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Mountain News: Aspen advertising air connections

ASPEN, Colo. – Last winter was something less than stellar for the Aspen Skiing Co. A major problem had to do with air transportation, beginning with the Christmas blizzard that bottlenecked traffic at Denver and continuing through the winter.

ASPEN, Colo. – Last winter was something less than stellar for the Aspen Skiing Co. A major problem had to do with air transportation, beginning with the Christmas blizzard that bottlenecked traffic at Denver and continuing through the winter.

With that in mind, the company — which operates four ski areas in the Aspen area — is pushing its airport connections this year in advertising materials. It boasts of having the America’s only slopeside airport, just five minutes from downtown Aspen.

But the company is also going to keep pushing its climate-change agenda. Last year, it took out alarms that warned of warming that will eventually melt the world’s winter playgrounds. David Perry, the senior vice president, conceded that the advertisements taken in several prominent magazines were a bit alarmist.

But it got people’s attention, and the ski company plans to press on again this year, using high-profile Aspen athletes Chris Davenport, a skier, and Gretchen Bleiler, a snowboarder. Television commercial and print advertising will focus on the company’s environmental efforts during the last 10 years.

In addition, the company this fall is sending 42,000 energy-efficient light bulbs to loyal guests.

 

Costs climb for art project

VAIL, Colo. – There’s residual heart-burn in Vail about a public art project in one of the town’s most prominent locations, Siebert Circle, located near the base of the busiest ski lift, the Vista Bahn.

There, in 1999, the town authorized a somewhat abstract work of art designed by noted Texas sculptor Jesus Moroles. The sculpture and associated landscaping, which cost $700,000, never warmed the hearts of many people. So, in 2005 the town council voted to appropriate $675,000 for a fire-water fountain, assuming $125,000 came in from the private sector.

But from $800,000 the project cost has now ballooned to $1.7 million, reports the Vail Daily. In a dissent of the latest supplemental appropriation, council member Kim Newbury called the project a “debacle” and “embarrassing.”

For those who like the water display of the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, this water feature is being created by the same company, WET Design.

 

Franchise stores may be regulated

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. – Steamboat Springs is now looking at regulations designed to prevent the proliferation of franchised chain retailers such as Starbucks, The Gap and other such stores.

At issue is the town’s original business district, several miles from the ski mountain. It’s a slice of small-town Americana, if now considerably gussied up. Going on 20 years, the town has been determined to retain that distinctive character even as it modernizes.

Now, the changes are arriving with a roar. Several major construction projects are now underway along the town’s original main street, called Lincoln Avenue. The current redevelopment is expected to yield upwards of 50,000 additional square feet of commercial space in the district, plus residential space.

Although the town has nearly 10,000 residents, that’s still not quite enough people to attract the national chains in droves. Still, with Intrawest now plowing money into the ski area, the town has become one of the West’s premier boom areas.

The regulations being considered would subject the national franchise businesses to greater scrutiny. The town planning staff reviewed formula business regulations from Sausalito, Calif.; Port Townsend, Wash.; and Bristol, R.I.; among others.

 

Banff close to growth limit

BANFF, Alberta – Banff is now up to 8,770 residents, a 6 per cent gain in the last two years, but still short of the cap of 10,000 residents mandated by the federal government. Because it is located within a national park, the townsite of Banff is subject to growth restrictions imposed several years ago on the community.

The census report notes that 46 per cent of people live in apartments, and that a majority of people are employed in the service industry. As well, 47 per cent of residents walk during summer, compared to 17 per cent who use motor vehicles. In winter, the numbers get closer together, but pedestrians still outnumber motorists.

 

Woman crushed by tree

CANMORE, Alberta – A 26-year-old woman from Canmore was killed when a large tree uprooted by a sudden wind storm fell on her in a disc golf course area of the town’s biathlon range.

The Rocky Mountain Outlook reports that the same storm toppled 60 trees near the townsite of Banff. At least three houses were damaged, while two cars were crushed. Uprooted by the winds were lodgepole pine, which are a notoriously shallow-rooted species.

