Mountain doc to trade patients for yak
TELLURIDE – Peter Hackett is looking forward to having a Christmas away from the doctor’s office. He’s retiring at the age of 65 from his position as director of emergency medicine at the Telluride Medical Center to raise yaks and to pursue interest in his specialty, high-altitude physiology.

Hackett, 65, told the Telluride Daily Planet that working eight 24-hour shifts in emergency medicine each month left him little time for research in high-altitude medicine.

“I’ve been doing it for 38 years, and it’s a young person’s specialty, really,” he said of the emergency room doctoring. “It’s hard because of all the night shifts and weekends. I haven’t had a Christmas off in about 20 years.”

After graduating from medical school in Chicago and then training in San Francisco, Hackett got his first jobs as a helicopter rescue doctor in Yosemite National Park, where he fought fires and rescued climbers, explains The Telluride Watch.

From there, he went to Nepal, where a three-month stint for at trekking company turned into a love affair with the Himalayas. That love affair culminated in an ascent of Mount Everest in 1981, where he collected physiological data on the way up, the last 3,000 feet of the climb by himself.

On his descent, however, he nearly died after slipping on the Hillary Step, the icy and steep pitch just below the summit where a missed step can send you tumbling 7,000 feet.

Along the way, Hackett became one of the world’s premier researchers into the human physiological response to visiting and living in the thin air at higher elevations. He will maintain his work in the Institute for Altitude Medicine in Telluride, seeing patients with altitude-related illness and training other doctors in the field.

At 8,750 feet, he said, Telluride is the ideal place to study the influence of thin air on pre-existing medical conditions, like high blood pressure and migraine headaches. While locals have not had generations for their bodies to evolve, such as in the case with natives of the Himalayas or Andes, they have developed adaptations, including bigger lungs.

In his ongoing work, Hackett intends to continue research as to why people live longer at high altitudes.

But Hackett also has out-of-office plans, too. With his partner, also a doctor, he’s planning to raise yaks, the wooly, cow-like animals he first encountered in Nepal, where he lived for six years. Hackett thinks the animals are the next big thing for Colorado, since they graze less than cattle and are well adapted to high altitudes and cold temperatures.

Grizzlies add to the Banff experience
BANFF, Alberta – What does Banff National Park have over, say Yosemite or the San Juan Mountains?

It has an estimated 60 grizzly bears that, should they choose, could chew you up and spit you out like stale bubblegum. And that, says Steve Michel, a wildlife expert for Parks Canada, administrator of Banff, is ultimately a good thing.

It may leave your knees knocking, but it makes the outdoor experience richer, he told a group in Banff recently.

“These kinds of experiences can still happen here, right outside our back doors. You can hike in California or Colorado where (grizzly) bears no longer are, and yes, they are beautiful landscapes, but it can be quite a hollow experience without grizzly bears there,” said Michel.

Banff still has 60 of the estimated 600 grizzlies in Alberta, but 13 have been killed by passing trains since the turn of the century, and cars and trucks continue to kill more.

Parks Canada and the Canadian Pacific Railroad have pooled resources for a $2 million study to better figure out solutions to reduce the train deaths. To that end, they captured, drugged and then collared 11 grizzlies with GPS devices, allowing researchers to track their whereabouts.

No conclusions have been drawn as per the larger question, but they seem to be gaining fascinating insights into the movements of individual bears. One young griz, for example, traveled over the top of the Wapta Icefield, eventually summering in the Blaeberry Valley in British Columbia before returning to Banff for denning. The bear is said to travel in this world of ice quite well.

Jumbo plans, but does a market exist?
WHISTLER, B.C. – Last November, the provincial government in British Columbia upped the ante on the long-considered Jumbo Glacier ski resort by creating a mountain resort municipality consisting of three appointed officials. There are no residents yet.

This infuriated opponents, of which there are many, particularly in the closest community, Invermere. Taking stock of the debate, Pique Newsmagazine publisher Bob Barnett wonders whether B.C., or the world, can support another major resort competing for high-end skiers.

Friends-with-benefits offers even more
ASPEN – Call it the unEpic Pass. Mountain Collective, the friends-with-benefits ski pass first offered by six independent ski companies, has now been expanded to nine. Newbies are Mammoth Mountain, Snowbird, and Whistler Blackcomb.

