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Mountain News: Canmore annoyed by first gated community

Compiled by Allen Best CANMORE, Alberta — Canmore has been getting big second-home money for awhile now, but it is just now getting its first gated community. Except that the developer hastens to add that it’s not a gated community.

Compiled by Allen Best

CANMORE, Alberta — Canmore has been getting big second-home money for awhile now, but it is just now getting its first gated community.

Except that the developer hastens to add that it’s not a gated community. Just a gate.

"Nineteen homes do not a community make," explained Greg Varricchio, executive vice-president of land development for Three Sisters Mountain Village. At least one of those 19 lots has sold for more than $1 million. In an interview with the Rocky Mountain Outlook, Varricchio cautioned that this enclave is "at the narrow end of the bell curve" of housing types at Three Sisters. "You’re not likely to see another development like this on Three Sisters property."

It appears that the town cannot prevent the gate, as it’s on private property. Similar requests have been made before, but town officials have tried to discourage them. The town may see what it can do to pass a bylaw, but it’s not clear that anything can be done. The town’s primary leverage seems to be access for emergency services.

Still, the idea goes down hard, if public pronouncements by municipal officials are a guide. "That’s not what this town is about," said the municipal planning director, Robert Ellis. "It’s not about creating private enclaves." Said Mayor Glen Craig, "I hope we never develop that kind of community…"

The Rocky Mountain Outlook saw the gates as very real evidence of the growing chasm between the wealthy and the not-wealthy. "Canmore has been heading down this road for a long, long time," said the newspaper. "We’ve seen it coming like the headlamp of a train on a darkened track."

The newspaper did not cite any particular impacts of gates, but did dwell at length on the "imagery that disturbs us."

Houston-Vail flights in works

EAGLE, Colo. — Last year promoters from Vail and the Eagle Valley initiated daily direct flights to Dallas.

The flights were a $475,000 risk, a third of the money put up by the county government. In the end, the hotels, developers, and government paid a collective $20,000. About half the people flying were second-home owners.

This year, those fights will continue, reports the Vail Daily, but various businesses and governments are pulling together $250,000 to guarantee flights from Houston, another primary source for tourist and second-home owners in the Eagle Valley.

Wal-Mart helps downtown businesses

DURANGO, Colo. — In Durango, as at other resort regions across the West, there’s great concern that the old mining-era downtown is losing its business – and its vitality – to the suburbs.

While business leaders sort through many good ideas, trying to devise a strategy for executing a few of them, the Durango Telegraph reports an unexpected ally: Wal-Mart. The giant retailer is distributing a directory of downtown businesses.

"At Wal-Mart Durango, we share the philosophy that successes in business start by building strong and healthy communities," explained the store’s director, Russell Parker. "By creating programs that contribute to the success of our local small businesses, everyone will win."

Beginners replacing ski jumpers

WINTER PARK, Colo. — The ski jumps at Winter Park that turned out at least a few Olympic jumpers are being scrapped to make way for beginning skiers.

Intrawest, now in its second year of management, has set out to boost the numbers at Winter Park by making it more appealing to intermediate, destination skiers. At least one major run, Outhouse, is being groomed, to the dismay of many die-hard bump skiers. Using the space now reserved for the 40- and 60-metre jumps located at the base area also allows more users in the same space. Intrawest figures it can accommodate 30,000 beginning skiers, compared to the 15 to 50 skiers now in the jumping program.

There are, of course, protests, including one from a 78-year-old skier who remembers skiing at Winter Park when the resort opened in 1940 as perhaps Colorado’s first destination resort.

The Winter Park Manifest, in its editorial, says that Intrawest is "walking a thin line between improved profitability and lingering distinctiveness. The paper recalled that Intrawest had "signed on to retain the uniqueness of what is Winter Park," and noted that it awaits Intrawest demonstrating how it can achieve that.

Moose nails snowshoer

PARK CITY, Utah — Never again, said a 65-year-old snowshoer after he was stomped hard by a 700-pound bull moose in a canyon near Park City. "I’m never coming back," said Nick Baldwin.

The Park Record explains that Baldwin and two 70-something companions were snowshoeing in the canyon when they encountered a moose on the trail about 50 yards away. The trio of men tried to hide behind a tree, assuming the moose would mosey down the trail, but they were wrong.

"He came down and stopped by the tree and licked his lips a few times," explains Bob Mitchell. The moose then knocked Baldwin down and began kicking and stepping on him, causing a fractured scapula and a severe laceration to his leg, before moving on.

There was some conjecture that the moose may have been agitated by previous encounters with people and dogs.

War declared on pine beetles

WINTER PARK, Colo. — Newspapers in Grand County, which is where Winter Park and Granby are located, have declared wars on two fronts.

On one front is a war on pine beetles announced by the Winter Park Manifest. The newspaper described the "evasive and unrelenting enemy" that could immediately "reduce property values" and could "ultimately cause homes to be destroyed."