 

Vacation homes are energy beasts

ASPEN, Colo. – Although their windows may be dark much of the year, the vacation homes in Aspen are actually using more energy than those occupied full time, a new study concludes.

The study was commissioned by The Sopris Foundation, a non-profit organization based in Aspen. The work builds on a previous study of greenhouse gas emissions done on behalf of Aspen’s Canary Initiative.

About 58 per cent of Aspen’s residential units are used only part-time, on average about three months per year, according to the calculations of consultant Richard Heede of Climate Mitigation Services. Furthermore, it was relatively easy to figure out the floor space of the homes.

Condominiums and townhomes used part-time are not much bigger than those used by locals, but the single-family homes used part-time are 35 per cent larger than those used owned by locals.

Actual utility records were available for only a few dozen homes, but in those cases, the energy used to heat and light the part-time homes was virtually identical on a per square foot basis to those of full-time residents.

How could this be? “Many larger residences have roof and/or drive-way melt systems,” Heede says in the report. “Anecdotally, driveway heating is typically on all winter regardless of occupancy to avoid difficult snow and ice clearing should the owner arrive suddenly.”

Furthermore, says the study, many homes have two or three refrigerators that remain on, even when nobody is there for months on end, and the security and ventilation systems are also kept on, as is exterior and interior lighting, to simulate occupancy.

“Excessive energy consumption, often with no comfort or security benefits, represents a problem for a community that aims to reduce community energy intensity and emissions of greenhouse gases,” the report asserts.

Pipe Foster, of The Sopris Foundation, said energy use for vacation homes was the “elephant in the room” in Aspen’s discussion about climate-changing greenhouse gases. The community has pledged to reduce greenhouse gases 30 per cent below 2004 by the year 2020.

Can Aspen really walk that talk? Speaking with the Aspen Daily News, Heede said even small items, like turning down heat in a 10,000-square-foot home from 60 to 55 degrees, can make a big difference. But, he conceded, Aspen has a long ways to go.

Still to be addressed is the biggest elephant in the room, the fuel use of Aspen’s jet-setting visitors. The 2004 inventory of greenhouse gas emissions found that Aspen’s per capita greenhouse gas emissions are double those of the U.S., with much of that energy consumption the result of transportation, particularly jets.

 

Less is more

FRASER, Colo. – Has the trend toward ever bigger houses finally crested and started to fall back on itself? The Sky-High News suggests so after profiling a condominium project called Cozens Pointe. It’s located in Fraser, adjacent to Winter Park.

The newspaper says the developers are offering condominiums ranging in size from 1,100 to about 1,500 square feet. “We don’t subscribe to the notion that bigger is better,” said Dan Gile, among the developers.

 

Buffer being created around Vail

VAIL, Colo. – Another 8,000 trees are being removed this summer from the periphery of Vail, with the goal being to create a 200- to 300-foot buffer to slow the spread of fire. Although intermixed with aspen, some 90 per cent of the lodgepole pine in the surrounding forests are expected to eventually die.

Much of the felled trees are to be taken across the Gorge Range to Kremmling, where a pellet mill is being assembled, reports the Vail Daily. Cost of the work is about $650,000, with Eagle County government paying $250,000, and lesser amounts coming from the U.S. Forest Service, the Town of Vail, and Colorado state government.

 

Costs of fighting fires probed

LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – The high cost of fighting forest and other wildland fires is sobering. Earlier this summer, for example, the U.S. Forest Service was bleeding $1.5 million per day fighting the Angora Fire at Lake Tahoe. Altogether last year, the agency spent $1.5 billion on fires.

For years, critics have said that the agency is addicted to fires. Come fire season, everybody from archaeologists to silvaculturists peel off to fires, making overtime wages while engaging in a paramilitary effort aimed at a common enemy.

The Los Angeles Times also notes the expenses: $80,000 an hour for rental of firefighting helicopters at one fire in California. Even seasonal firefighters, making much less than most permanent agency employees, can pull down $23 an hour including overtime. And with such hard work to do, meals are calculated for 6,000 calories a day, which comes to $47 per person.

The nagging question is whether fire policy has really changed all that much. The congressional General Accountability Office says the agency hasn’t clearly defined how it intends to cut back costs.

