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Victim was a free spirit

WINTER PARK, Colo. - This winter's sixth victim of a deep-snow immersion was a 48-year-old free spirit who sometimes went by the name of "Baker" Dave in Winter Park, a tip of his beret to his winter occupation.

WINTER PARK, Colo. - This winter's sixth victim of a deep-snow immersion was a 48-year-old free spirit who sometimes went by the name of "Baker" Dave in Winter Park, a tip of his beret to his winter occupation.

Dave Riddle's friends described him as "eccentric," reported the Sky-Hi News . He had studied physics in college, and his head was always full of ideas, but also increasingly the words of Mandarin. He had met a Chinese woman and had traveled to China eight times in the last two years, with the understanding by her father that she would be allowed to marry once he had learned Mandarin and purchased land in China.

For a couple of decades he got at least 100 days each season at Winter Park on skis, both alpine and telemark, or on a snowboard - which is how he was found on the evening of Feb. 11, outside the boundary of Winter Park.

He was wearing a helmet, but blunt trauma wasn't the problem. Plunged head first into the well of soft and deep snow next to the tree he had suffocated.

It's been a bad winter for tree-well and other deep-snow immersions. In addition to the one in Colorado, there were two in rapid succession at the same ski area in Montana, one in California, and two in British Columbia.

One of the latter occurred during a snowcat trip at Retallack Lodge, B.C. The other was at Whistler at Christmas, when a snowboarder was trapped in an inverted position after falling in deep snow in a creek bed. Unlike the others, it was not next to a tree.

An average of 3.8 deaths occur annually in the United States from what Paul Baugher calls non-avalanche related snow immerse deaths, or NARSID. The figures from British Columbia would boost that figure substantially. British Columbia has had the most NARSID fatalities since 1990, followed by California and Colorado.

Baugher, who is the director of Washington's Crystal Mountain Ski Patrol, has become the ski industry's expert on deep-snow immersions. He said he and others dismissed the first tree-immersion fatality at Crystal Mountain in the early 1990s as a freakish accident. But when another one occurred a decade later, he set out to investigate.

He has discovered that immersion deaths, in which the individuals cannot right themselves, correlate with the deep snows of La Niña winters. There's also a correlation with bigger canopy trees, such as are found in the Sierra Nevada, the Pacific Northwest, and Montana.

Colorado has fewer such trees, but it has more skiers. He found no immersion deaths east of the Rockies, probably because deep, powdery snowstorms rarely occur.

Conducting experiments at Crystal Mountain, Baugher had volunteers agree to be put into tree wells, as they might end up if skiing or snowboarding. Few people could get themselves out unassisted.

Baugher also pointed out that in most cases victims die quickly. As such, he said, it's not enough to agree to meet up at the bottom of the run. People skiing in trees should always keep sight of one another.

In the case at Winter Park, Baker Dave was skiing with two others. But obviously, they weren't staying close together. He was reported missing at 4 p.m. and wasn't found until 6 p.m. By then, it was too late.

 

Doctor challenges ban

JACKSON, Wyo. - Both outrage and a few smiles have been evident in Jackson Hole since 78-year-old Roland Fleck was arrested after refusing to stop skiing up the slopes of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort.

Ski patrollers said they tried for three and a half hours to persuade him to stop skiing uphill and instead go with the flow on Feb. 5. They even offered to give him a free lift ticket.

But Fleck, a physician, defiantly told them he was skiing to his granddaughter's ski race on the mountain and then told them to "just give me a ticket."

At length, they did more, detaining him with two sets of handcuffs and then hauling him down the mountain in a toboggan. He was in jail for more than seven hours.

"I thought Aspen was crazy, but it sounds like Jackson Hole has its claim to the same," wrote Ward Hauenstein, of Aspen, in a letter published the following week in the Jackson Hole News&Guide .

Jackson Hole, wrote a local in the same paper, "markets itself as a big-mountain, extreme, helmet-cam ready destination resort. Now they have declared hiking up a cat track on skins a hazard that cannot be tolerated under any circumstances."

