Crested Butte plans to charge skinners
BRECKENRIDGE – Really, does anybody in a ski town need to be told what “skinning up” means? Maybe 20 or 25 years ago, just when the popularity of free-heel skiing was taking off.
BRECKENRIDGE – Really, does anybody in a ski town need to be told what “skinning up” means? Maybe 20 or 25 years ago, just when the popularity of free-heel skiing was taking off.
But now, virtually all ski areas in early morning, and some at night, have a ton of people marching up the mountain, most with skins and a few on snowshoes, out to get in a work out.
At Crested Butte, there are so many people marching uphill that the resort operator wants to charge them. Ethan Mueller, general manager of Crested Butte Mountain Resort, says that 550 uphillers have picked up free passes that allow them to use the company’s trails. In getting the pass, they also agree to abide by the rules.
The ski company now plans to charge non-pass holders $75 annually or $5 per day for the privilege, reports the Crested Butte News. Pass-holders would not be charged extra.
“We don’t anticipate making any money as a result but we feel people take it more seriously if they pay something for the access,” said Mueller. He added that it’s a “numbers situation,” meaning that “when there are hundreds of people skinning uphill, that’s not something we can just ignore.”
The resort must get approval from the Forest Service to impose new rules.
The News also reports that Crested Butte will make a route available to uphill skiers during the day, when uphilling was previously banned.
In Breckenridge, uphillers were also in the news. Ski area employees say uphillers fail to clean up after their dogs or keep them in control.
“I have witnessed dogs chasing skiers, snowmobiles and snowcats,” Breckenridge ski patrol director Kevin Ahern said. “This is an accident waiting to happen. As an avid skinner myself, I would hate to restrict our policy any more or lose the privilege all together.”
The ski resort’s uphill-access policy requires all dogs to be on a leash or under voice command at all times, notes the Summit Daily News.
Salt Lake’s loss, Park City’s gain
PARK CITY, Utah – Park City is an anomaly among ski towns, with the possible exception of Canmore and Banff, which are just 45 minutes from Calgary. While snuggled in the mountains, many of Park City’s residents commute daily to the Salt Lake Valley, just 30 minutes away.
They’re so close, separated by the thin but high cordillera of the Wasatch Range, but so different, especially from November to February. During mid-winter, the Salt Lake Valley often congeals in a thick soup of tiny pollutants of size 2.5 microns or smaller, called PM 2.5 by experts. The soot, one-30th the width of a human hair, is a combination of particles from combustion, fumes and other chemical pollutants.
The Environmental Protection Agency in December issued a new standard, citing “hundreds of studies” that have linked the tiny particulates to an estimated 40,000 deaths in the United States from heart attack, strokes and other illnesses.
The Salt Lake Tribune explains that Salt Lake City is among the most polluted areas in the nation at times between November - February because of inversion, high-pressure systems creating a seal over the valley.
This year, an inversion began in late December, continuing into last week. It had been predicted a month before, explains The Park Record, based on weather in the Pacific Ocean. While air in Salt Lake turned murky, however, that in the mountain environs of Park City remained clear.
Privatization of hot springs debated
JASPER, Alberta – In an effort to reduce subsidies needed to operate its hot springs at Banff, Jasper and Radium, Parks Canada plans to privatize their operations. But the Public Service Alliance of Canada, one of the country’s largest unions, is fighting the privatization effort, calling it a “reckless cut” to public services.
A representative of Parks Canada reassured Jasper’s Fitzhugh that privatization will be nothing of the sort.
“Shifting their operation to the private sector will provide greater capacity and flexibility to respond to the demands of the tourism market and will maximize opportunities for enhancing the facilities, operations and marketing,” said Alisson Ogle, public relations and communications representative for Parks Canada.
She also said that the hot springs would not be sold. “No individual or corporate entity can buy ownership of land in national parks,” she said.
The Kyoto deadline came and went
JASPER, Alberta – The Kyoto Protocol adopted in 1998 by many nations, including Canada (but not the United States), has now come to its first milestone. The deadline set in the agreement called for significant reductions of greenhouse gases by 2012.
While the official carbon accounting has not been done in most cases, it was clear enough years ago that most of the nations that did sign it wouldn’t come even close. Canada, for its part, withdrew from the agreement in December.
“Whenever targets are placed out of reach and are not applied to all those involved (including China and India), the result is frustration,” says the Jasper Fitzhugh. “It should not be surprising that Canada opted out of the treaty.”
“Unfortunately, we still have a large problem. Climate change looms over us all and will have a lasting negative effect on future generations. How do we balance the need to feed our families and pay our bills with the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?”
Who’s at fault for deaths of 2 skiers?
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS – Two deaths, both on ski slopes, were the subject of court filings and testimony in Colorado last week. The fundamental issue in both cases is whether the victims should have known better before they skied into closed areas – or whether the ski area provided sufficient warning.
