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A dead grizzly and Leonardo DiCaprio

BANFF, Alberta – Canadian newspapers carried two stories about grizzly bears, and it doesn’t turn out well for griz in either case, including the one about the actor Leonardo DiCaprio.

The more straight-forward story involves a 7-year-old grizzly bear. As part of a study, the bear had been outfitted with GPS tracking technology by wildlife researchers, who called it bear 125.

Bear 125 liked to roam between Alberta and British Columbia, crossing heavily glaciated portions of the Continental Divide.

“It was definitely a little bit unusual that he was doing this regularly. There was a lot of regular movement involving high-elevation routes,” said Alan Dibb, a wildlife biologist with Parks Canada.

In spring, during mating season, the grizzly preferred British Columbia – a fatal mistake, as it turned out. British Columbia this year issued 1,800 hunting licenses. On average, 300 grizzlies are killed in the hunt, reports the Rocky Mountain Outlook. The wide-ranging grizzly became part of that statistic.

Alberta ended grizzly hunting in 2004 and in 2009 gave the grizzly formal protection.

As for Leonardo DiCaprio, he’s supposed to be in Alberta and British Columbia later this year for filming of a movie based on the story of Hugh Glass. As a young man in Missouri in 1822, Glass had joined a fur-trading venture up to the Missouri River.

In present-day South Dakota, he surprised a grizzly sow and her two cubs. He managed to kill the sow, but was badly mauled and became unconscious. Left for dead, he managed to crawl several hundred miles to safety but vowed revenge on the companions, Jim Bridger and Thomas Fitzpatrick, who had deserted him.

None of this occurred in Canada, but hey – the Canadian Rockies have South Dakota beat for scenery. Besides, Canada works hard to entice moviemakers. “Brokeback Mountain” was set in Wyoming but was shot near Banff.

In Santa Fe, Native Americans were being recruited to participate in the movie, Indian News Today reports.

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Window to be larger than many houses

MT. CRESTED BUTTE – The prospect of building a major convention and performing arts complex at the base of the Crested Butte ski area looks increasingly real. As of June, proponents had $17.9 million in pledges from donors. They expect the project to cost more than $20 million.

The Crested Butte News explains that the envisioned complex would include a venue large enough to accommodate 500 people in non-theatre chairs.

That’s large, but what would set apart the Biery-Witt Center, as the facility is being called, is the setting: a giant window of 2,000 square feet to admit unobstructed views of Crested Butte Mountain.

Proponents hope to begin construction next summer.

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Dog ‘poisonings’ most likely pot edibles

ASPEN – More evidence arrives of pets getting into illicit pet food. The owners of two large dogs in Aspen were certain that their pets were poisoned, but a veterinarian who examined the dogs says blood tests showed no evidence of poison, such as antifreeze.

The behavior of the dogs was consistent with those who have ingested THC, the psychoactive agent in cannabis. “The dogs walk like they’re drunk. They slept really hard, and they are hard to arouse. If you go to pet their heads, they shy away and flinch. They often dribble urine,” explained Ellen Miller, a veterinarian.

She told The Aspen Times that the clinic down-valley in Basalt sees, on average, one case per week of accidental ingestion of pot edibles by dogs.

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Important lessons in homemade hash

TELLURIDE – The Telluride Watch seemed to think that everybody already knew the story about the 911 call last spring when a dog bit a local man’s penis. Whatever backstory may be involved, the upshot was that police discovered an operation in which butane was being used to create hash oil from cannabis.

Using flammable gases and solvents to make hash oil is legal in Colorado, now that cannabis is also legal. But do it at home? That’s been a problem in many places – including Telluride.

As CNBC explained in February, marijuana trim (or bud) is infused with a hydrocarbon, usually butane gas, which strips THC and other cannabinoids out of the marijuana plant. “The goopy stuff that emerges is laced with butane. This has to be cooked down to remove the residual chemical. The result (if the cook doesn’t blow up, as butane is explosive) is a glassy substance called “shatter” or “wax.”

In Avon, however, a do-it-yourselfer blew an 8-foot hole in his kitchen drywall. The Vail Daily explains that when police arrived at the apartment of the 22-year-old man, they found five butane canisters and a tub of marijuana leaves in the living room.

“There have been more than 30 butane hash oil explosions in Colorado in the past few months, destroying homes and severely injuring both children and adults,” said Fifth Judicial District Attorney Bruce Brown.

Explaining that the man exposed others to possible death and serious injury, he charged him with arson and reckless endangerment.

In San Miguel County, it’s still legal to use flammable gases and solvents to make hash oil, but only by those licensed to do so.

And what do the professionals get? An owner of a marijuana dispensary in Denver says that hash oil concentrate gets closer to 80 or even 90 percent of THC, whereas cannabis without processing might contain 15 to 18 percent.

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Mining booms of past a lingering mess

PARK CITY, Utah – The residue of mining from decades and centuries past continues to be in the news in mountain towns.

In Utah, a delegation from Park City planned to visit with Environmental Protection Agency regulators regarding cleanup of 2,700 acres affected by old silver-mining operations. The land is northeast of Park City and is owned by a ski area operator, reports The Park Record.

And in Southwest Colorado, the potential for renewed uranium mining in the slickrock country west of Telluride continues to be a concern. Writing in The Telluride Watch, San Miguel County Commissioner Art Goodtimes reports that he hopes to have the lingering environmental mess from the first uranium boom cleaned up before a new boom starts.

That part of Colorado, he notes, has a quarter of the existing U.S. uranium mining workings. Goodtimes says he does not see an ecological emergency, but he does see “an undesirable pollution of public lands.”

