X Games stays course following death
ASPEN – With the death of snowmobile stunt competitor Caleb Moore, the focus has intensified on the X Games. This is the first fatality in the 18 years of the event, the last 12 of them in Aspen, but the obvious question is whether there is too much X in the X Games.

The Aspen Daily News polled public officials and sponsors, including the Aspen Skiing Co., but found little overt support for taming the competition.

“When the world’s best compete at the highest level in any sport, risks remain,” said Katie Moses-Swope, a spokeswoman for ESPN, which produces the annual event.

Michael Kaplan, chief executive of Aspen Skiing Co., also noted inherent risks. “The X Games participants are elite athletes who are aware of the risks and undergo rigorous training and preparation to mitigate those risks, but they cannot be totally eliminated,” he said in a prepared statement.

And Adam Frisch, a city councilman in Aspen, which also provided funding for the X Games, says he has seen no evidence of incompetence. “It seems what they do is crazy, but I’m unsure, statistically, if it’s worse than anything else that goes on in other sports,” he said. “This is just a sad day for the sport of snowmobiling, the community and the X Games.”

But Michael Owsley, a commissioner in Pitkin County, which helps put on the event through sponsorship of transportation, said X Games and ESPN should “seriously examine whether or not they can have an X Games without putting people at risk.”

Joe up front, maryjane in back
WHISTLER, B.C. – Ross Rebagliati won the men’s snowboarding gold medal at the Nagano Olympics in 1988, but was almost stripped of the title after minute traces of marijuana turned up in a drug test.

Now, he aims to be associated with marijuana in more than just a small way. He proposes to open two coffee shops in Whistler, with the expectation that medical marijuana dispensaries will be added to back rooms when it becomes legal in Canada to do so.

“My name is already synonymous with this,” he tells Pique Newsmagazine. It has been 15 years since I’ve been known for it. Other people are still concerned with having their names associated with (marijuana). I don’t have that luxury,” he said.

“I’ve tried to maintain my perfect Canadian status and my perfect gold medalist reputation, and it is just not flying. I cannot shake the association, so now that I’m 41 and have a family to care about, I realized it would be irresponsible for me not to play the hand I’ve been dealt.”

His business is to be called Ross’s Gold Coffee Shop, and he hopes to make it a nationwide chain, similar to Tim Horton’s, the restaurant chain.
Health Canada, the federal agency, has different ideas. Although the federal agency wants to shift distribution of medical marijuana into the private sector, it doesn’t necessarily see the joe-joint model as its vision of the future.

Aspen caters to graying demographic
ASPEN – At least 23 percent of permanent residents of Aspen and Pitkin County are 60 and older, which makes it distinctly gray – and an obvious place for study of geriatric medicine.

The Aspen Times reports that a $1.5 million endowment has been given to help launch programs aimed at serving senior citizens in Aspen and the Roaring Fork Valley.

A symposium was held with talks labeled “Cognitive Impairment: Facts and Fiction,” and “Depression: What to Look For.”
Sponsors promised more entertaining talks than the labels suggested.

Park City yanks bid as X Games venue
PARK CITY, Utah – ESPN has one fewer dance partner for its Winter X Games. Park City has withdrawn its bid, citing timing and financial requirements.

A representative of the local chamber estimated the cost of hosting the event at $5 million to $10 million, if split among the three local ski mountains, plus thousands of free hotel rooms for athletes, staffers and sponsors during the event and the preparations.

The event is currently held in Aspen in late January, but that date is off-limits to Park City because the resort already has its busiest event of the year then: the Sundance Film Festival. “April was identified as the alternative, but that would have required preparations be diverted during March, also an extremely busy time. And what benefits would accrue during April, a time when many people have shifted their interests away from snow and on to other sports.”

In the end, representatives of the chamber, the three ski mountains, the town government and the lodging industry all agreed that the prize wasn’t worth chasing. That leaves Aspen still bidding to continue as the North American host for the Winter X Games when its current contract expires after 2014, along with Lake Tahoe, Quebec City and Le Massif de Charlevoix in Canada.

