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Mountain News: Disabled ski champ didn't dwell on past

Avalanches are taking lives at an alarming rate
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AVLANCHE ALERT Now that mountains in the United States have snow, avalanches are a major concern.

BISHOP, Calif. — You think you had a bad day? Think about Jill Kinmont Boothe, whose early life you may have seen depicted in a movie, "The Other Side of the Mountain."

One of her first loves, skier Dick "Mad Dog" Buek, died in a plane crash, and a second, Buddy Werner, died in a an avalanche. Steamboat's Mt. Werner is named after him.

Then, the person who inspired her passion for academics at the University of California at Los Angeles, Lee Zadroga, died just a few years after she met him.

And, of course, there was the accident. She was a national ski champion, and had been on the cover of Sports Illustrated — when, in the winter of 1955, a skiing accident left her a quadriplegic.

She didn't spend much time looking over her shoulder. After moving to Seattle with her parents, she obtained her teaching credentials and then got her first job as a teacher of remedial reading. Then, she returned to Bishop, where she had learned to ski, on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada, about 48 kilometres from the Mammoth ski area, and taught from 1975 to 1996 while pursuing an avocation in art.

Dave McCoy, the legendary founder of Mammoth ski area, refused to answer the question put to him by The Sheet as to whether she was the best skier he had ever coached.

"I don't think you should say things like that," he answered when asked.

"She worked like crazy to make herself better. She didn't want to beat anyone else particularly. She just wanted to better herself. She was that kind of person — every day she had to be better. And she helped other people be what they wanted to be."

Kinmont died in February, a passing observed by the New York Times and a host of other publications. But the choicest quotes were most local. Her husband, John Boothe, who married Kinmont in 1976, told The Sheet that he never looked at her as disabled.

"I didn't look at it that way. She came off as normal in a minute."

And McCoy had this to say: "The world gets screwed up going after yesterdays. It's about now."

High school sledder 24th avie victim

MOAB, Utah — As unluck would have it, both the first and most recent fatal avalanches in the United States occurred in Utah this winter. The first was at Snowbird, the ski area just outside Salt Lake City, when a snowboarder was killed by trauma after being caught in an avalanche before the ski area was opened.

The most recent occurred Saturday, when an 18-year-old snowmobiler riding in the La Sal Mountains, located just west of the Colorado border, above the desert town of Moab, was caught in a slide that began about 300 metres above him.

The Utah Avalanche Center reports that the victim's party had just one beacon, one probe, and two shovels. His companions dug where they believed he was buried, but after digging for two metres found nothing. By then, an hour and 45 minutes had elapsed.

Their meager tools were insufficient for the circumstances. It took much better probes — and plenty of digging by 50 volunteers before the victim's body was found about a day after he was buried. He was under nearly four metres of snow.

The victim, who was still in high school, was the 24th person killed in an avalanche in the United States as of Monday: 11 were skiers, eight snowmobilers, four snowboarders and one had been on a snow bike.

Colorado and Montana led in the death toll, with six each, followed by five in Utah and four in Montana.

Five have died as a result of avalanches in Canada this year.

The record toll of this century, 36 fatalities, was twice set in recent years. In Canada, the high figure of 28 deaths was set in 2002-2003.

It's a measure of how shaky the snow is that even in-bounds avalanches at ski areas have occurred. The Salt Lake Tribune reports that a slide caught one person on an in-bounds run known as Blackjack, located on a west-facing slope that separates Snowbird and Uinta. Although avalanche control work had been done on the slope several hours before, the slough was enough to cause minor injuries to a 24-year-old man." It's extremely rare to have a slide after avalanche control work has been done and after the slope has been well skied on all day, like this slope was," Snowbird spokeswoman Emily Moench told the Tribune. Rapidly warming temperatures following weekend storms likely contributed to the avalanche, she told the newspaper.

Avie beacons of use in South America

KETCHUM, Idaho — What to do with your old avalanche beacon? A group called the South American Beacon Project is collecting them for use by ski patrollers and other ski resort employees in the Andes.

The old beacons can be sent to the South American Beacon Project at 3434 East 7800 South, No. 263, Salt Lake City UT 84121.

