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The tango of the dollar & the loonie

WHITEFISH, Mont. – The Canadian and U.S. dollars have been doing the monetary tango. The loonie, as the Canadian dollar is called, has dropped to 70 cents as compared to the U.S. dollar, the lowest since 2003, according to the Globe & Mail. That compares to 110 cents in 2007, an all-time high.

This means that it takes $145 in Canadian currency for $100 of goods or services in the United States. Conversely, it makes Canadian resorts like Banff and Whistler much less expensive for American visitors.

In Montana, where 19 percent of visitors come from Canada, this dipsy-doodle of exchange rates has been felt keenly. Just a few years ago, visitors sometimes arrived with U-hauls to buy goods from Costco and other stores. When the Great Recession hit, the Canadians still had money to spend, buoying the local economy.

Now, when they do go south, the Canadians are leaving less money behind in places like Whitefish, a five-hour drive south of Calgary.

“There are still a lot of Alberta (license) plates in the parking lot, but we’re way down in our Alberta lodging,” says Nick Polumbus, director of sales and marketing for Whitefish Mountain Resort. “Maybe they’re staying with friends now or finding a less-expensive place to stay during their ski trip.”

In Kalispell, located a short drive south of Whitefish, the local Costco manager tells the Flathead Beacon of a 30 percent reduction in the number of Canadian customers.

Resort real estate has also been impacted. In 2012, when the U.S. economy was still recovering, some 225 properties in Flathead County were purchased by Canadians. The Beacon reports that last year Canadians purchased only 21 properties.

Oil prices explain the difference. When oil was $140 a barrel, Canada was prospering, owing to its giant production from the oil/tar sands of Alberta. Now, with all the oil being produced from shale formations, there’s a glut and oil has dipped to less than $30 a barrel.

It could get worse. CBC News in January reported that an analyst with investment bank Macquarie expects the loonie to lose another 10 cents, to reach an all-time low of 59 cents by the end of 2016.

All this adds up to a very cheap road trip to places like Banff and Whistler for Americans, both because of low gas prices and the favorable exchange rate. Whitefish town manager Chuck Stearns tells the local newspaper, the Pilot, that he expects unusually heavy summer business to Whitefish.

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Lake Powell tied to Colorado ski lifts

ASPEN – Just how much more water can be drawn from the rivers that originate in Colorado’s mountains before the electrical supply powering the ski lifts gets wobbly?

That sounds a bit like a zen koan, but in fact, it’s at the heart of a discussion now under way in Colorado. The Colorado River is already heavily tapped by local farms. Then there’s the matter of the giant straws that convey as much as 600,000 acre-feet per year to the Front Range as well as farms on the Great Plains.

There’s only so much water in the Colorado River, and its use is strictly governed by interstate compacts. More importantly, the upper-basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming are obligated to allow roughly half the water in the Colorado River to flow downstream, to the lower-basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada, as well as Mexico.

Just how much water remains in Colorado, whether for ski areas, cannabis farms or Front Range cities? Nobody really knows.

But a $50,000 study funded by several West Slope organizations aims to get a better answer. Aspen Journalism reports that water organizations on Colorado’s Eastern Slope also want to get involved.

Chris Treese, the external affairs manager for the Colorado River Water Conservation District, recently explained the dynamics. If Lake Powell drops so low it can’t produce hydropower, he said, it also means the dam will not be able to release enough water to meet its rolling 10-year obligation under the 1922 Colorado River Water Compact.

“The earlier crisis point – and I don’t think that’s overstating it – is when Lake Powell falls to a level that is below the point where power can be produced through the dam,” Treese explained.

Aspen Journalism explains that this call for a more definitive study has been spurred by a disagreement on Colorado’s Western Slope. The Yampa-White River Basin (including Steamboat Springs) wants to reserve the right to dam and divert more water. The Gunnison Basin (including Crested Butte) is concerned this will hasten what is called a “compact call,” or reduced water use in all basins.

