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Warm winter result of faulty climate or memory?

FRASER – Across the North American West, temperatures in late January were disconcertingly warm and snowfall discouragingly thin.

In Colorado, it was near shorts weather in places. Not good if you’re putting together a ski-racing course at Vail and Beaver Creek. The resorts are hosting the World Alpine Ski Championships through Feb. 15. There was some fretting about the ability of crews to have a solid base for the ski runs.

In Steamboat Springs, it was worse. There have been balmier Januaries, but the ski area got just 11.75 inches, the lowest total since record-keeping on the ski mountain began in 1979, says The Steamboat Pilot & Today. On Saturday, the newspaper reported bare patches on the lower mountain. The base elevation is 6,900 feet.

Vail and Beaver Creek are higher, at 8,150 feet, but crews last week fretted whether the warm weather would make it difficult to establish a solid base for racers.

At Fraser, the self-proclaimed icebox of the nation, the freezer is out of whack. Temperatures of 30 or even 40 below zero (Fahrenheit) used to be common even into the early 1940s, but so far this year the town has shivered through just one night of 20 below.

Andy Miller, a long-time resident, reports many nights of near-freezing temperature but also this: a drizzly rain. That, he said, is a first for January in his memory.

In California, it was worse. Along the shores of Lake Tahoe, “people are raking, picking up pine cones and wondering if winter is only for those who live on the East Coast,” reported the Lake Tahoe News. The website described the situation as “horrible.”

The state water agency said that based on January snowpack, it’s “likely that California’s drought will run through a fourth consecutive year.” January will likely go down as the driest month in California’s recorded history.

In Alberta, weather was so warm in the Banff-Canmore area that firefighters set fire to four hectares of dry grass, to reduce fire danger. To the northwest 3½ hours at Jasper, the Fitzhugh talked about melting snow and rain showers. But examining weather records from the past 30 years, the newspaper blamed faulty memories, not errant weather.

“Despite our memories of frigid Januaries, full of long johns, woolies and frozen eyelashes, this January’s weather … is nothing new or unusual.”

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Vogt yodeled to his end at age 103 on ski trails

GLENWOOD SPRINGS – Julian Vogt died recently at age 103, but he was skiing to the very end.

Born in 1911, he retired to Glenwood Springs in 1971 and became a regular on the local ski hill. He took up snowboarding in his late 70s and stuck with it until just a few years ago, when he switched to the greater safety of the Nordic trails. The Glenwood Post Independent reports that he was still cross-country skiing just a couple of weeks ago.

Down in Glenwood, he was also a regular at the hot springs, where he kept in shape by swimming laps.

“This goes out to my main man Julian, who’s up there in heaven dancing, smiling, laughing and yodeling,” wrote a former Post Independent staff writer, April Clark, in a Facebook posting.

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The difficulty of sharing ski trails

JACKSON, Wyo. – Remember when skiers were cussing snowboarders? On the groomed trails designed for skate skiers, the sharing economy is even harder.

Writing in the Jackson Hole News&Guide, Molly Absolon tells about the frustrations of tripping on the gouges left in the trail’s snow by mothers with children in tow out for afternoon hikes. Then, there’s the newer issue of fat bikes, with big tires.

“In some ways the situation between Nordic skiers and fat bikers takes me back to the time when snowboarders first began flying down the slopes at ski areas,” she writes. “As a skier I had no idea how to share the slope with boarders. I didn’t understand their rhythm and found their speed disconcerting.”

She thinks they’ve gotten over that, but admits to some peevishness on the skate trails.

“We need a trail that‘s approximately 13 feet wide and smooth for our perfect set up. It’s asking a lot for walkers and bikers to stay off that welcoming white path. But when the snow is soft, that is what needs to happen or you’ll hear some complaints.”

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$350 million to help make Taos competitive

TAOS – An outline of how Taos Ski Valley intends to become more competitive in the ski industry has been unveiled. The Taos News reports that an economic impact analysis anticipates more than $350 million in investments for infrastructure, real estate developments, and recreational facilities.