Tom Harbour, the agency’s director of fire and aviation management, told the Times that officials have renewed their vow to let fires in some areas long untouched by flame burn for the well-being of the forest. And, adds the Times, Harbour suggested that firefighters would steer clear of heroic measures to save remote, wood-shingled forest hideaways surrounded by cascades of flammable shrubbery.

But critics say more can be done. Among them is Tim Ingalssbee, a former seasonal firefighter who now teaches at the University of Oregon.

“About 45 per cent of the Forest Service’s budget is related to fire, and that’s a big source of the problem,” he said. “The agency sees its money trained hitched to fire.” He said contracts can be bloated, and that the Forest Service hasn’t made use of prescribed fire as it should.

 

Flu lessons from 1918

GUNNISON, Colo. – As public health officials plan for the potential spread of avian flu, they continually study the public record from 1918, when Spanish flu in short order killed far more people than in all of the horrors of World War I.

Some of Colorado’s mountain towns were crippled. Silverton, then a going mining town, lost 10 per cent of its inhabitants.

But Gunnison County, where Crested Butte is located, only lost two people. What was the difference?

At the first precautionary warning in 1918, schools were closed across Gunnison County, and remained so for at least two weeks. County officials also required certain places to remain closed for four weeks. Anybody wanting to enter the county was required to be quarantined for two days. The school and business closures were finally lifted after four months, say officials in Telluride, who have studied the past in Gunnison while trying to prepare for a potential pandemic flu transmitted by avian species.

In contrast, the flu was transmitted at a public gathering in Silverton.

 

Surf up in Aspen?

ASPEN, Colo. – Aspen’s city government is spending $75,000 to at least study the potential for a special feature, called a Flowrider Pool, at its recreation center. The device creates a breaking ocean wave for surfers and would cost an extra $500,000, reports The Aspen Times. Such special features have become the rage at water parks across the country, and have a high crossover with younger patrons at ski areas, according to Ski Area Management, a magazine that studied water parks and ski areas in an issue earlier this year.

 

Old pickups disappear

RED CLIFF, Colo. – An art show was held over the weekend in Red Cliff, a one-time mining town located two ridges and sometimes a world apart from Vail.

The town’s artists opened their homes for inspection of photographs from Asia, paintings of mountainsides and creeks, and in one home, several renderings of old, weathered pickups.

Abandoned pickups and cars just a couple of winters ago were common in Red Cliff. Set up on blocks, they would be squeezed in next to houses or behind sheds. At one time, dozens were deposited along the Eagle River.

In most of America, such “dead” pickups are dealt with summarily by homeowner associations and assorted other police of tidiness. This is true, too, of old mountain towns.

But Red Cliff has been an anachronism. Only eight miles aside Interstate 70, that great arterial agent of change, Red Cliff for many years has remained true to its dowdy, blue-collar mining town roots.

Even in its flush times, Red Cliff was never a place of wealth as represented by the gaily painted gingerbread Victorians of Aspen, Telluride or even Breckenridge. The houses, those that remain from this earlier era, cluttered carefully on cliff bands, tend toward a plainness that speaks to a more hardscrabble existence.

The town is also distinctive for its cramped geography. The slopes of Battle and Hornsilver Mountains squeeze tightly. By comparison, the valley where Aspen is located seems like the Great Plains. Even the old baseball field, which serves double-duty as a snow storage lot during big-snow winters, is on a tilt. If not for the nearby mines, nothing could have justified a town in such a location.

In fact, mining remained a going concern in Red Cliff just a generation ago. Then the Eagle Mine, located two miles away at Gilman, closed and a few years later, in 1981, the Climax Mine between Leadville and Frisco shut down.

Now well into retirement, only a few miners still live in Red Cliff. In the place of miners have come a new generation, mostly in their 20s and 30s, many with pony tails, and with jobs tied to the resort and construction industries along I-70.

Money is also arriving, and not just from construction jobs. Teetering old buildings are being razed, and new homes and businesses are being erected. It’s like seeing a Salvation Army store, its goods dated and worn, being replaced one rack at a time into a store with iPods and fresh Carhartt’s. Both old and new are all the more striking for the contrast between them.

