The time when we all lived lives of gods
Need light? Turn it on. There’s the switch. Running out of gas? Find a service station. Chilly? Turn up the thermostat.

Most people take this vast infrastructure based on the cheap, available fossil fuels for granted. The late Randy Udall didn’t. Udall, who died in June while backpacking in Wyoming’s Wind River Range, told his many listeners through the years that we live in exceptional times.

“We’re living like gods right now,” he would say in his lectures, which he delivered to dozens, perhaps hundreds of audiences in Colorado and beyond.

In sometimes laugh-out-loud ways, he would then demonstrate how remarkable modern times are because of the abundance of fossil fuels and their liberal use. In one, a nude Lance Armstrong bicycled, his legs in rapid motion, to produce the energy needed to light a light bulb.

In another, he had us imagining 60 oarsmen rowing furiously on the Nile River to give the empress Cleopatra a pleasant repast. It was the energy equivalent to six horses, which is now manifested in an ordinary lawnmower.

Then, he would show a woman unloading groceries from a sport-utility vehicle, with six times more power at her fingertips than existed anywhere on the planet just 200 years ago. Even soccer moms, he would say, live exceptional lives.

“In an energy sense, we’re not living like royalty,” he said. “We’re not living like Cleopatra. We’re living like gods.”

Udall didn’t think this could continue. Even if oil and gas supplies meet the expanding needs of a world population sprinting toward 9 billion at mid-century, we couldn’t afford to burn them as we have during the last half-century. The dangers of greenhouse gases are too great.

More imminently, though, he saw a civilization pressing down on the gas pedal to go 90 mph even as the tank neared empty.

The revolution in drilling technology has taken the wind out of the sales of this peak-oil argument. With advanced fracking techniques, seismology and horizontal drilling, gas and oil found in microscopic pockets of shale can be extracted. With new production in North Dakota, Montana and Texas, the United States is now poised to surpass Saudi Arabia in oil production. And instead of importing natural gas, the big talk is now of exports.

It’s phenomenal, but while Udall acknowledged the technological prowess and extolled the new generation of fossil fuel explorers, he didn’t back down. “The pore throats in shale are 20,000 times smaller than a human hair. On these rocks, we’ve bet our energy future,” he said.

We need to shift our energy foundation to renewable resources, he believed, and toward more broadly distributed sources, not just big coal or even big wind farms.

In the Wood River Valley of Idaho, that same discussion is going on. Writing in Ketchum’s Idaho Mountain Express, Kiki Tidwell, a clean tech angel investor, makes the case for greater investment in local generation.

Idaho Power, the utility serving the area, has announced it may need to start rolling brownouts and blackouts unless new transmission is created to import more power. A substantial amount of power comes from hydroelectric generation, but drought has made that less reliable. A new transmission line likely means additional electricity produced by coal plants in Montana or Oregon.

Tidwell offers a different vision: “The cities of Ketchum and Sun Valley can take the same $14 million (the local component for the transmission) and accomplish a lot more toward energy security through distributed generation (including solar) and battery storage.”

At Telluride, there’s also talk about increased distributed generation. In Mountain Village, the town council recently entertained a proposal to levy a 2 percent fee on electricity bills. The fee would generate $137,000 per year, with the money going to various projects intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But a majority of councilors rejected the idea. Mayor Dan Jansen said that electricity costs are projected to rise 5 to 7 percent next year. “That’s starting to add up to a significant amount for some people,” he said.

Jansen holds the view that greenhouse gas reduction is best formulated in concert with other local governments. He thinks some money can be set aside for reduction projects next year. Among the ideas is the purchase of more solar panels at an installation in Paradox Valley, 80 miles to the west.

In Aspen, town officials in 2008 set out to explore the idea of whether the heat of the earth can be tapped to produce heat for buildings. The idea was premised on the fact that miners of the 19th century had noticed that some mines had more heat than others.

But an exploratory well that reached 1,500 feet revealed temperatures of just 90 degrees. That’s the lowest temperature for which a geothermal heating utility might be worthwhile. And to generate electricity, temperatures would have to be closer to 180 degrees.

More analysis will be required during coming months.

Sex and drugs and Widespread Panic
DRIGGS, Idaho – When Widespread Panic played at Grand Targhee Resort in early June, the entire concert venue filled with 10,000 people smelling of marijuana.

Local police had a dog trained to detect drugs, but she never left the patrol car.

“There’s really no point,” said detective Chad Sashse. “She’d be turning circles no matter where she went.”

What do you do if you’re a cop in such a place? The Jackson Hole News&Guide says that police – 15 from Wyoming’s Teton County and the U.S. Forest Service – were assigned to keep order.

