Nucla proposes gun in every house
NUCLA – In Southwestern Colorado, where white-capped mountains descend into red-rock canyons, the town trustees in Nucla this week are scheduled to take up a proposal to require every household to own a gun.

“I think we ought to do like that town in Georgia and do an ordinance that requires everybody in the town have a gun,” said Richard Craig, a town trustee, according to a Facebook posting in March.

“I think so too,” said the mayor, Dawna Morris.

Nucla is an hour west and 3,000 feet lower than Telluride. Philosophically and economically, they inhabit different planets.

Where Telluride can afford a private school and supports two newspapers, Nucla and nearby communities have been strapped since the uranium boom ended about a half-century ago. Even the prospect of a few jobs is front-page news in the current issue of the local San Miguel Basin Forum.

Nucla has been in the news before. Along with nearby Naturita, Nucla once attracted national attention for a prairie dog shooting festival, which drew the ire of animal rights activists. Townspeople were belligerently defiant, some even speculating about a “shoot a yuppie” festival, according to a New York Times story in 1990.

A more nuanced view of Nucla was presented in a New Yorker story by Peter Hessler. His story “Dr. Don,” profiled the local pharmacist, but it really was much more broadly about what it takes to make a small town work. David Brooks, a columnist for the New York Times, cited it as among the best magazine stories of 2011.

One memorable quote in that story, from a Nucla resident, is this: “I like to play chess. I moved to a small town, and nobody played chess there, but one guy challenged me to checkers. I always thought it was kind of a simple game, but I accepted. And he beat me nine or 10 games in a row. That’s sort of like living in a small town. It’s a simpler game, but it’s played to a higher level.”

But as regards gun control, ironies can be found in both Nucla and Telluride. Telluride recently hashed out the need for stronger gun controls. But there’s no place in town that sells guns and, for that matter, little evidence of guns altogether.

And why require guns of residents in Nucla when every household already seems to have one?  “The criminals know that we have guns,” explained Craig, the town trustee, in the Forum. “We have them anyway, but that’s beside the point. This makes it official that we have guns.”

Skiers conquer Grand Teton’s N. Face
JACKSON, Wyo. – Just looking at the photos of the North Face of the Grand Teton that were published in the Jackson Hole News&Guide is enough to make almost anyone queasy. It’s nearly vertical, a feat for only the most gifted climbers even in summer.

Now, it has been skied. The News&Guide reports that two mountaineering guides, Greg Collins and Brendan O’Neill, skied a route called the Direct North Face. Although unable to ski directly from the summit, they descended via crampons to ski a series of ledges. One of the ledges was only slightly wider than their skis and 2,000 feet above the highest point on the glacier below.

O’Neill, who has skied mountains around the world, said that the Direct North Face, while hard to compare with 7,000-meter mountains, is as “technical a ski descent as there probably is.”

Miller Resort, the story’s author, dryly noted that the two men had “found powder stashes nobody had skied before” in their March 31 feat.

Climber dies after fall into crevasse
LAKE LOUISE, Alberta – Experience helps, but some things are just flat-out more dangerous than others. That seems to be the story from Banff National Park, where a 32-year-old mountaineer died after falling 110 feet while descending a glacier north of Lake Louise.

The skier, who was from Calgary, and his two companions had roped up, as is common for travel across glaciers, but for their descent had chosen to go untethered. Visibility was good, and there were relatively few crevasses.

“It wasn’t unreasonable to travel in the conditions they were experiencing, in my opinion,” Banff public safety specialist Brian Webster told the Rocky Mountain Outlook.

“In this case, the crevasse was covered by a snow bridge, and there was no visible indication that there was a crevasse there,” he added. “It was just very unfortunate.”

Caribou crimp winter access in Jasper
JASPER, Alberta – Parks Canada proposes to close about 18 percent of Jasper National Park during winter months to backcountry users with the goal of helping improve the odds for the 71 caribou remaining. But at least one company in Jasper that offers guided access to those backcountry areas feels put off.

“Backcountry users are being vilified,” said Gilbert Wall, of Tonquin Valley Adventures. “There is a realization from me, particularly, that caribou are worth saving, but the conversation is dismal right now,” he told Jasper’s Fitzhugh newspaper. “It’s ‘people bad, caribou good,’” He said the proposed closings could be the last nail in the coffin for his business. He said the federal agency is continuously shortening his season and implementing new operation conditions that add costs.

The hypothesis behind the closures seems to be that backcountry users compact the snow, allowing predatory wolves to more easily gain proximity to caribou.

Layla Neufeld, a wildlife biologist with Park Canada, says the trail-aided predation is not the only threat to woodland caribou, but it must be addressed. “There are a lot of things that are important to caribou ecology, and we need to do everything at hits point, because the situation is quite desperate.” she said.

Tree data points to past megadrought
LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – Tree rings in the Colorado River Basin tell of a time from about 850 - 1150 A.D. that was much drier than the present. That dry period can also be found in the Lake Tahoe Basin, where retired professor John Kleppe at the University of Nevada, Reno, discovered 200-year-old trees rooted 120 feet below the surface of Fallen Leaf Lake. In a 2005 paper, he noted that all the submerged trees had died simultaneously.

“For these trees to be rooted below the surface of the lake, the lake must have been down at least 36.5 meters (120 feet) for over 200 years,” Kleppe said in the report. “This would indicate that a ‘megadrought’ had occurred, since several of these trees have been carbon-dated to have ‘drowned’ in 1215 A.D.”

Tree-ring data and other proxies of the past suggest the lower level of Fallen Leaf Lake lasted more than 220 years. Scientists estimate that precipitation was 60 percent of normal from the late 10th century to the early 13th century.

Kleppe told the Sierra Sun that the megadrought may have been caused by orbital and solar factors. He has documented a correlation between snowpacks at a site in the Lake Tahoe Basin and one near Mammoth Peak, northwest of Mammoth Lakes, Calif.

Although the cycle of megadroughts seems to occur every 650 to 1150 years and the last one was 750 years ago, it is uncertain when the next will occur, said Graham Kent, director of the Nevada Seismological Laboratory. “With climate change upon us, it will be interesting to see how carbon dioxide loading in the atmosphere will affect this cycle,” Kent said.

Jackson, Whitefish see record seasons
JACKSON, Wyo. – It was a good year for Jackson Hole, but also Montana’s Whitefish Mountain. Both set new skier visit records.

At Whitefish, snow was consistently good. That, along with a high magazine rating, helped push the resort to a new record for total skier visits, 11 percent ahead of last season, and a comparable increase in lodging.

Jackson Hole, meanwhile, rose above 500,000 skier days for the first time. Only 17 to 20 of the country’s 485 resorts hit that high mark, said Jerry Blann, president of Jackson Mountain Resort.

Easier access for travelers was a major reason, according to the Jackson Hole News&Guide. The local airport had 8 percent more seats this year, as compared with last winter, and 14 percent more passengers.

– Allen Best / mountaintownnews.net