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A ski town, yes, but also a bicycle town
ASPEN – Aspen on Sunday afternoon was buzzing. CNN founder Ted Turner had been in town over the weekend, as had civil rights organizer Jesse Jackson and gas-and-oil entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens, all of them to speak at a festival called American Renewable Energy Days. The musician Taj Mahal performed at Paepcke Park.
ASPEN – Aspen on Sunday afternoon was buzzing. CNN founder Ted Turner had been in town over the weekend, as had civil rights organizer Jesse Jackson and gas-and-oil entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens, all of them to speak at a festival called American Renewable Energy Days. The musician Taj Mahal performed at Paepcke Park.
But the commotion on Main Street had almost entirely to do with sweat, not intellectual heavy lifting. The USA Pro Challenge launched from Aspen on Monday with a three-lap, 66-mile race between Aspen and Snowmass Village. Booths set up in the park sold Fat Tire beer and the assorted paraphernalia that professional bicycling enthusiasts would want to buy. Around town, bicycle riders were thick.
Aspen may be a ski town, and a talk town, too. But it has definitely become a bicycle town. The Denver Post picked up on this in its report Tuesday from Aspen. The newspaper cited anecdotal evidence, including the proliferation of businesses that directly support bicycling.
As a result of the race, more avocational bicycle riders are now making a point of testing themselves on nearby 12,095-foot Independence Pass just east of town. “Independence has always been a proving ground for local and Colorado riders,” said the Post. “Now it’s internationally renowned, thanks to the Pro Challenge.”
Now in its third year, the race has invaluable funding from a part-time resident of Aspen and assurances that the race will always have some Aspen connection, even if other legs of the race hit and miss other ski towns. The only other consistent stop, so far, has been Breckenridge. Riders set out from Aspen on Tuesday morning on that 126-mile journey, which includes two passes at or above timberline.
Bill Tomcich, president of Stay Aspen Snowmass, the valley’s chief reservations agency, said the event has proven to be more than a flash in a pan. Evidence is in the bookings. As the Aspen Music Festival wound down over the weekend, nearly all rooms in Aspen and Snowmass were booked.
“We were close to sell-out on Friday and Saturday, but to see it on Sunday and Monday was impressive,” he told Mountain Town News.
In an ironic twist, the Denver Post notes that spectators at Monday’s race included Lance Armstrong, a part-time resident of Aspen. “Just another spectator watching with his girlfriend,” noted the Post.
As for security – there are ripples from the bombing at the Boston Marathon – The Aspen Times reports that the hundreds of volunteers in Aspen were required to undertake new training that includes how to recognize suspicious packages or people and how to report those suspicions.
The training is designed to help volunteers be “vigilant but not over-reactive,” said Blair Weyer, public information officer for the Aspen Police Department.
Mtn. bike museum moves to California
CRESTED BUTTE – The Mountain Bike Hall of Fame and Museum is departing Crested Butte for the more populated and well-heeled setting of California’s Marin County.
Both places claim to be the birthplace of mountain biking, but in different ways.
Fairfax (a town in Marin County to which the museum is being moved) is the true birthplace of the sport, says Don Cook, co-director of the Hall of Fame.
However, klunkers were being used in Crested Butte at the same time for commuting around its pot-hole streets. In Marin, the sport aspect was a real focus. From there it grew into what is now known as mountain biking. Crested Butte was quick to pick it up, and the history exploded there after about ’76 with the Pearl Pass tour.
To the Crested Butte News, Cook further summarized the chronology as this: “They had the technology and we had the terrain.”
By why move to California? Because Marin County wants it. It offered space and support for staffing. In Crested Butte, the museum seemed to be operated on a shoe string. Founded in the mid-1980s, its contents even went into storage for a few years.
Plus, Marin County is just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco and the Bay Area’s 7.1 million residents. Crested Butte is four hours from Denver and the Front Range of about 4 million.
Keeping truckers off of Teton Pass
JACKSON, Wyo. – In 1975, an entertaining ballad about an out-of-control truck carrying a load of chickens descending Colorado’s Wolf Creek Pass into the town of Pagosa Springs hit No. 4 on the country music charts. The musician, C.W. McCall, later served for six years as mayor of Ouray, which sits at the bottom of Red Mountain Pass, another grip-your-handles crossing of the San Juan Mountains.