“They knew from the start they were only going to catch the unruly, the unlucky and the unobservant,” says the newspaper.

Those who blazed blatantly in front of the cops got slapped. At the end of the night, just 11 people had been arrested and 22 more had been issued citations. The cops also confiscated three tanks of nitrous oxide.

Among those with slapped hands was a father-son combination. The 21-year old had a joint in his pocket. The father, 54, admitted to doing a “few grams” of psilocybin mushrooms. A few more grams were found in his pocket.

“Your mother is going to be so pissed,” the father said to his less-amused son.

“To be honest, I’ve been doing this shit since 1974,” he said. “Sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll, right?”

Crested Butte moves toward arts center
MT. CRESTED BUTTE – The dollar trees are starting to shake loose in Mt. Crested Butte. There, local boosters want to create a performing arts center comparable to what the big destination resorts like Beaver Creek, Jackson and Aspen have.

They are trying to raise $23 million. So far, the effort has produced $15 million.

The center, if it gets built, will bear the name the Biery-Witt Performing Arts Center at Mt. Crested Butte. The names come from the president of the organization and a board member.

The organization had said it would take $1.5 million to name the performance hall, but officials tell the Crested Butte News that details of the donation are still being worked out. For the time being, the staff is calling the donation a “generous gift to secure the naming rights.”

Bears keep distance, but it’s chow time
TELLURIDE – There’s a saying in the ski industry that good snow can make lots of people look like geniuses. In other words, it’s mostly about what nature bestows, not the cleverness of humans.

And so it may be with bears, which during the last 20 years have increasingly become a problem in ski towns. The bruins wander in, filching from birdfeeders, trash cans and sometimes brazenly breaking into cars and homes.

So far this year, bears have been conspicuously absent in Crested Butte. Police chiefs there credit people and businesses with being careful to not provide any tempting food for bears.

“We haven’t had to write a ticket for a wildlife infraction yet this summer,” said Tom Martin, the chief marshal in Crested Butte.

But something else is going on, which they acknowledge: natural food sources – primarily berries and nuts – have been good this year.

But 150 miles away in Telluride, bears are creating some wariness. The Daily Planet reports that both houses and vehicles have been broken into, trashcans upended, and one bear ripped off a house’s siding at 1:30 in the morning.

“The whole house started shaking and there was this bear outside,” explained a resident. The bear apparently smelled something in the pantry.
More rattling and shaking is expected as summer merges into fall and bears start loading up with 20,000 calories per day before hibernation.

One town, 2 places for skiing at night
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS – Steamboat Springs is one of the few towns in Colorado with night alpine skiing. Howelsen Hill, a town-owned ski area, has had skiing under the lights since at least the mid-’70s.

Now, the big ski area, Steamboat, wants to have lighted skiing until 9:30 p.m. on several trails. While some residents appear concerned about the lighting, Doug Allen, the resort’s vice president of mountain operations, said lighting for night skiing has become sophisticated. Ultra-Tech has been chosen to implement the lighting, if the town government approves.

The Steamboat Pilot says that Howelsen historically has not attracted large crowds at night, and the Steamboat ski area similarly expects no large influx.

Never-ending quest to find elusive sasquatch
KETCHUM, Idaho – A university professor from Idaho was in Ketchum recently to talk about bigfoot, otherwise known as sasquatch, the mythical beast thought by some to inhabit forests of the Pacific Northwest and perhaps other regions.

Jeffrey Meldrum, from Idaho State University, told the Idaho Mountain Express that advances in film and other technology mean he can go back and dissect previous evidence in the goal determining whether the mythic beast exists.

Meanwhile, The Falcon Project intends to use a drone to conduct flyovers in regions thought to be inhabited by bigfoot in order to gather more conclusive evidence.

Meldrum was in Ketchum and Sun Valley to drum up believers and pass the hat.

Canmore seeks to curb flood threat
CANMORE, Alberta – In an effort to control its own destiny, Canmore’s municipal council has approved $600,000 to study what happened during the floods of June and create a plan for mitigating future rainfalls.

In June, during torrential rainfalls in Alberta, Cougar Creek flooded. Damage was relatively minor, but the surge of water threatened to tear dozens of houses from their moorings.

This isn’t the first time the hydrology of Cougar Creek has been studied. In 2008, a report recommended $6.5 million in mitigation. But neither the provincial government nor CP Rail, which has a bridge that constricts flows, contributed.

The Rocky Mountain Outlook reports that several elected officials wanted to see more robust participation this time around, but Councilor Joanna McCallum said it was not time to lollygag. “It won’t happen on its own,” she said.

Mathias Jakob, the town’s project manager, said the problem is solvable, but the outcome depends on the entire process.

– Allen Best