Whistler may host refugees from Syria
WHISTLER, B.C. – While Republican politicians in the United States bluster on about sealing the borders with Mexico and Canada, politicians in Canada have been talking about inviting refugees from Syria into their homes.
Whistler Mayor Nancy Wilhem-Morden was moved to tears by the picture of a 3-year-old boy whose body washed up onto the shores of Turkey. “To see that little boy, so senseless and blameless and … dead,” she told Pique Newsmagazine. A resolution she was preparing sought to prod the Canadian government into more hurried efforts to receive refugees.
Wilhelm-Morden said it was the right thing to “sponsor one or two or three families” at a cost of $27,000 per family.
But Carole Stretch, program manager of the Whistler Multicultural Network, an organization working to support immigrants, warned of the continued support that would be needed. The immigrants will have mental health trauma and probably physical issues as well, Stretch said. In Whistler, they would be detached from others of their native culture as Whistler has few Arabic speakers.
“This is not a short-term thing to help these families. This is long term,” she said. “I also think we need to think through how we respond and whether sponsoring families to actually come to Whistler is the best response.”
Hoots and hollers about ski season
ASPEN – When did meteorologists become folk heroes? The answer seems to be when ski towns are on the cusp of El Niño.
Cory Gates, a meteorologist with AspenWeather.net, laid out his expectations at his company’s first-ever winter-outlook party Monday. The Aspen Times reports the event drew 150 people who clapped, cheered and whistled, when, with absolute confidence, Gates predicted an El Niño winter. His collaborating meteorologist, Ryan Boudreau, said snowfall will, at the very worst, be normal. That alone makes it better than last year.
AspenWeather.net says Snowmass could get 360 inches of snow this year, 31 inches more than average. But the story is on the edges. As other meteorologist have warned, mid-winter itself could be a dud.
Feds frown on high-elevation growing
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS – Cannabis became legal in Colorado two years ago, but it’s not legal everywhere – and especially on national forest.
While federal officials have been willing to turn a blind eye toward Colorado’s closely regulated industry, that tolerance doesn’t extend to furtive grow operations on federal lands. Colorado newspapers last week reported growers at two sites were busted by federal agents.
One site was near Buffalo Pass, north of Steamboat Springs, where federal agents found 926 marijuana plants, but also a loaded .22-caliber pistol that had been reported stolen two years previously, a machete and two knives.
All this occurred at about 9,000 feet, and the plants appeared to be a couple feet tall, Steamboat Today reported. Could the plants have reached maturity before the first frost? Hard to say.
The other site was at 10,000 feet, in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of southern Colorado.
Survey finds wolverines in Wyoming
JACKSON, Wyo. – Several years ago a wolverine wandered into Colorado from Wyoming, where a few had been seen in recent years near Jackson Hole.
The lone male somehow managed to dodge the trucks on I-80, and find its was to Rocky Mountain National Park.
According to Eric Odell, carnivore conservation program manager for Colorado Parks and Wildlife, using radio telemetry, it was determined the wolverine also crossed I-70 three or four times before disappearing to who knows where.
Evidence that wolverines are plentiful? No, but a multi-year research initiative in Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, and Washington to map wolverines south of the Canadian border finds at least a few in the Yellowstone area. Before, except in the Tetons, the area was a question mark.
The Jackson Hole News&Guide reports that cameras in five of 18 high-elevation areas of Wyoming turned up evidence of wolverines, including several in the Wind River Range.
Kim Heinemeyer, of Round River Conservation Studies, warns about making assumptions though.
“If you hear rhetoric currently, it’s often that wolverines are doing fine or expanding because you get these males that disperse long distances,” she said in Jackson recently. “But those are just single male animals of a species that do big dispersals.”
The wolverine has been proposed as a species for protection under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.
Fire and rain. Will flooding be next?
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. – The stories coming out of California are about fire and rain.
First the flames: The Los Angeles Times reports that insurance rates for homes located near wildlands have increased sharply. Factors fueling fears of insurers include both the drought and some huge recent blazes.
The Times tells of one family, located near Yosemite, whose annual insurance costs doubled this year to $51,000. This increase was despite efforts by the owners to plant a 50-foot lawn buffer around the house and install fire-resistant landscaping.
One insurance agent says clients who own homes in mountainous areas pay 30 to 40 percent more than their counterparts with property in areas that are less vulnerable.
But will it stay dry? After four years, that seems like the new normal. But El Niños can produce drenching rains. Which brings us to flooding.
The Sacramento Bee reports that the number of federal flood insurance policies active in California has fallen by 30,000, or 12 percent, since the drought began in 2012. The newspaper cited data from the National Flood Insurance Program.
As strange as it sounds, says the Bee, California could see extensive flooding this year with the strong El Niño.
Glider team hopes to break record
BEND, Ore. – Can you imagine being 90,000 feet in the sky, on the edge of the outer atmosphere in nothing more than a glider? In Central Oregon, a team working at an airport near Bend thinks it can be done by next year.
The world’s existing fixed-wing altitude record of 50,722 was set by former NASA test pilot Einar Enevoldson, the founder of the Perlan Project, and his co-pilot and noted adventurer, Steve Fossett. That was in 2006.
A successful businessman until his early retirement to Beaver Creek, Fossett set a number of edge-of-impossible records before a plane he was piloting several years ago slammed into a mountainside near the Mammoth Mountain Ski Area.
In this next project, called Perlan 2, coordinator Doug Perrenod tells the Bend Bulletin that the intent for this new glider is to go higher than any other fixed-wing aircraft with a pilot in it. “That includes the Air Force’s U-2 (spy plane). It really will be on the edge of space.”
While aircrafts that go into higher altitudes must have pressurized systems, the Perlan Project has developed its own life support system, a “re-breather” similar to what is used for underwater diving.
The glider will make as many as 20 flights in Oregon this fall to test air breaks and different maneuvers and so forth. In December, according to current plans, the testing will be moved to Nevada, where higher flights to above 50,000 will occur this winter. Then, next March or April, everything will be moved to Argentina and the effort to rise to 90,000 feet.
“We may not get it done the first day or the first week,” Perrenod said. It took Enevoldson and Fossett a few years to attain their record, he added. “It was one success against several failures.”
Vail Resorts has lived up to Park City pledge
PARK CITY, Utah – The sock-rubbing continues in Park City, a year after Vail Resorts succeeded in its ambitions to purchase the Park City Mountain Resort.
The Park Record points out that in introducing its value-added Epic Pass into the Utah market, Vail Resorts forced Deer Valley, Snowbird, and Brighton to form their own alliance. Vail has also upped the corporate-giving ante with $1.3 million in grants and in-kind services. Plus, the company has begun installing $50 million in improvements at its newly conjoined Park City and Canyons ski areas.
Last year, until the announcement of the sale, Park City was “shrouded in gloom, and doom” because of uncertainty about continued ski area operations. This year, there’s excitement about a banner ski season. “Much of the credit for that goes to Vail Resorts. The company promised, and it delivered.”
– Allen Best
For more, go to www.mountaintownnews.net