Well, Teton Pass is second to neither. The proof is in the number of truckers that have lost control, capsizing their 18-wheelers while descending the 8,431-foot pass.
Far lower in elevation than most crossings in Colorado, it is second to none of them in steepness. Sustained grades of 10 percent are found on both sides. Vail Pass and the western side of the Eisenhower Tunnel are steep, too, with steady grades of 7 percent. Wolf Creek runs about 7 percent. But Teton has them all beat.
Truckers should know better, but if they read the conspicuous signs, they ignore them. Crossing the pass into Jackson Hole saves considerable time over the longer but safer routes. Year after year, trucks have screamed down the pass, occasionally overturning in Wilson, the hamlet located at the foot of the pass.
At last, the Wyoming Department of Transportation has an idea for discouraging truckers. The Wyoming Department of Transportation plans to install scales under the highway. Those weighing more than 60,000 pounds, the posted limit, will be alerted to turn around via overhead electronic signs. At the same time, state highway patrollers will be notified and the license plates of offending trucks will be photographed.
Wyoming is also installing a second device designed to reduce deaths of truckers, reports the Jackson Hole News&Guide. A system of nets will be erected to catch trucks that roll from the highway onto steep, adjacent slopes.
One such network of nets, called an arrestor, is also in place in Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains, near the town of Buffalo.
Bears go over instead of under highway
BANFF, Alberta – A new report from Banff National Park finds that wildlife crossings over the Trans-Canada Highway are being used by grizzly and black bears. About 20 percent of local grizzlies have used the crossings during the last three years.
The Trans-Canada between the eastern entrance to Banff and the border with Yoho National Park has six overpasses and 38 underpasses designed to allow bears, moose, wolves and other wildlife to come and go without being threatened by traffic. The four-lane highway carries about 18,000 vehicles a day.
The crossings, supplemented by fences alongside the highway, were installed beginning in the 1980s and with several new overpasses in recent years. Parks Canada estimates roadkill has been reduced 80 percent.
But if keeping critters off highways was the only challenge, it could be done with just fences. The harder question to address is the value of the expensive overpasses and underpasses.
To get a firmer handle on how the crossing structures were being used, researchers in 2006 strung strands of barbed wire at 420 sites across the wildlife overpasses. The barbs snag bits of fur, which can be analyzed for DNA. Some 497 trees used by bears were similarly outfitted.
The research documented that 15 grizzlies and 17 black bears used wildlife crossing structures to access habitat on both sides of the highway.
What’s more, the study found that 90 percent of the time the bears used the overpasses, and not the culverts or underpasses.
“You can put in underpasses cheaper, but this data means you can justify putting in overpasses,” said Mike Sawaya, co-author of the study.
Tony Clevenger, a wildlife biologist based in Canmore, Alberta, has been monitoring the wildlife overpasses for the last decade. “We knew that the bears used the crossings. We just didn’t know how many.”
He also noted that there is clear evidence that bears are learning how to use the structures.
Another report, from the same body of research, will be issued this fall. It will document the gene flow between bear populations in Banff.
Even in thin towns, girths are gaining
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS – The Steamboat Pilot & Today proclaims Routt County as the “skinniest county in the skinniest state.”
Strictly speaking, that’s not entirely correct. In fact, it has the lowest obesity rate in Colorado, which has the lowest obesity rate in the United States.
As for children – no, not so much. LiveWell Northwest Colorado has found that children have been growing obese by 1 percent per year since 2009. During that time the obesity rate for children has grown from 16.4 percent to 19.4 percent. That’s not skinny and it’s not healthy.
That is in line with the surging obesity rate for children in Colorado. For children, unlike adults, Colorado is 23rd in the nation.
What’s happening? LiveWell Northwest Colorado presents the argument that while Steamboat Springs and Routt County are affluent places, higher-than-average food costs can create a budget crunch for some local families. “In a nutshell, healthy foods are available but not affordable for all residents,” says the newspaper, echoing the LiveWell analysis.