And about that electricity? The turbines at Glen Canyon produce massive amounts of it. This low-cost (and non-carbon) electricity is then distributed to utilities that serve many of the ski towns in Colorado.

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U.S. Pro Challenge takes a hiatus

ASPEN – The U.S. Pro Challenge, which has brought some of the world’s most elite bicycle racers to Colorado, is taking a hiatus. As has occurred with previous bicycle tours in Colorado, there’s a giant gap between revenues and expenses. Organizers are trying to find a deep-pocketed title sponsor.

Former Aspen Mayor Mick Ireland, a bicycling enthusiast, says the races gave him something that only happened once during his quarter century in elected office: he was asked for his autograph.

It was during an evening when Aspen was uncommonly happy with the world, he explains in a column in the Aspen Daily News.

“Ask any mayor if that’s a common experience, a town full of people who are just plain happy about their day and eager to stop and share that feeling,” he writes.

Such expressions of gratitude and happiness aren’t common in ski towns, he went on to say. “In a town that can be 10 percent empty much of the time and First World problems like a six-minute traffic jam on Main Street take on crisis overtones, a day of pure joy is worth remembering.”

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Snowmelt systems big user of energy

ASPEN – In 1999, Aspen and Pitkin County adopted what amounts to a tax on what is considered to be extravagant use of energy in homes. The tax in the Renewable Energy Mitigation Program applies to homes that exceed 5,000 square feet in size and those with high-energy features such as private snowmelt systems, heated outdoor pools and outdoor spas.

Snowmelt systems burned the most energy, accounting for 84 percent of exterior use in the 280 homes subject to the tax between 2010-14, according to a study by the Community Office for Resource Efficiency, or CORE, which administers the program.

People building these new homes or upgrading existing ones can offset their energy use by installing renewable energy features or pay an in-lieu fee. Those fees since 2000 have added up to $12 million. The money is allocated to community energy efficiency and renewable projects.

However, whereas a decade ago 59 percent of homeowners mitigated their high-energy use with on-site renewable energy, in the last few years it’s been about 75 percent, according to a recent CORE report.

In the last decade, similar programs have been adopted by Eagle County, Crested Butte and Telluride/San Miguel County.

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$1,500 fines for going to where caribou are

JASPER, B.C. – Three backcountry users were fined $1,500 each after pleading guilty to entering areas closed for the protection of the dwindling caribou herds in Jasper National Park.

The Jasper Fitzhugh explains that surveillance cameras alerted park wardens that the closure had been violated. The closure was instituted in the belief that human footprints in the snow can be used by wolves to more easily reach alpine areas and prey on the caribou.

The violators claimed ignorance, but the judge ruled that it wasn’t excusable. “In circumstances like these, you have to read the signs,” said Judge J.P. Higerty.

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Video game follows life of a fire lookout

JACKSON, Wyo. – A new video game set in Wyoming called Firewatch has been released, but it’s not an action-packed, excitement-overloaded game, reports the Jackson Hole News&Guide.

Instead, it’s one that allows the user to help the characters develop through a focus on the storyline. That story involves a fire lookout named Henry, who in 1989—the year of the big fire in Yellowstone National Park—decides to get over the deterioration of his marriage by disappearing into the Shoshone National Forest of Wyoming to scout for wildfires.

The creator, Nels Anderson, a 2001 graduate of Jackson Hole High School, told the News&Guide that he sent his San Francisco-based team digging deep for details from which to fashion a credible backstory. They met with old lookouts, flipped through 1950s lookout cookbooks and apparently read some of Jack Kerouac. The so-called beat writer once worked as a fire lookout, until the boredom drove him away. He did get a novel, “Desolation Angels,” out of the experience.

The game is available for $20 and is programmed for Mac, Linux and Windows.

– Allen Best

For more, go to mountaintownnews.net