The giant financial hand at work belongs to billionaire Louis Bacon, who completed purchase of the ski area last summer from the family of founder Ernie Blake.

Investment in a revitalized Taos has already begun, but the document prepared by Doug Kennedy Advisors projects $238.8 million in real estate improvements done by the resort plus $45 million in real estate investment by other parties. Also expected are investments of $43.9 million in public amenities and $23.5 million in recreational facilities.

Neil King, mayor of the base-area municipality, told the newspaper that existing utilities and facilities are “barely adequate” for the present homes and businesses. The ski area, he explained, can’t finish its redevelopment until municipality infrastructure is upgraded.

Among the projects planned: a redesign of the base area to include a public plaza and riverwalk, but also an expanded wastewater treatment plant.

But the municipality can’t possibility afford to do those upgrades with existing revenues. To move forward, it seeks to use a common financing vehicle called tax-increment financing. A proposed taxing district would allow the resort to front the cost for those improvements and be reimbursed later from future tax revenues.

Gordon Briner, chief executive of Taos Ski Valley, said the tax district would help speed up redevelopment. “This allows things that might be on the 5 to 10 year plan to happen relatively quickly.”

Briner said that annual skier visits between 2000 and 2010 were down 25 percent from those during the 1990s, while ski areas elsewhere have seen visitation grow. “A lot of our development is to try to get us back to where we were 20 years ago,” he said.

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Three overdoses in one night in Park city

PARK CITY, Utah – Police were summoned to Park City’s largest and liveliest nightclub to three overdoses in just one night, reports The Park Record. The substances causing the overdoses were not reported, except the possible use of GHB, called the “date rape drug.” The OD victims, who survived, were all men in their mid-20s.

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100th anniversary of the "Rocky" park

ESTES PARK – “Rocky” is 100 years old. In January 1915, a bill was signed in Washington D.C. that established Rocky Mountain National Park. The park was opened in September of that year.

The key figure in that effort was Enos Mills, a native of Kansas who spent his winters working at the copper mines of Butte, Mont., so he could afford to gambol about the high peaks along the Continental Divide northwest of Denver.

He wrote about his experiences in a variety of books. One of them told of a spring afternoon, after snow had firmed up. Mills watched a grizzly bear slide down a steep slope of snow, then climb up to do it again.

Some thought had been given to a national park in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains. But those mountains had been picked over by miners, who found much to reward their efforts in the way of gold, silver and other deposits. The northerly portion of Colorado’s Front Range, lying outside the mineral belt, remained better preserved.

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Employees fined for damaging snail habitat

BANFF, Alberta – Two former employees of Parks Canada have been fined $2,000 each for entering the thermal springs inside the cave containing the world’s only known population of a species of snail.

The Rocky Mountain Outlook explains that even minor movements in the water can upset the floating microbial mats on which the snails feed and lay their eggs. Chemicals such as insect repellents and deodorants on people’s skin can also harm the snails and their habitat, as can changes in water levels.

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Solar garden arises in vicinity of power plant

CRAIG – Another solar garden has opened in Colorado, this one at Craig, 42 miles west of Steamboat Springs. It has an oddity to it lacking in the solar gardens found at Breckenridge, west of Telluride, and other locations.

Unlike the others, this new solar farm is situated near the Craig Station, a series of three coal-burning power plants that can collectively produce 1,303 megawatts of electricity. The solar farm is nowhere near that robust. It can produce not quite a half-megawatt of generation, but only when the sun is out. All of Colorado’s solar farms, roof-top solar, and other installations have a maximum capacity of 34 megawatts.

The mayor of Craig, Terry Carwile, who formerly worked in the coal industry, said he was happy to see the solar alongside the local plant. “I believe that we should be energy leaders in this part of the state,” he said, in a story posted by the Craig Daily Press.

– Allen Best

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