, 75 percent of their electricity comes from dams, wind turbines and other noncarbon sources. Putting the local hydroelectric sources on line would bump that figure to 83 percent.

But a group of residents and others interested in the issue of impacts to rivers and creeks have argued that the diversions would harm the local creeks. They have filed a lawsuit in an effort to block the plans.

The city has agreed to phase in production, only to the level allowed by a three-member board of experts.

The City Council has now agreed to put the issue before voters in November. An overwhelming proportion, 78 percent, had approved issuing of $5.4 million in bonds for the project at a vote in 2007.

Romney outpaces Obama in Aspen
ASPEN – If you go back far enough, you can probably find an election in which Aspen and Pitkin County gave a majority of votes to a Republican, but that’s not likely to be the case this November.

But make no mistake: Mitt Romney has raised more money there this year. The Aspen Daily News reports that local residents had given the Republican nominee $202,000, compared to $90,000 to the Obama campaign. Contributions to the Republican National Committee are also outpacing their Democratic counterparts, $275, 000 to $211,000.

The Daily News points to a fund-raiser in July that reportedly raised more than $2.5 million – not all of it, obviously, from local donors. The records do not yet reflect another fund-raiser in early August in which Romney returned to Aspen to say thank you to donors – and pass the hat again.
While Michelle Obama visited Aspen last year, the president has not.

In Vail, there’s a similar tilt to Romney, although the total dollar amount is much, much lower, as revealed by a search of the Center for Responsive Politics website. Neither presidential campaign has dispatched the candidates or their wives to Vail or Beaver Creek. Like Aspen, Vail has been voting Democratic in recent elections, but by much narrower margins.

Taking a bite out of the locavore movement
WHISTLER, B.C. – A strong correlation can be found between organic and other such foods and the more-educated and higher-income demographics commonly found in mountain resorts.

In Colorado, Whole Foods opened in August at Basalt. Another one is scheduled to open in Frisco. Glenwood Springs has a Vitamin Cottage, and Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage has stores in Steamboat and Durango. Steamboat Today notes that the chain’s business volume increased 16 percent in the last fiscal year.

The locavore movement is closely related to organics. Some argue for a diet based on food that can be produced from within 100 miles, a sharp contrast to the 1,500-mile radius of the average food product. Others go even further, arguing for entirely home-grown food— within 150 feet of your house.

But is eating local the great benefit that many believe? Whistler’s Pique Newsmagazine examined that question in great depth. “We’re satisfied that we’ve taken a principled stand, whether it’s picking berries, enjoying the slow food cycle or shopping at a farmers’ market,” says the paper. “But as appetizing as the local food movement looks, digesting the facts about it might give you heartburn.”

Consulting authorities from across North America, the story offers no firm conclusions. Perhaps the best summation is that agribusiness has very effectively created a food-delivery system capable of feeding the planet’s almost 7 billion residents. Total food production doubled between 1940 and 1990.

But Peter Ladner, a part-time Whistler resident, also points to a problem with using the free market to assign the true value of food. It does not take into account things like subsidies, soil erosion and other externalities. “The price doesn’t take into account all costs of production.”

One self-described soft-core locavore, Lisa Richardson, had set up a bicycle ride that now draws 4,000 people to taste local food in the Pemberton area near Whistler. She was moved to do that when she discovered that it was impossible to buy a locally produced potato, despite the many potato farms.

But local food is not the only answer. Rather, she sees the movement as being more of a backlash to the agribusiness world represented by super-sized grocery stores. “Food culture is so removed from us that people want to claim it,” she said.

– Allen Best