Town struggles to get back on its knees

JAMESTOWN – Located in the foothills near Boulder, Jamestown was established in 1863, the result of gold deposits nearby, and has survived ups and downs since then.

Whether it will survive the flood of September 2013, however, is in doubt.

Mayor Tara Schoedinger says 80 to 90 percent of the town’s 300 residents remain displaced. They’ve rented houses in Boulder, about 20 minutes away, or elsewhere. Schoedinger fears few will return if water service and roads cannot be restored by August.

The town is the most northerly in Colorado’s arc of precious metals that sweeps down through Idaho Springs, Aspen and Silverton. It’s located at about 7,000 feet in elevation.

Jamestown was probably drenched worse than any other town in the four days of storms that dropped up to 18 inches in some locations. The flooding waters destroyed 20 percent of the houses and 50 percent of roads, plus the water treatment plant and the fire station. A mudslide also killed Schoedinger’s next-door neighbor, Joe Howlett, who was considered the town’s patriarch. He was buried by a mudslide.

When the flooding started, Schoedinger worked for Vail Resorts. There, she supervised a part of the IT department. She quit working Sept. 11, the day flooding began, and threw all her time into rebuilding the town. She formally left the company Jan. 1, but says the company itself – which is headquartered in the Boulder suburb of Broomfield – has been exceedingly generous to her. Also, company employees have pitched in with personal time to help Jamestown struggle back to its knees.

Rebuilding has started. The new post office opened Feb. 8. Meanwhile, a new 100-year flood plain has now been determined, which will allow for calculation of rebuildable lots. But water infrastructure must be restored, and those pipes will be buried below the reconstructed roads.

Meanwhile, town board meetings have been held at the Boulder County courthouse, and one of the lingering issues is where will the money come from to pay for all this. There is state and federal assistance, but also fundraisers.

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Winter Park cleared of liability in death

DENVER – On a day in 2012 in which avalanche professionals had advised skiers to stay out of the backcountry, Christopher Norris, 28, decided to ski an area of Winter Park called Trestle Trees. It was not closed, but an avalanche in the area killed him.

His widow sued, saying that the ski area operator should have closed the area or taken actions to reduce the avalanche danger. The first judge to hear the case ruled that the ski area operator was protected from liabilities under Colorado’s Skier Safety Act. Now, the Colorado Court of Appeals has reached the same conclusion. If appealed, as expected, the Colorado Supreme Court will have final say.

At issue is the wording of the 1979 act. The law specifies responsibilities of skiers and other users and grants immunity to ski operators for “inherent dangers” of the sport. The Denver Post notes that the law specifically mentions changing snow and weather conditions but not avalanches.

The two judges who constituted the majority in the ruling last week concluded that avalanches are the result of “changing weather conditions” across “variations of steepness and terrain,” phrases mentioned in the law. If Colorado legislators wish to hold ski areas accountable for avalanche-related injuries or deaths, the judges wrote, then they should change the law.

The dissenting judge noted that the lawmakers in 1979 had spelled out many of the dangers that operators were exempted from, so the absence of avalanches from that list would suggest they did not mean to exempt them in this case.

An open question is how much this case may affect a lawsuit expected to be heard in June against Vail Resorts. In that case, a 13-year-old local boy was killed by an avalanche on Vail Mountain. Vail had closed the top of the run, but the victim and his companions had entered the run from a side gate that was not closed, then side-stepped up the slope.

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Climate risk part the pipeline equation

JASPER, Alberta – Jasper, located in the Canadian park of the same name, has decided against trying to have say-so in whether expansion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline gets approved.

The pipeline would stretch from near Edmonton, Alberta, to Burnabay, B.C., the latter on the outskirts of Vancouver. An existing oil pipeline spans that route, but the proposal now before Canadian regulators is whether the pipeline can be twinned. In some areas, including Jasper National Park, a duplicate pipe already exists.

In Jasper, local resident Art Jackson tells the Fitzhugh that he’s concerned about safety. Mayor Richard Ireland acknowledges those concerns, but tells the newspaper that the municipality will not apply as an intervener. The municipality, he says, simply lacks the expertise.

“Yes, we could make a political statement, but we would rather have this thing meaningfully discussed at the board. And we think the best opportunity to do that is to align ourselves with Parks Canada,” he said. The federal parks administration, he said, does have that expertise in pipeline management.

The controversy about the pipeline has two levels. One is about the potential for spilling of oil, which would include oil extracted from the oil/tar sands of northern Alberta.

But as with the Keystone XL and other export pipelines, the Trans Mountain raises questions about whether the infrastructure for oil can be justified in the face of rising greenhouse gas emissions.

Vancouver’s application to be a participant in the proceedings lays out an economic argument. It says it will be impacted by the changing climate because of the impacts of “severe weather events and rising sea levels.”

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Michelle and girls continue the theme

ASPEN – There seems to be a pattern here. Princess Diana skied at Vail – but then shifted her mountain time to Aspen. Bill Clinton, if never a skier, also visited Vail first upon becoming the U.S. president, wailing on his saxophone and charming locals, but then spent his later summer vacations at Aspen and Jackson Hole.