Under the headline "Valley war on Pine Beetles," the Manifest explained that one subdivision is spending $100,000 to spray the property’s 15,000 larger trees. Already, 1,100 trees will have to be cut down even though the epidemic is just beginning. "I’m scared to death that this could be happening in our community," explained Steve Ley, the developer of the golf-course homes in question.

The Forest Service is also gearing up for the infestation. The Granby office has initiated the largest timber sales in its history, which says a lot. Timber harvesting during the Reagan years was substantial. So far, sales on 5,300 acres are in the works, but seem to be located well afield of areas where ensuing fires would be of danger to people.

It’s the second time in 20 years for this particular home-destroying enemy in those precincts. However, as forests in the Rocky Mountains age, more beetle epidemics are expected. Only extreme, 40-below cold, which Winter Park has not had in a number of years, or forest fires will abate the epidemic.

A sibling newspaper, the Sky-Hi News, has meanwhile declared a "water war," with the enemy this time presumably being Denver and other Front Range cities that want to increase their diversions from the Granby-Winter Park area. Water is clearly the greatest commodity in this tourist area. Already, about two-thirds of the water there is exported across the Continental Divide to cities and farms from Denver to Nebraska.

Cars worse than smokers

BANFF, Alberta — The partisans are fiercely debating the merits of a proposed ban on tobacco smoke in bars, restaurants, and other enclosed public places in Banff. The arguments are mostly typical, but a novel argument compares tobacco smoke with pollution from cars.

It takes, said Peter Steinber, owner of the Grizzly House Restaurant, more than 500 chain smokers to produce the same amount of pollution as the average car on Banff Avenue.

The Rocky Mountain Outlook reports that outdoor decks and patios would be exempted from the ban, but most bar and restaurant owners want an additional provision allowing "private" clubs.

No rush to affordable housing

TRUCKEE, Colo. — Growth continues to be the story at all resort areas across the West. That is unlikely to change for many years, despite the occasional economic lull that temporarily leaves the demand for and supply of affordable housing in equilibrium.

Still, many of the big boom areas are slow to step in to require affordable housing as a component of all projects, something called inclusionary zoning. In Colorado, commissioners in Eagle County, which is home to Vail and Beaver Creek and is also a suburb for Aspen’s workers, this year rejected inclusionary zoning. The proposal would have mandated that a percentage of any new subdivison include housing within the "affordable" price range. The idea had been under study for seven years.

In California’s Truckee, which is getting hit left and right with plans for high-end housing, the town also does not require affordable housing, except as negotiated in the larger, planned-unit projects. A case in point is the Tahoe Donner subdivision.

Planned are 82 single-family lots, with homes as small as 2,000 square feet, far below the typical mansions that characterize Homes on the New West Range.

One planning commissioner seemed to think that 10 to 20 per cent of the lots should be restricted to first-time home-buyers making 120 per cent of the town’s median income. But others dismissed his call, because no town policy is yet in place to base that requirement.

Dogs killing deer, elk

SUN VALLEY, IDAHO — In the Wood River Valley near Sun Valley, at least four elk were killed in early March by canines that, in at least one case, were dogs.

A woman recalls hearing a "horrible screaming sound" near her home, and went outside to see two dogs – one a German shepherd and the other a malamute or husky – chasing a young elk down the canyon’s slope until the elk bogged down in steep snow.

"One dog jumped on its back, and one jumped on its neck," Katherine Weekes told the Idaho Mountain Express. "They took it to its knees and killed it right in front of me. It was awful," she added.

A state wildlife officer, Roger Olson, explained that in spring, when the snow is alternately wet and then crusted, dogs can run on top of the snowpack with ease, while deer and elk break through. "Dogs will be dogs, and their instinct is to pursue and chase. Some do it for fun, and some do it to kill."

In the Banff-Camore area last December, dogs chased an elk onto the Trans-Canada Highway. The elk was then smacked by a truck. Owners of those dogs were fined.

Mud could fly over OHVs

SILVERTON, Colo. — "Ahhh … the slush. Ahhh … the mud," writes Jonathan Thompson, editor and publisher of the Silverton Standard and Miner.

Silverton, with two ski areas in its backyard, is a ski town, but hardly a destination resort. One of those two ski areas is mostly double-circle green runs, the other all double-black diamonds.

During winter, sales tax revenues are anemic, so much so that Thompson in his weekly editorial exhorted locals to buy their necessities at home rather than driving to outside towns. If every household in town spent $75 more each week in Silverton, he explained, the town would be $31,000 richer at year’s end.

And where would the money be spent? If Silverton follows the progression of other towns, it will probably take the mud from mud season. Not much mud remains in most ski towns, what with all the heated pavers, asphalted bike paths, and everything else.

