---

Thin ice for elk, and for others, too

It’s been a winter of thin ice. A cow elk fell through the ice in Banff National Park last week and drowned. No attempt was made to save the ungulate, as park officials deemed it best to let nature take its course.

Ice has also been thin in the Arctic Ocean this winter, a result of warm temperatures there and across the globe. February, said scientists, was the hottest month ever going back to 1880. January and December had also set global records. The three months were all 1 degree C warmer than the 20th century average.

“The planet is rapidly on its way to that 2-degree-Celsius mark, possibly faster than anyone imagined,” said CNN. “In fact, average temperatures over land in February were a mind-boggling 4.16 F/2.31 C above normal.”

The Associated Press found disagreement among scientists about what to make of the huge leap in temperatures. Gavin Schmidt, chief climate scientist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, called it “obviously strange” but suggested the heat of previous months will not be a permanent situation.

But others weren’t sure. Some talked about a “new normal.”

Can El Niño be blamed? In part, but CNN explained that it alone fails to explain all the extra heat the planet has seen recently.

Some of the warmest temperatures compared were found in the far northern latitudes, uninfluenced by El Niño, which primarily impacts tropical and mid-latitude regions.

“It’s being called the year without winter,” reported Toronto’s Globe and Mail. “Temperatures have been positively balmy across wide areas of (Canada).”

---

Troubled coal mine near Ski Town USA

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS – From Lincoln Avenue in Steamboat Springs, which calls itself Ski Town USA, it’s roughly 20 miles to Twentymile Mine. It’s a pastoral landscape of serviceberry and oak brush, but the main work there is industrial: mining of dark-as-midnight subbituminous coal.

But there’s trouble. Peabody Energy, the largest coal producer in the United States and owner of Twentymile, announced it was delaying $71.1 million in debt payments and might seek bankruptcy protection. The New York Times noted that this has been the path already taken by three of the other large coal companies in the United States.

Peabody had been trying to sell Twentymile and two other mines in New Mexico to raise cash. But the sale to Bowie Resources Partners appears to have stalled amid the difficult financing environment, said the Times.

The newspaper explained that banks have been pulling back from coal companies. The latest, JP Morgan Chase, announced it would no longer finance new coal-fired power plants in the United States or other wealthy nations.

“The retreat follows similar announcements by Bank of America, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley,” the Times added.

Bankers have given different reasons: some want to do their part to curtail climate change. But for others, it’s strictly business. Coal is being undercut by less expensive energy sources, especially natural gas, but also by stiffening regulations.

Many environmental groups have been working for years to shove the coal industry into a corner. The Sierra Club famously created a video campaign that pictured coal as vaguely obscene and perverted.

In Northwest Colorado, the group WildEarth Guardians has tried to pinch coal mining operations with lawsuits. “The writing’s on the wall: there is no future for coal,” said Jeremy Nichols, the group’s climate and energy program director. “It’s time for Peabody to acknowledge the realities of climate change and the need to keep coal in the ground.”

But the four coal-burning power units west of Steamboat Springs, near the towns of Hayden and Craig, are major suppliers of electricity for many ski towns and are equipped to burn nothing but coal.

---

Vail OKs $9 million to clean up creek

VAIL –Vail is located in the Gore Creek Valley, and it’s a beautiful creek, shimmering in late-afternoon sunlight. Kayakers cavort in it, and those practitioners of the long cast do so with regularity, because it’s designated a Gold Medal Trout Stream.

But it’s not a pristine river, nor even a clean one. Along with a number of other creeks that flow through Colorado towns, Gore Creek was listed as failing to meet new federal water quality standards in 2012.

The causes are many: homes with chemically treated lawns that spread out to the high-water mark; city streets; and sand and chemicals spread on Interstate 70.

After several years of discussing what to do, the Vail Town Council has approved a $9 million cleanup. The first year’s plan budgets $750,000 for design and improvement to the town’s storm drain system. The town also plans to hire somebody for two years with the express purpose of education.

What will success look like? Kristen Bertuglia, the town’s sustainability manager, told the Vail Daily she’d like to see a stable, or upward, trend in the number of macroinvertebrates. “That would be progress.”

