Former DMR exec to head Park City
PARK CITY, Utah – Vail Resorts wasted no time in deciding who to install in Park City to run its show there. Bill Rock has been reassigned from California, where he had been chief operating officer at Northstar with oversight of Heavenly and Kirkwood ski areas.
Rock had worked for Intrawest as chief operating officer at Snowshoe Mountain Resort in West Virginia from 2005-10 and before that was chief operating officer at Durango Mountain Resort.
He reports to Blaise Carrig, who is president of Vail Resorts’ mountain division, working from the company’s headquarters near Boulder.
Social media execs buy Nevada homes
INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. – Employees of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn seem to be liberally represented in the lists of second-home owners in Incline Village and Crystal Bay, two resort communities located along Lake Tahoe.
Importantly, says the Sierra Sun, they’re located on the Nevada side of the line. The larger share of Lake Tahoe lies in California, but Nevada has more attractive tax laws for the wealthy.
“Nevada offers some of the most favorable estate and trust laws in the nation, while California has some of the worst and least-flexible,” says Greg Crawford, co-manager of Alliance Trust in Reno. He tells the newspaper that one-quarter of his company’s business comes from setting up Nevada-based trusts for Silicon Valley and Bay Area residents.
“A lot of Twitter executives have used Nevada trusts to shelter and shield part of their assets,” he says. “The same is true with Facebook and GoPro. It is very well established in Silicon Valley that Nevada is a better place for your wealth. It may not be a better placed to create it, but it’s a better place to protect it.”
Much of Alliance Trust’s business over the past few years has come from younger clients working at social media companies, he said.
Scoping out the inflating value of real estate, up 13 percent in the last year, the Sierra Sun finds that “cabin-style” furnishings are passé among many of these younger buyers. They favor more modern furnishings and fixtures. “Younger families are trending to more modern homes that are fully automated,” says Pam Aaron, owner of Sierra Verde Interior Design in Incline Village. “You can run the whole house from an iPad. You can turn on the house from your car, and it’s warm when you get there.”
Evidence links 4 bears to man’s death
JACKSON, Wyo. – In early September, a contractor working for the U.S. Forest Service was killed in the Teton Wilderness north of Jackson.
The Wyoming Fish and Wildlife Service analysis of DNA specimens don’t conclusively find a killer, but the evidence suggests two male grizzlies, one female grizzly and one male black bear “associated with the area during or shortly after the encounter.”
The Jackson Hole News&Guide further notes that two deer carcasses that bears had been feeding on were nearby, an indication that whatever bears killed the man were provoked to do so in an effort to protect their food.
Eagle County’s first gay couple weds
EAGLE – On Oct. 7, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would not hear cases on gay marriage, in effect, dismissing the ban in Colorado and other states. Reading about it the next morning in a newspaper, Beth Reed and Dorothy “Bit” Hood decided to hasten to the Eagle County Courthouse during their lunch hour to get married.
And so, reports the Vail Daily, the first gay marriage in Eagle County occurred. Teak Simonton, the long-time county clerk, told the newspaper that she has long supported same-sex marriage and would have given couples a marriage license before – if only a couple had asked.
The first couple in Eagle County met in Denver, where Beth sold cars and Bit bought a Jeep. They met two weeks later for dinner and have had many dinners together in the 14 years since.
They say that while being in a civil union is good, being married is better, as marriage entitles them to make the kinds of decisions for each other that heterosexual couples make.
“Colorado’s civil unions are designed to be separate but equal, but it’s neither, really,” Reed said.
Bears carbo-loading before the long nap
RENO, Nev. – As certain as the yellowing of aspen leaves, bears are in the news in almost every mountain town.
In the Sierra Nevada, an Associated Press story notes that bears currently are trying to scarf the caloric equivalent of 83 cheeseburgers a day.
A typical bear’s intake jumps from 3,000 to 25,000 calories a day this time of year, said Chris Healy, spokesman for the Nevada Department of Wildlife.
On the Nevada side of the Sierra Nevada, dozens of bears have been rounded up in the Lake Tahoe-Reno area after getting into trouble. But only two were killed for their recidivism.
In Colorado, the toll is much, much higher. In the area from Vail to Aspen and westward to Grand Junction, some 41 bears were killed this summer after violating Colorado’s rules about repeat offenders. Included were four cubs and one sow put down in Aspen during the last two weeks, while another sow is being hunted.
“It’s all human-error related,” said Kevin Wright, district wildlife ranger for the Colorado Parks and Wildlife. “It’s trash, trash, trash. Aspen has not gotten a hold of its trash issues.”
He told the Aspen Daily News that crabapples are also drawing bears to residential and business areas.
Difference between ski town and city
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS – The Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club says it began using the phrase “Ski Town U.S.A.” in 1959. It was the governing body for the town’s small ski area, called Howelsen Hill, which had been open for decades. The big ski area, called Steamboat, was opened two years later.
Now comes “Ski City USA,” the invention of a trade group trumpeting Salt Lake City as a ski destination.
Steamboat does not take kindly to the flattery by mimicry and has sued the Utah group, called Visit Salt Lake.
The Utah group tried to split hairs, arguing that its $1.8 million promotional campaign around Ski City USA “celebrates and promotes the fact that there is a distinct alternative of the ‘ski town’ experience, one that will forever change ski-related travel for a large segment of winter enthusiasts.” Persuaded?
Blakes succeeded the old-fashioned way
TAOS, N.M. – The Blake family sold the Taos ski area last year to Louis Bacon, the billionaire hedge-fund manager who owns several large ranches in southern Colorado and New Mexico. But the Blakes are not forgotten in Taos.
The ski area was started by Ernie and Rhoda Blake in 1955 after moving from the East Coast. Rhoda survives, although Ernie died several years ago. Their children, who are now all in their 60s, remember the hard work of carving out a ski area in the southern end of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
Just getting to the ski area took perseverance, the Taos News notes. The road remained unpaved until the early 1970s. It was windy and often snowy, muddy or dusty. It crossed a creek several times. In some places, it split into two tracks that go around a tree.
The ski area now employs 650 people at peak season.
On the newspaper’s website, some remember when the ski area came along. Many locals pooh-poohed Ernie Blake’s vision. “The local gentry should have been delighted, but they spoke negative of his endeavor,” wrote the commentor, who said he was a shoe-shine boy at the time.
Said another: “They succeeded the old-fashioned way. They earned it.”
– Allen Best
More stories from mountain towns of the West can be found at mountaintownnews.net.