Snowbird rides above brown cloud
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – In late January, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that “eye-smarting, lung-scarring smog” has enveloped the Salt Lake Valley for a large part of the winter.

Now Snowbird is offering discounted lift tickets on bad-air days.

“Although you can’t see it from the valley, the skies are blue and the sun is shining at Snowbird during most inversions,” said Dave Fields, Snowbird vice president of resort operations, in announcing the $20 discount off the normal $84 all-day ticket.

In January, a group called Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment released a letter signed by more than 100 doctors. They called for large pollution sources, such as the Kennecott smelter, to be shut down on days when temperature inversions trap smog in the valley. They also want fares for public transportation to be waived on those days and highway speeds reduced to 55 mph.

Ski areas face big demographic uphill
WHISTLER, B.C. – If Whistler Blackcomb and 19 other ski areas in British Columbia can expect to enjoy an extra bounce of business this coming weekend, the ski areas in both Canada and the United States face a more difficult and long-standing challenge.

The easy growth in skier days ended when Baby Boomers came of age, and succeeding generations just haven’t developed the same intense lust and loyalty for the sport.

In British Columbia, Feb. 11 is now Family Day, creating a three-day weekend that should expand business for the ski areas. But Bob Barnett, publisher of Pique Newsmagazine, points out that ski trade organizations in both Canada and the United States have long recognized a fundamental demographic problem.

“Simply put, as Baby Boomers – a generation that helped build the industry into what it is today – continue to age, they will begin dropping out of the sport at an alarming rate,” says the Denver-based National Ski Areas Association.

“Without an industry-wide effort focused on attracting newer, younger participants and converting them into loyal skiers and riders, ski areas could face dramatic declines in visitation in the not-so distant future.”

Trade groups in Canada and the United States have set a goal of converting 25 percent of first-timers into long-term participants. They both have a long way to go. The current rate in the United States is 16.7 percent, while the rate in Canada is 18.4 percent. More discouraging, both countries have been trying to inch up the rate for a good long time now, with little success.

Says the NSAA: “The intangible psychology of ‘conversion’ and the ‘golden hour’ between trial and conversion must be more effectively addressed.”

Ex-Whitefish resident Nabors weds
WHITEFISH, Mont. – Jim Nabors, the actor who played Gomer Pyle in the ’60s sit-com “The Andy Griffith Show,” has married his long-time companion. He met his partner, a firefighter in Honolulu, in 1974, and they have been together now for 38 years. Nabors split his time between Whitefish and Honolulu for many years, but now lives in Hawaii exclusively. They got married in Seattle, however, as Washington state recently legalized gay marriage.

Consequences of killing oil pipelines
CANMORE, Alberta – The “bitumen bubble” that provided Alberta with its booming economy and low taxes is leaking air. Because bitumen is more expensive to process, experts tell the Rocky Mountain Outlook, it fares poorly against higher quality oil, including that which is being produced in North Dakota’s Bakken shale.

“We enjoy the lowest taxes in Canada because of oil,” said Ron Casey, an elected legislative representative. “There’s still a huge advantage here, but we’re going to have to reassess and re-evaluate and look at how we do business.”

Efforts to expand export of bitumen through new pipelines, including Enbridge’s Northgate pipelines to British Columbia and the Keystone XL across the United States, have been slowed by concerns about environmental impacts.

“The real worry for Alberta is that by all estimations this is looking to be more permanent,” said Todd Hirsch, a senior economist with ATB Financial.

He told the Outlook that even if the pipelines were a sure bet, they will take years to get built and operating.

Resorting to transportation of oil by rail would be potentially more dangerous. “If the environmentalists block Keystone and northern Gateway, it might be what they call a pyrrhic victory because if more of this is going by rail, then you’re going to see a lot more avalanches, train derailments and tanker spilling,” he said. “It’s way more prone to accidents than pipelines.”

Three lions slayed after pets attacked
PARK CITY, Utah – Three mountain lions were captured and killed after pets were attacked in Park City. One of the pets was found dead, and the other injured. Wildlife authorities tell The Park Record that mountain lions frequent areas where deer spend winter months, and pets sometimes are also attacked.
– Allen Best