Among those collecting old beacons is Miles Canfield, a member of the Ketchum Fire Department. "I like knowing that a tool that was once valuable to me can be passed on to someone to appreciate it," he told the Idaho Mountain Express. "When you have nothing, you are happy to have anything."

Wolves too close for comfort

JACKSON, Wyo. — Wolves have been somewhat commonplace in a subdivision on the edge of Jackson, just five minutes from downtown. To the dismay of some, federal wildlife officials expected to kill the animals.

The Jackson Hole News&Guide reports that one of the homeowners in the Indian Trails subdivision posted video footage on YouTube of the wolves travelling within 10 metres of his home. James Peck told the newspaper that the wolves seemed to be using his property to travel from one place to another.

"They appeared to avoid humans," he said. "They weren't sniffing around the deck."

Suzanne Stone from the Defenders of Wildlife said that hazing has succeeded in chasing wolves from residential areas near Ketchum, Idaho.

Hazing in that sort of situation rarely succeeds, said Mike Jimenez, the wolf manager of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He said his agency would use a helicopter and tranquilizer darts to track and capture three or four wolves that have been near homes.

Residents of the subdivisions where the wolves were seen say they don't like to see the predators killed, but understand that Jimenez made the decision to err on the side of human safety.

"If the goal is the long-term recovery of wolves, then I think they need to avoid these kinds of public relations nightmares (such as) if a wolf jumps onto somebody's porch and rips somebody's dog to pieces."

Wildlife managers say that acceptable ecosystem niches for wolves are already occupied in the region, and hence there is no place to transplant the too-close-for-comfort wolves.

From Ketchum, meanwhile, comes a story about a wolf that did get into somebody's driveway. But the emaciated wolf was suffering desperately from an intestinal virus called parvovirus. Barely able to raise its head, it died in the driveway, reports the Idaho Mountain Express. The condition can also affect domestic dogs.

Climate change stance triggers Aspen debate

ASPEN, Colo. —The Aspen Chamber Resort Association is staying in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, despite the vigorous protests of some locals.

"The very fact that we're affiliated with them is embarrassing," said David Perry, senior vice president for the Aspen Skiing Co. He said that 55 per cent of the U.S. Chamber's budget comes from anonymous donors, and speculated that the money comes from the oil and gas industry.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has lobbied against legislation that seeks to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

Membership in the national organization costs the local group $800 a year, reports the Aspen Daily News.

Vail Resorts knocks down energy use 10 per cent

BROOMFIELD, Colo. — Vail Resorts, now the owner of seven ski areas in the West, in 2008 announced efforts to ratchet down energy use by 10 per cent. It has succeeded — and now has a new goal of reducing energy use another 10 per cent by 2020.

The company says it will examine ways to improve snowmaking, increase building automation, invest in free cooling, and make additional LED lighting upgrades.

Linking of Utah ski areas advances

PARK CITY, Utah — For decades, ski areas that straddle the Wasatch Range in Utah have mused about the potential to become linked. They're relatively close together, with the resorts around Park City lying just a few miles east from Solitude, Snowbird and the others.

Now a bill has passed a committee in the U.S. House of Representatives that would make that easier to happen. The bill would allow the U.S. Forest Service to sell 30 acres of land deemed essential to allow this interconnection to occur.

While ski industry promoters in Utah last autumn proclaimed this as an idea with very little opposition, in fact significant doubts are now being voiced. Not only does a key environmental group object, but so does the mayor of Salt Lake City. The city draws its water from the canyons, and argues that expanded ski area development along the Wasatch could degrade the municipal water supplies.

Dog survives attack by big cat in Canmore

CANMORE, Alberta — A large cougar attacked a small dog near downtown Canmore recently, just after midnight.

Police tell the Rocky Mountain Outlook that a man was walking his two dogs when a cougar emerged from the darkness and attacked the smaller, 16-kilogram dog he had on a leash. The man fought off the cougar, and the dog escaped with just a few scratches.

Last year, a cougar attacked a dog in the Banff-Canmore area, and another attacked a child.