Big Sky lays claim to 2nd most acreage
BIG SKY, Mont. – At first there was Big Sky, the resort between West Yellowstone and Bozeman started by former newsman Chet Huntley in 1973. Then, many years later, came the very private, very high-end Yellowstone Club. Followed by Moonlight Basin and the real estate development called Spanish Peaks.
And now, after bankruptcies and acquisitions, it has become one big ski area. By the simple metric of acres, it’s in the same league as Whistler/Blackcomb and Vail.
The latest piece of this consolidation was announced last week when Boston-based CrossHarbor Capital Partners and Big Sky Resort operator Boyne Resorts announced the joint acquisition of Moonlight Basin. The ski area adjacent to Big Sky had previously been operated by Lehman Brothers, which owned it as the result of a 2012 bankruptcy sale.
The combined ski areas have more than 5,700 skiable acres. Vail has 5,289 acres. Whistler-Blackcomb claims 8,171 acres.
In business volume, however, Big Sky isn’t in the same league. Last winter, it set a record with 370,000 skier days. Whistler Blackcomb runs more than 2 million, and Vail’s record is 1.75 million.
Hardscrabble times on the Colorado River
BOULDER – In due course, the Colorado River goes past Las Vegas on its way, at least in theory, to the Pacific Ocean. But it originates in Rocky Mountain National Park, flowing through Grand Lake, picking up additional water from tributaries that go through Winter Park, Vail, Telluride and other ski towns.
Fully half of the Colorado River’s water comes from Colorado, with lesser amounts from other states before the river is stopped at Glen Canyon Dam to create the reservoir most people call Lake Powell.
Now comes the news that because of the drought that has continued more years than not since 1999, less water will be released from Powell downstream to Las Vegas, Arizona and California. Also as a result, less electricity can be produced at Hoover Dam.
This was not surprising news. Water experts for some years have spoke with increasing alarm about the razor-thin margin between supplies and demands in the Colorado River Basin.
As is, water hasn’t reached the Pacific Ocean with regularity since the 1960s – and not at all since the late 1990s.
Bull’s eye for this story is Las Vegas. A century ago, it wasn’t much more than a railroad depot in a place that annually gets only 4 inches of precipitation. Mafia dons and gambling and giant hotels all came later. When the Colorado River Compact was drawn up in 1922, only 700,000 acre-feet out of what the compact framers optimistically estimated were an annual 16 million acre-feet of flows were allocated to Nevada. California could see its future needs, and Colorado presciently saw the need for a compact before California slurped up all the water. But nobody foresaw The Strip.
Pat Mulroy looks after the water interests for The Strip and all of Clark County. The county, which includes Henderson, a decade ago surpassed Manhattan in population. This was about the time that she and others decided it was not wise to depend upon a Lake Mead brimming with water. Or any water, for that matter.
With that in mind, Mulroy’s Southern Nevada Water Authority began boring a new tunnel to the reservoir, its third. This newest one will come up from deeper, burrowing into the bed of the lingering Colorado River, just in case the reservoir ceases to exist. Cost of tunneling has now reached a projected $820 million.
Meanwhile, in her many talks through the West, Mulroy has hammered away at the same message: cooperation and not conflict, sharing instead of fighting, innovation and the future – and the great challenge of climate change.
“We need to find the language that the public can understand. If we talk about winners and losers, the public will talk about winners and losers,” she said at a recent water conference sponsored by the University of Colorado's Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy and the Environment.
“The last conversation we need is who is on first, who is in charge,” she added.
Mulroy called for more innovative partnerships, such as her organization forged with Arizona, to store more water in wet years for use in tight times.
“Some day it will snow again in Colorado. One day it will snow again in New Mexico,” she said.
Just what part of this drought and increased temperatures is natural and what part is a result of human-caused greenhouse effect, scientists cannot say with precision. Tree rings document decades-long droughts in the Colorado River Basin a millennium ago similar to the one now under way. But while climate models haven’t figured out how increased greenhouse gases will affect precipitation, they are clear about rising temperatures – which are almost certain to exact much higher tributes of water for everything from corn fields north of Denver to residential lawns in Salt Lake City to fountains in Las Vegas. All depend on the Colorado River in some way.