---

A private ski area in N. San Juans

GUNNISON – Back in the 1980s, Jim Aronstein, a Denver lawyer, began working with a partner to buy old mining claims on Battle Mountain, located a few miles from Vail, between the towns of Minturn and Red Cliff. They came cheap, often just for back taxes.

Together, they put together more than 5,000 acres of former mining claims, many with wonderful views of the Sawatch Range. They then cut a deal with Vail Associates, as Vail Resorts was formerly known. Planners for Vail toyed with the idea of a private ski area and high-end real estate.

Vail ultimately walked away from the deal, leaving Aronstein and his partner to find somebody else. They found Floridian Bobby Ginn, who bought the land for $32.5 million and then courted residents of Minturn with his vision of a high-end resort with a private ski area.

Aronstein, meanwhile, took his money in 2005 and invested it in a new idea of paradise, sort of a Yellowstone Club in the Rockies. It consists of 2,000 acres of logging property located in a northern tip of the San Juan Mountains, in the Cimarron River Valley between Ouray and Gunnison.

After a few years, explained the Denver Post in a January story, Aronstein began recruiting buyers from the high ranks of the Colorado ski industry: Johnny Stevens, who ran Telluride for 33 years; John Norton, who was high up in the ranks of both Aspen and Crested Butte; and Andy Daly, once president of Vail as well as top executive at several other Colorado resorts.

The plan is to keep the ski area ultra-private: just 12 parcels, consisting of 35 to 204 acres, with no ski lifts but unlimited snowcat and guided skiing. There’s altogether more skiing than on Aspen Mountain.

Called the Cimarron Mountain Club, it looks like a ski resort but functions more like a residential development, Norton tells the Crested Butte News.

As for those 5,000-plus acres near Vail, they’ve been in the news again. After the developer from Florida went bankrupt, a new developer, Crave Properties, bought it but has been looking to do something less ambitious. It’s willing to trade the 5,000 acres to the U.S. Forest Service for some of the agency’s land adjacent to Minturn for real estate development.

---

Whitefish to hear why gender law is needed

WHITEFISH, Mont. – Elected officials in Whitefish this week were scheduled to hear a proposal that would make it illegal to discriminate based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

In Montana, the cities of Missoula, Helena, Butte and Bozeman have all adopted a similar law. The town of Dillon rejected a similar proposal, as did Billings.

The Whitefish Pilot reports that the local proposal is being pushed by Councilor Frank Sweeney. “It’s very hard to make the argument, in a civil society, that discrimination for gender identity or sexual orientation is fair,” he said.

He acknowledged that some question why a new law is necessary when no problem has been apparent.

“We have to set the tone for community values,” he responds. “Nobody should question what we’re about. We want to make it clear.”

---

Jasper Pride Parade draws high official

JASPER, Alberta –The Jasper Pride Festival this year was scheduled to include the first openly gay cabinet minister in Alberta. MLA Ricardo Miranda became the province’s first openly gay minister in early February and said he would participate in the Pride Parade, now in its seventh year in Jasper, to help promote Jasper’s tourism industry.

---

Coming to grips with popularity of edibles

ASPEN – The great popularity of edibles infused with THC, the psychoactive agent in marijuana, has been one of the great surprises of Colorado’s experiment with cannabis legalization. Nobody saw it coming.

But now that it’s here, Pitkin County’s elected officials want to get a grip on how to govern it. The Aspen Times reports a 90-minute discussion recently about access to youth, overdoses, accidental ingestion, and marketing and packaging.

Joe DiSalvo, the county sheriff, said his office was motivated to begin working with lodges after a hotel worker took home some chocolates found in a room. A child ate the candy and fell ill.

“We got proactive with the lodges and told them, ‘Please don’t assume anything is just candy anymore,’” he said. “It’s not what it appears to be.”

DiSalvo said local cannabis stores were asked to stop selling items that mimic candies that children could mistake as store-bought. But ultimately, the onus lies with the adults to protect their stash, “much like with cigarettes,” he said.

– Allen Best

For more, go to: http://mountaintownnews.net

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

– Allen Best

For more, go to http://mountaintownnews.net