A midnight glimpse of nirvana in Aspen
ASPEN – In 1949, when Aspen was still a ski town emerging from the decayed shell of a mining town, a young architect arrived one cold, winter night, seeking shelter.
The Aspen Daily News explains that this traveler was named Charlie Paterson, who explains that there wasn’t a room to be had in Aspen. “And we walked the streets at midnight. It was cold, we were freezing, and we didn’t know what to do.”
Knocking on an old Victorian house, the door opened to reveal the woman. “All she had on was her long blond hair,” Paterson said.
Appreciative of their predicament, said Paterson, she swung the door wider to reveal a floor covered with sleeping bodies. So, the wayward travelers pressed on, ultimately finding shelter in the unlocked Elks building.
“But I thought, ‘This is a pretty good place. No locked doors, women greeting you at the front door naked,’” Paterson said.
The Daily News explains that he went on to become a storied architect, and a 2011 proclamation from the city government said his expertise has affected a quarter of all properties in the city.
The story was told as part of the new “Journeys” exhibit at the Aspen Historical Society museum.
Destination tourism is on the wane
WHISTLER, B.C. – If Whistler sees more visitors during summer, winter season remains more lucrative. Destination visitors spell the difference. They pay higher room rates, stay longer and spend more money while they do.
In Whistler, 59 percent of the winter market of 1 million skiers is classified as destination visitors. There’s half-again as many visitors during summer, when they’re more parsimonious in their spending – and they also tend to be more regional in their origins.
But what should be of great concern in Canada, says Pique publisher Bob Barnett, is a decline in destination visitors. He points to the work of David Goldstein, of the Tourism Industry Association of Canada. Goldstein reports that domestic travelers, who were responsible for roughly 60 percent of the tourists in Canada a decade ago, now make up 80 percent of resort visitors.
Why is this? Partly it’s because the Canadian dollar has gained in value against the U.S. dollar and the British pound. That makes Canadian vacations more expensive for Americans and Brits.
The fallout of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., has also made border crossing more difficult. In addition, the Canadian government is now requiring visas of visitors from Mexico. Too, tourism marketing has fallen off.
“In any other industry, this would be big news, perhaps grounds for an inquiry,” he says of Canada’s faltering in the international tourism market. “But tourism, particularly international tourism, isn’t on most people’s radar.”
Anticipating impacts of warmer planet
REVELSTOKE, B.C. – Climate models are notoriously imprecise. Wetter or drier? Atmospheric systems being so complex, even our most powerful computers can’t model the future with much reliability.
Still, climatologists are confident they know the general directions as we begin to feel the effects of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere. It will get warmer, winters will get shorter, rainstorms will become more epic, and droughts will intensify.
The Revelstoke Times Review reports that a nonprofit group called the Columbia Basin Trust has recently issued a document that outlines the impacts caused by climate change and the adaptations needed.
The report says that the growing season could expand by anywhere from 18 to 35 days by 2050, compared with the baseline period of 1971-2000.
Existing infrastructure, such as dams and storm-sewer systems, may not serve us well in the future.
Projections of the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium at the University of Victoria indicate springs will be warmer and wetter. But Trevor Murdock, a climate scientist at the consortium, tells the Times Review that the projections are for ranges of weather. El Niño and La Niña, for example, will continue to play a role from year to year.
“There’s a range in the projections, and it’s hard to talk about,” he said. “It’s not uncertainty in the sense of not knowing. It’s uncertainty in the sense that what we know with a good deal of certainty is the change in the 30-year average.”
Former mayor’s house now is net-zero
MOUNTAIN VILLAGE – He did it! For years Bob Delves, then mayor of Mountain Village, the joined-at-the-gondola municipality with Telluride, committed his community to seeking dramatic reductions in carbon-based energy use.
Taking it on as a personal challenge, Delves and his wife, Jenny, set out to see what could be done at their 5,200-square-foot home. Together, with their three sons, they looked at their energy consumption. Hanging their clothes to dry instead of using an electric dryer saved energy, as did removal of unnecessary “show” lighting. They turned off the icemaker and drained the hot tub.
They also slapped on 24 photovoltaic solar panels, capable of producing about 50 percent of the home’s consumption. Then, they purchased 18 more panels in a solar farm in the Paradox Valley, about 80 miles west, getting them over the finish line of a carbon-free home as it pertains to electrical use.