Mulroy long ago accepted the science of climate change. “It’s time to stop the religious discussion about climate change,” she said.
She also called for greater federal involvement in drought planning and mitigation in advance of climate change. “We have an interesting attitude in this country,” she said. “We think we only have to pay once the destruction has occurred.”
“Barton “Buzz” Thompson, a professor at Stanford University, said that the evidence about effects of greenhouse gases has strengthened – and the outcome is likely to produce more weather extremes. This will require planning for solutions that “are not really within our range of experience,” he said.
He called for consideration of higher rates for water, greater development of technology to expand conservation and recycling, but also more serious thought about limiting population growth in the Southwest.
Thompson also noted the need to increase costs for consuming water even while asking people to conserve. That, observed Mulroy, is a “very, very difficult conversation to have” with water customers.
Bear’s top snack is Diggity Sauce
TELLURIDE – In the dark of the early morning hours, just after closing time, a black bear was found breaking and entering a food cart on the main street in Telluride. The business, Diggity Dogs, sells hot dogs, but the owner of the food cart said the strongest enticement seemed to be Diggity Sauce. The Telluride Daily Planet says the bear was unavailable for comment.
The case did reveal an irony. While it’s strictly against the law to leave food out in trash cans and in other ways that tempt bears, no such laws addressed food carts. Even so, this was the first raid on the Diggity Dogs cart.
Tahoe clarity returning, but so are tall buildings
LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – The famed clarity that provoked the admiration of a young Mark Twain in Roughing It, the book recounting his youthful adventures, has been returning.
In the late 1960s, a white disk the size of a dinner plate could be seen to a depth of 102 feet. But, by 1997, when former President Bill Clinton and Vice Al Gore met at the lake with various senators and other leaders, the clarity had declined to 64 feet. Now, the lake’s clarity has increased by 11 feet.
What’s responsible? So far, $1.7 billion has been spent. Some of the measures have included sweeping roads, virtually vacuuming them, to keep sediment from sullying the pristine waters.
Gore, returning to a summit at Incline Village, Nev., on the north shores of the giant lake, commended the progress – but also pointed to future problems. Already scientists have documented warming temperatures in Lake Tahoe, more rapid snowmelt during spring, and a greater conversion of snow to rain.
“A single degree in temperature," he said, “is the different between rain and snow.”
The Tahoe Daily Tribune, which covered the event, said that Gore pointed to the cooperation that has resulted in progress at Lake Tahoe as being a model for taking action in dealing with the greenhouse effect.
But the Daily Tribune also reports deep disagreements about the progress. A coalition that includes the Sierra Club, Friends of Tahoe Vista and other conservation groups disagree with what would be permitted under the plan adopted last December by the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency.
The plan, said a member of the Friends of the Western Shore, “will bring radical change to Tahoe’s look and feel, with new tall buildings, intense urban development, and increased traffic and congestion around the lake.”
Skiing under lights a go at Steamboat
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, – Night-skiing is a go at the Steamboat Ski Areas this coming winter. The Steamboat Today reports that the city council approved night lighting on five trails.
In its night offering, to begin with three nights per week, Steamboat joins Keystone, but also Howelsen Hill, the small ski area in downtown Steamboat.
While Howelsen Hill doesn't get all that much traffic for its under-the-lights skiing, representatives from Intrawest, operator of the larger ski area in Steamboat, represented night skiing as an economic agent.
Part of the argument for the night skiing is that $35 million has been invested in hotels and public infrastructure at the base in recent years, and this will help make better use of those investments.
Christo explains controversy is also art
SNOWMASS VILLAGE – Oh the heartburn! The horror! The artist Christo plans to drape silver fabric over steel cables for sections of 6 miles in the Arkansas River Canyon. To many, this is the dumbest of dumb ideas, sure to be the ruin of the canyon between Salida and Cañon City.
Christo takes it all in stride. It’s part of the process, he said at a recent talk at a design conference in Snowmass Village, part of what will make it art.
“Anyone who thinks about the project, good or bad, is part of the work of art,” he said. “It’s irrelevant whether they like it or dislike it – they are affected by the work.”