Cost of the Mountain Collective pass is $349 and that gets you two days of skiing or riding at six distinct destinations: Alta, Snowbird, Aspen, Snowmass, Jackson Hole, Mammoth, Squaw Valley, Alpine Meadows, and Whistler Blackcomb. In their press release, they emphasized “independent resorts.”

That distinguishes the Mountain Collective resorts from those of Vail Resorts, which has four in Colorado, three in California, plus one in Michigan. Vail offers the powerful Epic Pass for $689, which offers a season pass good at all of these resorts plus Arapahoe Basin, and privileges at Verbier, in Switzerland.

Hooping and whooping in the Tetons
JACKSON, Wyo. – Some people like to hoop it up, as in basketball. But Ryan Mertaugh, a 26-year-old substitute teacher, has another quest: to hula-hoop atop the eight central peaks of the Teton Range.

“A lot of people are in the mountains for the right reason,” he tells the Jackson Hole News&Guide. “But a few could benefit from lightening up a little bit and getting back to the fun. I want to hoop to help show that,” he added. “We’re up there to have a good time.”

“Mountain tops are to be celebrated on,” said mountaineer and author David Gonzales. You can take it seriously on the way up and seriously on the way down, but the summit’s the place you can let your flag fly.”


High-end plans piling up in Jackson
JACKSON, Wyo. – Although nothing more than planning documents at this point, proposals have been filed to add more than 400 mostly high-end hotel rooms to downtown Jackson.

Many plans for such projects were put on hold when the recession hit.

The Jackson Hole News&Guide points to a general upgrade in lodging quality in the proposals. Currently, the town has two hotels that have a four-diamond rating from AAA. Ten miles away, at Teton Village, where the valley’s big ski area is located, three lodges have four diamonds, and one – the Four Seasons – has five diamonds.

The newspaper notes that while summer lodging has bounced back to pre-recession levels, in winter the lodging numbers remain suppressed.

Development rebounds in White Fish
WHITEFISH, Mont. – Real estate investment seems to be thawing rapidly. The Whitefish Pilot reports plans for 174 housing units on what is now an open field along a local waterway called Cow Creek. Apartments and condominiums would be erected on the 24-acre property by Community Infill Partners.

If their project is approved by city officials, the developers say they hope to begin construction within a year, proceeding in six increments.

Despite the large number of lots available for single-family homes, there are several proposals to develop raw land into housing, reports Chuck Stearns, town manager. “Clearly, our building and development community has rebounded,” he says.

Dam retrofit to push Aspen toward goal
RIDGWAY – Installation of a hydroelectric generation in Ridgway Dam is now expected to begin in June, allowing Aspen to further shrink its dependency on carbon-based sources.

Constructed in the 1980s, the dam impounds water from the Uncompahgre River, which drains a portion of the San Juan Mountains near Ouray. Water is used for irrigation of farms and orchards in the Montrose-Delta area of Colorado.

But like many dams of that era, when the West was overstocked with new coal-fired power plants, a hydroelectric component was not included. Economics of small hydro have become more powerful, in part because of renewable energy mandates, but also because of internal goals, such as that set by Aspen.

Aspen in 2005 adopted the climate-change manifesto called the Canary Initiative. That plan calls for Aspen Electric, the city-owned utility that provides about two-thirds of electricity consumed in the city, to be 100 percent carbon-free by 2015. Most of that big gain was achieved through purchase of electricity generated by wind in Nebraska.

However, Aspen also set out early on to become a buyer of power from the new Ridgway hydroelectric unit during winter, when Aspen’s demand is highest. When the dam comes on line by the winter of 2014, it will make Aspen Electric 93 percent carbon free.

This doesn’t mean that electrons produced at Ridgway will go directly to Aspen, however. As the Telluride Watch explains, the electricity might actually be most directly shipped to the town of Delta. But in the broader accounting, Aspen will get credited.

ile denying that it was the result of the death of Caleb Moore, ESPN has cancelled its snowmobile “best-trick” competition as well as the motocross best-trick event in the Summer X Games.

“Moto X Best Trick and Snowmobile Best Trick were not dropped in response to what happened in Aspen,” ESPN spokeswoman Danny Chi said in a prepared statement. “This decision was under consideration before Aspen. And, in fact, our review of Snowmobile Freestyle continues.”

 

– Allen Best - Read more at mountaintownnews.net
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