At resorts across the West, the issue of "uphilling" has become an occasional thorn in recent decades, as people have increasingly taken to the slopes to improve cardiovascular conditioning. But while resorts mostly operate on public land, they have special-use permits that allow them to place restrictions on use.

Earlier this winter, Montana's Whitefish Mountain Resort annoyed many locals when it announced that people heading uphill, using skins on skis or snowshoes, would have to hew to a restricted route.

But the case at Jackson Hole stands out from others partly because of Fleck. Austrian by birth, he began visiting Jackson Hole in the 1950s and moved permanently in 1978. He was said to be one of the first people to use climbing skins, the devices that can be attached to the bottom of skis to allow climbing.

Fleck invested in Teton Village, the real estate project at the base of the ski area, in 1965, and was known for his emergency room work in Jackson Hole. He has also been a fitness buff.

But Ray Spencer, the winter sports administrator for the Forest Service, told the newspaper that circumstances at different ski areas require different policies. While Colorado's Buttermilk ski area has hundreds of people skiing or snowshoeing up its slopes each day, Jackson Hole is different in that significant avalanche work occurs almost daily.

"At Buttermilk, there's not a lot of benches and rollers, so (downhill skiers) can see people coming up," said Spencer, who has experience at Aspen and Steamboat. At Jackson Hole, he said, "the angle of the slopes is steeper. The skiers are carrying much more speed compared to Buttermilk."

But the News& Guide also found people who thought Fleck might prevail.

"People think that Fleck is somehow responsible to cause these people to have to do that to him," said Armando Menocal, an attorney and mountain guide who has litigated for access by rock climbers.

"I did civil rights cases for 25 years, people who stand on principle aren't always the nicest people in the world, but we should be thankful that they have more cojones than we do," he said.

Perhaps a middle perspective was provided to the paper by Jim Mccarthy, a retired liability attorney, formerly of Jackson and now of Ridgway, Colo. While the resort probably fears liability, he said that Jackson Hole is "probably missing the boat on setting up an uphill travel corridor."

The News&Guide seemed to tip its editorial hat at both Fleck's obvious stubbornness, calling him "mulish," but also at the nature of the dispute that, only in a ski town could be understood as important. "Free Fleck," the editorial said.

 

Ouray officials split on more wilderness

OURAY, Colo. - Ouray County commissioners are presenting less than a united front in support of enlarging the designated wilderness in the San Juan Mountains.

The Telluride Watch reports that one of the three commissioners dissented at a recent forum, arguing that wilderness will handcuff potential mining for rare-earth minerals and development of small hydro projects.

The commissioner, Mike Fidel, who worked at one of the local mines for some years, said he was very uncomfortable relying on a single industry, tourism, for the local economy. "I'm afraid we're going to lock everything up," he said.

But Commissioner Lynn Padgett, a geologist, said rare-earth minerals are actually not all that rare. What is rare, she added, is the alpine tundra and water-filtering ecosystem found in the proposed wilderness addition, located on the north slope of the Sneffels Range, between Telluride and Ridgway.

"Mining has always been boom-and-bust," she said. "Tourism has sustained us and will continue to sustain us."

Adding testimony was Joe Ryan, a former miner who runs a backcountry hut system. He said in all his years of rambling the proposed wilderness area, he has found only three holes. The minerals are in the interior of the San Juan Mountains, inside the caldera of the ancient volcano, such as in Yankee Boy Basin, he said.

 

A flurry of mansion sales

ASPEN, Colo. - The Aspen Times reports a recent run on very expensive houses. Five homes with sales prices of between $13.75 million and $20 million have been sold since late December, with contracts out on two more.

The take-home message seems to be that high-end buyers who had been sitting on the sidelines have decided that prices have hit bottom. "People have been hesitant to pull the trigger. Now that's changing," said Brian Hazen, vice president at Mason Morse Real Estate.

In some cases, those sitting on the sidelines were well rewarded for their hesitancy. A home sold for $16 million in the recent flurry had originally been listed for $32 million.

But don't be worried about missing out. There are still 49 homes listed at $10 million and more in the Aspen area. Real estate agents, ever the hopeful sorts, said they think they can put a dent in that total this year.