Summit resort valley has first civil union
SUMMIT COUNTY – For the first time, a gay couple in Summit County has entered into civil union. The Summit Daily News explains that Rhoda Lynne Whitney and Priscilla Ann Ledbury first made vows to one another in a church in Denver 22 years ago.
This year, the couple returned to the same church to repeat their vows, this time with the legal authority of the civil unions now allowed in Colorado.
Practical effects of their new legal status will change little in their lives, however. They bought property in Summit County in 1983, when both were working, and then moved there full time in 1998, after both had retired. Their absence of legal status as a couple presented no problems in the property purchase, nor has it in the case of hospital visits.
But gay couples still cannot marry in Colorado. The state’s constitution defines marriage as between a man and a woman. Ron Holland, the mayor of Dillon, says that’s not right. “This is America, and gay couples are entitled to the same rights and privileges as any taxpayer,” he says. He’s been with his male partner for 18 years, he tells the Summit Daily.
Houses approved where Ike once fished
FRASER – Over the protests of some residents, one of the prettiest meadows in the Colorado high country is to be carved into a dense subdivision.
The 295-acre Byers Peak Ranch has been annexed into Fraser with entitlements to build 530 detached and 905 attached residential units, 550 lodging units and RV sites, and 270,000 square feet of mixed use, commercial and industrial units.
Fraser Mayor Peggy Smith justified the annexation and development as an act of self-determination for Fraser. The project will deliver sales tax – and allow Fraser and neighboring Winter Park to more effectively compete against Summit County and Steamboat Springs.
In the 1950s, President Dwight Eisenhower sometimes vacationed in Fraser, snagging trout from the St. Louis Creek, which runs through the ranch.
Smith, the mayor, agreed that the view of the meadow was “very difficult to give up,” according to an account in the Sky Hi News. But she asked other elected officials to focus instead on the vision of Fraser’s future. “I believe a community that is not growing is in the process of dying.”
420 advocates poke at opportunities, limits
SUMMIT COUNTY – Colorado now has its first business specifically dedicated to marijuana tourism. My 420 Tours sold out when it held its first tour on April 20, peaking at 4:20 in the afternoon.
Sales for recreational use won’t become legal until Jan. 1, but laws approved by legislators allow visitors to purchase less than an ounce of marijuana.
The Summit Daily News talked with Matt Brown, a co-proprietor of the new business. “(Say) you’re going to take a ski vacation, and you’re going to go to Utah or Colorado. If you enjoy marijuana, the case became much clearer for Colorado,” he said.
Meanwhile, in Aspen, marijuana advocates gathered for a three-day symposium. The Aspen Daily News says that during a break in the session, which was hosted by the national Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, many of the lawyers and activists in attendance spilled out into a courtyard, pulled out pipes and joints, and lit up.
While Colorado has legalized marijuana, it has not legalized smoking and driving. But many advocates argue that Colorado’s new law, which establishes a legal limit of five nanograms of TCH, the psychoactive chemical in marijuana, say that the presence of THC in the blood does not prove impairment.
Park City welcomes Vail Resorts to party
PARK CITY, Utah – Hosannas were sung and palm fronds were waved last week in Park City as the community’s leaders welcomed Vail Resorts to the party. The continent’s dominant ski area operator, Vail, has taken over operations of the Canyons Resort, one of the three ski areas in Park City, under a long-term agreement with Talisker, the Canada-based owner.
“Vail is a strong brand and should further enhance Park City’s reputation as an elite destination,” said Andy Beerman, a member of the Park City Council.
With this, the Epic Pass has become even more valuable and will likely boost traffic at Canyons beyond 450,000. The pass already provides entry into eight major resorts in the West, two in the Midwest, and privileges at another in the Alps.
“It’s been a missing link for us. Park City is one of the economic destination ski towns in the West,” Blaise Carrig, president of the mountain division at Vail Resorts, told the Salt Lake Tribune.
The most interesting aspect of this may be the tangle of lawsuits lurking in the background. Vail Resorts sued Talisker in 2007 when it failed to get the ski area coming out of the failed hands of the American Skiing Co. We can assume that bygones are now bygones.
Talisker, meanwhile, is embroiled in litigation with the adjoining Park City ski area over use of Park City’s land. Vail will inherit that legal case.
The Park Record wondered about ski links between Canyons and Park City resort, which have held talks for several years about capital upgrades that included a possible connection between the two.
Canyons Resort has also been pushing the idea of a ski link with resorts on the west side of the Wasatch Range, an idea hotly disputed by environmentalists but also Salt Lake City public officials.
– Allen Best www.mountaintownnews.net