Taft Conlin was 13 last January when, after one of the winter’s rare storms, he and buddies skied onto the lower portion of Prime Cornice, one of the steeper runs at Vail. The run had been closed at the top, but Tate side-stepped up about 120 feet, bypassing the closure. He died of blunt-force trauma when an avalanche ran 400 feet, throwing him into a tree.
Vail Resorts claims that the youngster was entirely or mostly to blame in his own death, reports the Vail Daily. Lawyers representing the victim’s parents claim the company created an “avalanche trap.”
“They seem to be asserting that there’s an unwritten rule against climbing,” Jim Heckbert, attorney for the parents, told the Daily.
In Steamboat, snow was plentiful all winter long two years ago, when 19-year-old Cooper Larsh got off a Poma lift at the city-owned Howelsen Hill and turned to his left. There were no out-of-bounds signs, but trail maps indicate the ski area is closed above the Alpine Slide, which operates only in summer. He lost control, flew 6 feet through the air and landed headfirst in the snow. He suffocated.
The Steamboat Pilot & Today explains that the city claims immunity under a state law. The exception is if there was a “dangerous condition” in public facilities. Whether that dangerous condition existed was the subject of two days of testimony, with a ruling yet to be determined. If there was, the case against the city government can then be pursued under Colorado’s Skier Safety Act.
Reading the judicial tea leaves at Tahoe
LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – Both sides involved in proposed real estate expansion of the Homewood Mountain Resort claimed victory after a U.S. District Court judge issued a ruling in early January.
San Francisco-based JRA Ventures wants authority to build a five-star hotel at the base of the ski area, one of Tahoe’s older-style resorts. Total development has been calculated at $500 million.
The Sierra Sun reports that Judge William B. Shubb agreed with Earthjustice, the legal arm of the Sierra Club, that two local jurisdictions, Placer County and the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, had improperly failed to analyze whether the company could have proposed a smaller project, while still making money. However, the judge dismissed most of the other contentions of Earthjustice.
To the environmental camp, this represented a victory. To the developer and the regional regulatory agency, it showed they did most everything right, with nothing that can’t now be fixed.
When should the lost be billed for rescues?
JACKSON, Wyo. – The state representative from Jackson Hole in the Wyoming Legislature has introduced a bill that would allow county governments to charge search and rescue victims.
Jim Whalen, the sheriff of Teton County, told the Jackson Hole News&Guide that, if granted the authority, he would use it sparingly.
“We don’t want people to wait until the 11th hour to call because they’re worried about the cost,” he said.
Mostly, he sympathizes with the victims of his department’s rescues. “In between 90 and 95 percent of cases, stuff just happens, and people legitimately need help. It seems to me the ones we’re hoping to target are those who throw caution to the wind,” he said.
Spurring the proposed legislation was a case last winter in which a group of snowmobilers needed to be rescued. The circumstances of the rescue were not reported, but Whalen clearly believes they deserved to get cough up the cost, which he estimated was $13,000.
“I don’t want them to think they could come up here and do any old thing they wanted because we’d come and get them,” he told the News&Guide. “Rescuers do risk their lives every time they go out.”
Sucking sounds gets louder at Winter Park
WINTER PARK – Denver Water continues its efforts to expand diversion from the Fraser River, near Winter Park. Given the long history of transmountain diversions in Colorado, it will likely succeed in its ambitions to build a larger straw. Still to be revealed are the terms.
Diversions from the valley began in 1936, about the time skiing began at Winter Park, and by one account they now take 60 percent of the flows of the Fraser, a tributary to the Colorado River. Together, with diversions from the Breckenridge area, they allowed Denver and its suburbs to grow rapidly after World War II.
But the drought of 2002, by various accounts the worst in several hundred years, exposed the limitations of Denver’s water-delivery system. Denver and its 1.1 million people reduced water use by 30 percent, but still some areas of metro Denver nearly went dry.
The diversion proposed by Denver would boost its take of water from the Fraser Valley to 80 percent. But for that to happen, the city needs more storage, to be achieved with expansion of Gross Reservoir, west of Boulder.
Boulder County commissioners, who must permit the dam expansion, refused last week, pending a word on how Denver will mitigate the impacts of the diversions. Of course, Boulder County gets much of its water from the Western Slope, too.
The denouement of this story will likely be told when terms of mitigation for this project are announced by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Regulating chopper use in Aspen-Snowmass area
ASPEN – Pitkin County commissioners are mulling how to regulate use of helicopters for commercial flying in unincorporated areas.
The Aspen Times reports that commissioners are looking at a simple process for permitting low-impact photo shoots and film productions. County planners estimate that four or five such shoots occur annually.
For now, at least, the commissioners aren’t touching regulations that would govern the use of drones for use in photographing real estate being marketed for sale.
– Allen Best