Amid this new gloss of funky modernity the old pickups are disappearing.

“What happened to them?” the artist was asked.

One by one, they’re all being towed away, explained the artist.

What will she paint when the rusty old pickups are all gone?

She didn’t say.

 

Bear problem? Just add ammonia

ASPEN, Colo. – While Aspen and many other mountain towns continue to fret about how to make their garbage less available and hence attractive to bears, Salida resident Julia Litz says she believes she has the solution.

“While living outside of Breckenridge at 10,600 feet, we had bears in our garbage,” she writes in a letter published in the Aspen Daily News. “No matter what we did to discourage this, it didn’t happen until I read somewhere to pour household ammonia on top of the garbage can,” she reports.

“It worked,” she adds. “I did this a couple times a week.”

 

Forest thinning and luck keys

LAKE TAHOE, Colo. – Another wildland fire has hit the Lake Tahoe Basin, this time destroying six structures. But what could have been a fire similar to the Angora blaze that burned 256 homes earlier this summer was averted.

The difference, a fire district spokesman told the Sierra Sun, was that the 30 mph winds died down, and firefighters responded immediately with a well-executed, no-holds attack. But a key, said Ed Miller, was a forest thinning project on 150 acres completed in 2005.

“If we hadn’t treated that area, we’d still be chasing (the fire),” he told the newspaper.

Thinning was also in the news when Bruce Krantz, a county commissioner in Placer County, called for loosening of regulations to allow more thinning of forests near streams in the basin. Existing regulations designed to reduce sedimentation of Lake Tahoe specify that thinning must be done with low-impact vehicles.

Environmental officials told the newspaper that the regulations don’t preclude work, although the U.S. Forest Service officials disagreed. Rex Norman, an agency spokesman, said the stream-side forests are some of the most dangerously overgrown in the Tahoe Basin. “They burn very fast and with great intensity.”

 

Into the black

BLANDING, Utah – Even in mountain towns, where at times it seems you could reach out and grab a few stars, the sky is not nearly the same glittering wealth of stars that Galileo saw. The Milky Way is fast disappearing.

There are, in ski towns and elsewhere, people who feel aggrieved by this diminished night sky. The New Yorker explains that a ranking of dark skies, called the Bortle Dark-Sky Scale, has been created. The darkest, a Class 1, such as existed across the world when Galileo lived, today can be found only in such place as the Andes or the Australian outback, but nowhere in the lower 48 states. The sky above New York City itself is Class 9.   On this scale of 1 through 9, most American suburban skies are rated 5, 7 or 8.

Even the very darkest places in the continental United States today are almost never darker than Class 2, and many of these places — such as the north rim of the Grand Canyon — are increasingly threatened.

The magazine says that the International Dark-Sky Association, using a variety of measurements, has found that the darkest sky remaining is at the Natural Bridges National Monument, located west of near Blanding Utah. This is about 130 miles west of Telluride.

 

Tunnel to new neighbourhood

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. – Further evidence of the pricey nature of real estate in Jackson Hole is found in the case of a development called Pine Glades. The project is located on the most prominent mountainside above the town of Jackson.

Neighbours lower on the slope might well have created an uproar of opposition with a conventional plan, using their streets for access. Instead, developer Dave Taylor proposed to tunnel under the slopes of Snow King Mountain, a small downhill ski area adjacent to the building sites.

In addition to 27 free-market townhome units, the project will have 12 deed-restricted affordable housing units. Half of those will be eligible to people with incomes of up to 200 per cent of Jackson’s median, which means they will sell initially for about $450,000, reports the Jackson Hole News & Guide. The affordable units are on slopes of greater than 25 per cent, which pose some avalanche risk.

 

An upstream emergency

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. – The town council in Crested Butte has adopted an emergency moratorium on all new development in the town’s watershed, but not on development within the town itself. Town officials said the existing ordinance governing disturbances in the town’s watershed was adopted in 1978 and is inadequate.

Exactly what precipitated the emergency was not clear, although the Crested Butte News reports that the primary objection came from the proponent of a possible molybdenum mine that has been on-and-off again since when the watershed ordinance was first adopted.