Christo and his late wife, Jean-Claude, did many similar landscape art projects around the world. One of them was also in Colorado, the draping of fabric over Rifle Gap, which is about an hour-and-a-half west of Aspen and Vail. That was in 1973.
The Aspen Daily News explains that around 1992, he and Jean-Claude began planning “Over the River.” They investigated 90 American rivers, including the Salmon in Idaho, the Wind River in Wyoming, and the Poudre in Colorado.
In the Arkansas, they have a river running from west to east, so that fabric panels suspended over the water would appear rosy in the morning, platinum in the midday sun and golden in the evening. The panels will be opaque to drivers on Highway 50, above and to the side, and transparent to rafters below.
Christo now has permission from the various levels of government, but two lawsuits filed by a group called Rags Over the Arkansas River have yet to be resolved.
The slow movement of this process is not unusual. Winning approval to install “The Gates” in New York City’s Central Park took 26 years.
“I'm not a masochist. This is how works of art develop,” he said.
Rules change more easily than a house
WHISTLER, B.C. – Sometimes it’s easier to ask forgiveness than for permission. That adage seems to apply to a case in Whistler, which has strict rules regarding how large a house can be.
It turns out the municipal rules aren’t all that strict, or at least not obeyed all that much. Pique Newsmagazine says that hundreds, if not thousands, of homes in Whistler have some form of habitable space that was illegally created.
But an 11,300-square-foot house probably has more illegal space than most. It has 3,500 square feet of space that never showed up in municipal permits. Included is an underground tunnel, weight room, office, massage room, den plus an extra master bedroom. This illegal space is located underneath a legal swimming pool.
With little debate, says the newspaper, the council members brought the property into compliance by changing the property setbacks, thereby legitimizing the illegal space. At least one neighbor seemed to think the councilors did themselves no honor with this legal sleight of hand.
Grizzly polishes off black bear in Banff
BANFF, Alberta – It’s a bear-eat-bear world, and only the strong survive. The Rocky Mountain Outlook reports that a 100-pound black bear was killed and eaten by a grizzly bear in Banff National Park. The same grizzly had also killed a black bear last year, but Parks Canada biologists think this happens more often than is documented.
This was a relatively easy meal for the grizzly identified as Bear 122. “He’s an extremely large grizzly weighing between 500 and 600 pounds, versus a 100-pound black bear,” said Steve Michel, Parks Canada biologist. “It’s probably not a difficult meal.”
Bears eat berries and what not, but they are opportunistic feeders. They will kill elk and moose, for example, and occasionally cubs of their own species.
Other species also exhibit similar traits. Wolves often eat their cousins, the coyotes.
All in all, it sounds like it’s not easy being a black bear in Banff National Park these days. The Outlook also reports of several other black bears killed on either the Trans-Canada Highway or on the Icefields Parkway to Jasper.
Most of sheep-eating wolf pack killed
VICTOR, Idaho – Federal officials have killed 13 wolves from a pack blamed in the death of nearly 200 sheep that were grazing on national forest land in the mountains south of Idaho’s Teton Valley. The wolves had sometimes ventured to Teton Pass, the western entrance to Jackson Hole, reports the Jackson Hole News&Guide.
While wolves had killed some sheep directly, they also panicked the flock, resulting in the downhill-running sheep to trample and smother 165 of their own. The herder for the flock also reported seeing another dozen sheep killed by the wolves.
Loss of the 57 ewes and 119 lambs was placed at $20,000 by the owner, the Siddoway Sheep Co.
Stan Boyd, executive director of the Idaho Woolgrowers Association, said deathly stampedes provoked by predators aren’t uncommon. “It’s the first time I’ve heard of wolves causing it,” he told the newspaper. “Every two, three, four years it’ll happen from black bears.”
While livestock grazers see the answer to predation being management of predators, the Western Watersheds Project sees the world from completely the opposite direction. “The problem is not the wolves, but subsidized domestic sheep grazing,” said Travis Bruner, the group’s public
lands director. He said it costs one cent per day for each animal for grazing privileges on the national forest.
– Allen Best, more Mountain Town News can be found at http://mountaintownnews.net