Instead, Silverton is left to talk about how to get more money. One idea being discussed is to allow off-highway vehicles onto town streets. Town trustees, remembering a heated discussion four years ago, won’t tackle this themselves. They want to put it to a community vote. "I don’t even want to touch this with a 10-foot pole, Trustee Joe Zimmerman said at a recent meeting.

The Standard explains that proponents want to make Silverton accessible to OHV riders doing the loop among the nearby towns of Telluride and Ouray. But opponents say roaming OHVs would scare off other tourists and be a detriment to the safety and quality of life of residents.

Much the same discussion was being held last year in Telluride, where OHVs are currently banned from city streets.

With everybody in the high mountain towns getting cranky this time of year, the OHV debate in Silverton sounds like it could become a brawl.

Evidence inconclusive

SUMMIT COUNTY, Colo. — Are you more likely to have a heart attack if you go up from low-lying elevations, say Oakland or Houston, to Colorado’s high country resorts?

Yes, say a handful of county coroners contacted by the Rocky Mountain News. No, say several doctors.

Young people are a particular concern. In Summit County, with an elevation of around 9,000 feet, one in seven heart attack victims is under 40. One in 14 heart attack fatalities were people under 40 in Vermont’s largest resort area, with an elevation of 3,000 feet. The fatalities are mostly tourists. Full-time residents under 40 rarely have fatal heart attacks.

But Dr. Gordon Gerson, a cardiologist at Aspen Valley Hospital, flatly rejects the notion that the low-landers become more at risk when recreating at mountain resorts. "We have three to four skiers a year who have heart attacks on the mountains out of how many thousands of skiers?" he asked.

Flatlanders who have heart attacks in the high country were probably going to have them anyway, he maintains. That’s the same view of Dr. Ben Honigman, director of the new Colorado Center for Altitude Medicine and Physiology.

Snowmobiler dies

SUMMIT COUNTY, Colo. — It probably sounds impolite, but the question must be asked: Don’t snowmobilers read newspapers?

A 39-year-old snowmobiler was killed last week by an avalanche on Mt. Guyot, near Breckenridge. Authorities who spoke to the Summit Independent Daily suspected high-marking, which is the game of seeing how high on a slope you can get before gravity overwhelms acceleration. It is usually the reason that snowmobilers die in avalanches.

Avalanche danger at the time was cited as moderate, which is most often the danger when avalanche victims are killed. Newspapers – and the radio and television stations that repeat what newspapers dig up – have been filled for much of the last month with stories about the instability of the snow. Despite that instability, there have been fewer than average deaths so far this season

Spring cleanup questioned

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. — It sounds like cabin-fever grumpiness. In Crested Butte, several town council members are questioning the value of spring clean-up day.

It seems that the participation rate has steadily declined. Thirty years ago 100 people turned out to buff the town, reports the Crested Butte News. Last year, it was down to 32. Worst yet, according to one council member, many people seem to hoard their refuse through winter so that they can dispose of it for free during the spring cleanup. The event costs the town $14,000.

Crested Butte could take a cue from Vail, where the town council, in about 1990 began offering money to volunteers – not directly, but to the local charity of their choice, at $25 a head. The incentive flushes out 125 to 150 people annually. Now, even cigarette buttes from along I-70 get picked up.

Historian debunks Yellowstone story

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. — Danged those pesty, pedantic historians. They’re always digging into archives and everything else, trying to figure out if all of the stories we keep telling ourselves are actually correct.

A case in point is John Colter, a fur trapper. If you know anything about the history of the American West, you know that he was the first white guy to report the geysers, fumaroles and all the other wonderous gothermal features in what is now Yellowstone National Park. That was in 1807. That part of the story remains unquestioned.

And according to any number of history books, while on his Yellowstone jaunt, he passed through what is now the town of Jackson, Wyo. That "fact" is even installed in a monument in the Jackson town square.

But self-taught historian Paul Lawrence has spent much of his adult life debunking that mis-reported act. In a two-hour talk before the historically minded in Jackson Hole recently, Lawrence detailed Colter’s month-long journey into the region. It all amounts to what the Jackson Hole News & Guide seems to think is a compelling case that Colter wasn’t a tourist at the base of Grand Teton. He took another route.

The bottom line here? Don’t believe everything you see in print, even if it is chiseled into stone or cast in bronze.

Still more males, but skiing less chauvinistic

TAHOE, Calif. — Skiing remains a male-dominated sport, 62 per cent compared to 39 per cent for women. But there’s a lot less chauvinism than there was 35 years ago, says Dinah Witchel, who wrote a book called Ski Woman’s Way.

Remember that rather quaint expression, snow bunny? That seems to reflect the attitude of the 1960s, which held that if a woman could ski, that was great, but more important was how she looked in stretch pants.

Whether that has changed probably depends upon the guy. But a clear change began in 1975, with the first clinic devoted specifically to women. There are now 200 such clinics in the U.S. Just how the clinics differ from those offered to both sexes, however, wasn’t clear from a story in the Tahoe World.