 

Tahoe lays out vision for base village

LAKE TAHOE, Calif. - The debate is starting about what makes sense as Homewood Mountain Ski Resort plans a major upgrade.

The resort, located on the west shore of Lake Tahoe, has six development alternatives, but the preferred one calls for a 17-acre development that will yield a substantial amount of housing, skier-services facilities and a parking garage. The plans also include a lodge with 75 traditional hotel rooms plus 40 condominium/hotel units, and 30 penthouse condominiums, reports the Sierra Sun .

Art Chapman, president of JMA Ventures, a San Francisco-based real-estate firm, said the intent is to create "an upscale boutique ski resort the community can be proud of."

Chapman touted the environmental credentials of the proposed development, which would be built to LEED gold standard, the third highest of four levels. The project, he said, would make Homewood "the most progressive environmental ski resort ever at Lake Tahoe."

 

Sun Valley debating energy efficiencies

HAILEY, Idaho - Can the Ketchum/Sun Valley area go where the Aspen, Vail, and Telluride communities have started to go, with more energy-efficient buildings? That's the drift of things, but there's plenty of pushback from builders.

The Idaho Mountain Express explained that county officials are looking to upgrade the building code, to require that homes of more than 11,000 square feet have net zero energy consumption. That would require renewable energy mitigation and great amounts of energy efficiency.

Just how much would this add to the cost of building these mansions? There seems to be no firm figure that is commonly accepted. Estimates at a recent meeting of county officials, builders and environmental advocates ranged from zero to 30 per cent.

But meanwhile, the proposed regulations would also require energy audits of even smaller homes of 2,000 square feet. That requirement, said a builder, would be onerous.

 

Banff versus chain stores

BANFF, Alberta - The arrival of another chain restaurant in Banff has reignited passionate debate over whether the municipality should intercede to protect community character and aesthetics.

The new business, Rick's All Day Grill, has about 60 restaurants. It joins other well-established franchises in Banff that include McDonald's, Chili's, The Old Spaghetti Factory, Tony Roma's and Boston Pizza, among others.

Municipal planning officials say they intend to give elected officials proposed regulations that would include quotas for all future chain or franchise restaurants.

 

In the blogging section of the Rocky Mountain Outlook website, a reader identified as Alvin Shier says maybe Banff officials should consider overseeing food preparation. "Most places hire drift-in-drift-out kids on a world tour who have no formal training in how to handle food or have any stake in the public they serve. One of these days someone is going to get really sick and die..."

 

A powerful lot of snow in Revelstoke

REVELSTOKE, B.C. - With the snowfall reaching 432 centimetres (170 inches, or 14 feet), Revelstoke by Valentine's Day had already exceeded its average annual. And, with that much snow piled up, power lines were within reach of children who, in their naiveté, might be tempted to touch them.

As such, a warning was issued by town officials, reports the Revelstoke Times Review .

While not a scientific poll, the newspaper's website asked readers their druthers. Fully half said they hoped it kept snowing forever.

 

Bill would give ski area operators more latitude

BOULDER, Colo. - U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, along with other Congressional representatives from Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, has introduced a bill that would expand the authority of ski area operators to use their permitted federal lands for non-skiing uses.

While mountain bike trails have never been questioned, and some ski areas even have had alpine slides, ski areas would like clear authority for other uses.

The proposed bill, explained The Aspen Times , specifically allows Frisbee golf, ropes courses and zip lines, and other still unspecified uses. But it excludes tennis courts, swimming pools, golf courses, water slides and water parks.

In a press conference, Udall said he isn't promoting industrial tourism, but wants to allow better use of existing facilities and to attract tourists to resort towns.

"Our ski areas shouldn't have to close up shop once the snow melts," he said.

 

Vail Resorts and Cadillac hook up

BROOMFIELD, Colo. - Vail Resorts has linked with Cadillac, which is now the official vehicle at the company's four Colorado ski resorts and two in California. "Vail Resorts provides our guests a world-class experience, and our brands are synonymous with luxury and sophistication," said Heidi Kercher-Pratt, chief marketing officer of Vail Resorts. "Cadillac's line of vehicles and economic reputation is an impressive addition in our resorts."