Now come Michelle Obama and the girls. They first skied at Vail, then shifted to Aspen. They have stayed the course, and Presidents’ Weekend was the third for a skiing vacation.

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C.B. measures snow by feet, not inches

CRESTED BUTTE – Snow, it’s a wonderful problem to have in Crested Butte. In less than two weeks, more than 7 feet of snow fell on the ski area.

Nobody’s complaining, though. “After two rough winters, every inch of snow that falls this winter is so worth it,” said Erika Mueller, spokeswoman for the ski area. “It’s much more exciting to market snow, and we’ve been given ample opportunities to measure the snow in feet instead of inches.”

Mueller told the Crested Butte News that February bookings increased 60 percent compared to the same week last year. While the destination business – people flying in on jets – has been declining for years, the snow is stimulating the “drive markets.”

The Crested Butte News observes that the drive-market dines on hamburgers, the destination folks on prime rib. But Crested Butte is happy to sell hamburgers after two lean winters.

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Park City has reasons to feel good

PARK CITY, Utah – Snowfall and, of late, the stock market, haven’t been kind to Park City this winter. Nonetheless, there’s plenty of reason to see prosperity now and into the future.

One reason is an event called Grub Crawl. Sponsored by Bon Appétit magazine, it will take place in New York City, San Francisco and three other cities … including Park.

Park City also stands to benefit from the announcement by Delta Airlines that it will expand operations from its hub at Salt Lake City by 8 percent during the next five years.

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Film by Telluridians takes aim at dams

TELLURIDE – Two filmmakers from Telluride will be at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, showing their new film, called DamNation.

The film, explains the Telluride Daily Planet, explores the shift in attitudes toward big dams in the United States. Once a source of pride for their engineering, the dams have become notorious for their disruption to the healthiness of rivers.

Included in DamNation is rediscovered archival footage and vintage photography such as that taken by an archaeological “salvage” team working against time in 1958 to recover priceless Ancestral Pueblan artifacts before the flooding of Glen Canyon.

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Telluridians to listen in on Vancouver Ted talks

TELLURIDE – No matter how much powder has been deposited on the slopes of Telluride on March 16, some people intend to have their tushes parked in the comfortable seats of the local high school auditorium.

There, thanks to a local couple, the TEDX talk being held in Vancouver, B.C., will be broadcast. Speaking will be theoretical physicist Allan Adams, geneticist Wendy Chung, and cartoonist Randall Munroe, among a dozen or so others.

The Telluride Daily Planet says that Katrine and Bill Formby previously brought the first broadcasts of Ted to Telluride in 2012 and 2013. “It’s one of the most fulfilling things I do all year,” Katrine Formby told the newspaper.

Such talks, she added, are best experienced with other people. “I get more out of TED when I watch it with other people,” she said. “I want to be able to walk out of a session and talk to people about what we just saw.”

The TED talks, all four days of them, will also be broadcast live to Whistler for those able to peel out $3,750 for registration.

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Old railroad route to Winter Park still closed

WINTER PARK – Will four-wheel enthusiasts ever again be able to traverse the Continental Divide of Colorado between Rollinsville, in the foothills above Denver and Boulder, and the ski town of Winter Park on the west side?

The apex of the route is 11,676-foot Rollins Pass, and just east of it is the Needles Eye tunnel built for a railroad that intended to go from Denver to Salt Lake City. The tunnel was used from 1904-28, when the 6.2-mile-long Moffat Tunnel opened at a much lower elevation.

The Needle’s Eye tunnel was closed by a rockfall in 1990, and Boulder County has never seen fit to clear the tunnel of debris. How come?

Reporting on a recent meeting, the Boulder Daily Camera reports the cost of repairing decaying trestles and other work at $10.5 million.

An even larger concern appears to be impacts to adjoining tracts of public land now designated as wilderness. Boulder County Commissioner Elise Jones is among those worrying that allowing four-wheelers that much access will tempt them to go places they shouldn’t.

Edward Wiegand says cost shouldn’t be prohibitive. He says the route can be reopened by hewing to an older wagon road.

“This area is owned by the citizenry, and to keep it closed because one county wants to make some kind of environmentalist statement is just not fair to the entire public, not just motorized recreationalists.”

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Is reservoir to make snow or fight fires?

JACKSON, Wyo. – Why create a small pond atop Snow King Mountain, the ski area whose base is six blocks from downtown Jackson?

Mayor Mark Barron maintains that the $1.2 million expense is needed to provide firefighters with water in case of adjoining forest fires, such as occurred two years ago. He concedes the reservoir could be used for snowmaking for the ski area, but insists that’s just a secondary consideration.

But Councilman Jim Stanford sees flipped justifications. “It doesn’t seem like anybody in the firefighting community is calling for a pond to be built” on top of Snow King, he told the Jackson Hole News&Guide. “Certainly the biggest beneficiary would be Snow King’s snowmaking.”

– Allen Best

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