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Glitzkreigs at both Aspen, Sun Valley

SUN VALLEY, Idaho – It’s that time of year. Just as the big names depart from the Aspen Ideas Festival, big names from the media and business world descend on Sun Valley for the Allen & Co. annual gathering.

The two events are very different. The Aspen Ideas Festival is open to the public, assuming you can pay a few thousand to see Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic candidate for president in 2016, or Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, interviewed in an intimate setting of a few hundred people. But even if you don’t wear silver heels, the Aspen Institute broadcasts many of the sessions live on the Internet and makes others available afterwards.

If nobody said anything this year that made the front page of the New York Times, it remains a scintillating cauldron for thoughts.

One local in the Roaring Fork Valley, where Aspen is located, calls the arrival of the big names a “glitzkreig.”

The conference at Sun Valley, in contrast, is off limits to the general public, including reporters – except those specifically invited. But as in Aspen, there are plenty of big names. Warren Buffett is a regular, and this year Amazon founder and CEO (and Washington Post owner) Jeff Bezos was interviewed by a reporter from CNBC.

For sports fans, New York Knicks general manager Phil Jackson, Arizona Diamondbacks chief baseball officer Tony La Russa, and Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig were all expected. And probably dozens of other names that you may recognize.

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Itty-bitty places hope to hop on info highway

OPHIR – Like Telluride, but 1,000 feet higher, Ophir is an old mining town with about 100 people who like the idea of absorbing natural beauty and few neighbors.

But there’s a price to be paid for such isolation. Internet access sucks.

“It’s in the nature of the place to be in the middle of nowhere, but better Internet would be nice since we don’t really have cell service,” resident Katherine Devlin tells The Telluride Watch.

To that end, San Miguel County residents, including those in Telluride, will be asked in November whether the county can get into the business of providing broadband services to more rural places.

With so few people, Ophir is not an attractive place for CenturyLink, a local broadband provider, to lay cable. The company has estimated it would charge $620,000 to provide broadband to Ophir.

That leaves satellite as the only option. It’s expensive and slow.

If voters approve, San Miguel is looking to deliver high-speed Internet connectivity through the local electrical distributors, by attaching fiber cable on the power lines. The power companies, of course, may have ideas of their own.

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Chinese tourists now frequent in Jackson

JACKSON, Wyo. – Chinese tourists have begun to arrive in Jackson Hole in significant numbers, by one estimate 500 a day in June.

It’s no accident. Jeff Golightly, chief executive of the local chamber, says the Chinese visitors are the reward of a “multiyear strategy.” And Jackson’s proximity to Yellowstone National Park – it’s just about an hour away – is a major reason that Jackson seems to be drawing Chinese.

Chinese are familiar with America’s national parks. “When you go to China, they’ve all heard of Yellowstone,” said Mark Newcomb, an economic consultant. He is also a board member of the Jackson Hole Center for Global Affairs, which sends delegations annually from Wyoming to visit China on matters of energy.

Grand Teton National Park is starting to think about how to accommodate the Chinese. By one estimate, only 44 percent of Chinese have skills or training in speaking or understanding English.

Local businesses are also starting to grapple with the language barrier. “We’ve done an incredible amount of business with people from Shanghai in the last couple of years,” said Sheri Bickner, owner of the Onyx and Antler Gallery of Jackson Hole. But “the language barrier has been a real challenge for us,” she added.

To help smooth communication, the East Meets West Chinese Information Center in Jackson is translating menus and other materials for businesses and has Mandarin-speaking guides on hand.

It’s in the economic interests of businesses to reach out to the Chinese. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, Chinese tourists spend more than $6,000 per trip.

Citing the Chinese Tourism Academy, a website called Shanghailist reports that 26.4 million Chinese tourists traveled overseas in the first quarter of this year, up 17 percent from the same period last year. This same group finds that New Zealand is the top-ranked travel destination as measured by tourism satisfaction, followed closely by the United States and Canada.

In the United States, New York City and Washington D.C. are the top draws, but also in the top are the Grand Canyon, Yosemite National Park, Hollywood, San Francisco and Las Vegas, but not necessarily in that order, according to a website called China.org.cn.

Abetting Chinese travel in the United States are relaxed visa requirements. Forbes said that China is getting no special treatment on orders from President Barack Obama to streamline the entry process. However, in a May report, the magazine did note that “right now, China tourism is hotter than new love.”

Could Vail, Aspen and other ski towns be part of that new love? That idea has been broached in Vail, where Councilwoman Margaret Rogers proposed the town investigate a sister-city relationship with a Chinese city.

“(The Chinese) have not picked a ski resort in the U.S. to go to yet,” Rogers said at a meeting covered by the Vail Daily.

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Pace of real estate market quickens

ASPEN – The pace of real estate sales continues to quicken. Based on sales during the first six months of the year, some real estate agents in the Aspen market are using such expressions as “lift off.”

“There is a change going on in the market that is significant,” realty agent and market analyst Tim Estin tells The Aspen Times. He notes the record highs on Wall Street and points out the historical correlation between stock market strength and high prices of Aspen real estate.

Some investors, he explained, are seeking a “safe harbor” for their money and portfolio diversification.

Bob Starodoj pointed to buyers from Argentina, Brazil and the United Kingdom as being partly responsible for the strengthening market. “I sure as hell wouldn’t call it a frenzy,” he said.

Citing new data from the Land Title Guarantee Co., the Vail Daily reports a similarly strengthening real estate market in Vail and Eagle County.

For more, go to www.mountaintownnews.net  – Allen Best