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Mountain News: Aspen airport a giant funnel

ASPEN, Colo. – Passengers arriving on commercial aircraft at the Aspen/Pitkin County airport have the deepest pockets in Colorado.

ASPEN, Colo. – Passengers arriving on commercial aircraft at the Aspen/Pitkin County airport have the deepest pockets in Colorado.

A new study called the 2008 Colorado Airports Impact Study found that passengers spend an average $2,652, tops in Colorado. Second-highest were passengers into Eagle County Regional Airport, with $2,070 per passenger. The latter airport serves primarily Vail and Beaver Creek but, to a lesser extent, the Aspen-area resorts.

Bill Tomcich, president of Stay Aspen Snowmass, a central reservations group, said 80 per cent of winter visitors to Aspen fly. The airport “is so critical to our economy,” he said.

The study also found that, while Eagle County handles more passengers, Aspen’s has more economic clout. It accounts for 11,950 jobs in Colorado, compared to 10,467 jobs initiated by Eagle County Regional.

With the economy struggling and oil prices rising, does the future look equally prosperous? Aviation consultant Mike Boyd told The Aspen Times that there won’t be big changes, but discretionary spending will slow. Tomcich noted the airlines are in what he, and most businesses, would call a crisis, since many are on the brink of bankruptcy.

 

Q400 new plane of choice

KETCHUM, Idaho – The rising oil prices are steadily nudging changes in how we live. One change is in the fleet of planes used by Horizon Air, which offers commercial service to Sun Valley and other locations. Horizon is adding 15 Bombardier Q400 turboprops, the newer 78-passenger model. Frontier is also using the Q400 for its shuttles from Denver to Aspen, Jackson Hole, and other mountain valleys. The Q400 has 33 per cent improved fuel efficiency compared to other regional planes. Horizon is getting rid of 37 of its older, gas-guzzling planes, notes the Idaho Mountain Express.

 

Restaurateur says no to Clintons

EDWARDS, Colo. Debbie Marquez was a very popular gal for a while this spring. In addition to helping operate a restaurant in Edwards, located 10 miles down-valley from Vail, she was fielding phone calls from people named Bill and Hillary.

A political activist for nearly 30 years, Marquez is what the Democratic Party calls a “super-delegate,” meaning that she wasn’t beholden to the wishes of causes or state assemblies. Early on, she supported Bill Richardson because he’s Hispanic and from New Mexico, a state neighbouring Colorado, and also because of his foreign policy experience.

When Richardson dropped out, Marquez quickly settled on Barack Obama. The word didn’t get immediately to the campaign of Hillary Clinton. Marquez finally had to deliver the news herself to Bill Clinton during a ranging 45-minute conversation. The key, she said, was Hillary’s original vote authorizing the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Marquez said she often talks politics with her customers, and she reasoned that if she and they could figure out that there was no good evidence for weapons of mass destruction, the rationale for the 2003 invasion, why couldn’t Hillary Clinton? She came to her conclusion about the shaky justification from reading newspapers and Internet sites.

Along with two sisters, Marquez founded a restaurant called Fiesta’s Cafe and Cantina in 1989. The Vail Trail recently profiled her in a series called “Women We Admire.”

 

Economy hurts railway

SILVERTON, Colo. – The high gas prices and slowed economy are having ripples. In Silverton, there will be three narrow-gauge steam trains a day, instead of four, disgorging passengers during the high season of mid-July to early August. The Silverton correspondent for The Telluride Watch says the cancelled train, the first of the morning, carried fewer passengers.

 

Ski industry pioneers thinning

PARK CITY, Utah – The individuals responsible for the ski industry’s boom of the ’60s, ’70s and early ’80s in the Rocky Mountains are now rapidly passing.

Early this year it was D.R.C. Brown, the president of Aspen Skiing Co. from the late 1950s into the late 1970s. More recently figures at Vail, Tahoe and Park City have all also died, as has the founder of one of the first ski magazines.

Earl Eaton died in late May. He grew up on a thin-living ranch in the Eagle River Valley, and made a bit of money helping scrape Camp Hale, the home of the 10 th Mountain Division, before he himself trundled off to war in Europe.

After War War II, he returned to Colorado, got himself a pair of skis, and moved to Aspen. He was an adventurer, one summer rafting down the Colorado River and eventually the Grand Canyon. But he was always looking for the next big thing, be it a uranium deposit or a ski resort.

In Aspen, he met another dreamer, Pete Seibert, and one March day in 1957 they strapped on skins and hiked up to a moderately-sloped mountain about 10 miles away from where Eaton had grown up. Eaton had hunted and prospected for uranium there. Seibert had trained at Camp Hale, also less than 10 miles away, but had not noticed what is now called Vail’s Back Bowls. It was, he agreed with Eaton, just what he had been hoping for.

Ski area operations subsequently began in 1962, and if success wasn’t immediate, the proximity to Denver’s large number of skiers and its well-connected airport made Vail’s success probably inevitable. Eaton, a blue-collar sort with great mechanical instincts, worked on the ground literally to get the resort up and going.

Later, he hoped to get on the ground floor of ski-bikes. Unlike Vail, though, that idea never took off, although he was allowed singularly to ride his snow bike on Vail Mountain whenever he pleased. He did so nearly until his death at age 85. A plaza in Vail is named for him.

Passing in early June was Nick Badami, who is credited with helping solidify Park City’s transformation from a grimy has-been mining town to a world-known ski town. He had been chairman of BVD, the underwear company, when he purchased Alpine Meadows, a ski area near Lake Tahoe. That was in 1970, and he bought Park City Ski Corp. in 1975.

Badami was a champion of snow-making systems, enabling it to secure World Cup ski racing, which in turn set it up as a venue for the 2002 Winter Olympics. He sold his Park City operation to Powdr   Corp in 1995, but remained active until 2003.

Without Badami’s investment and vision Park City would have developed into a major ski area anyway, it would have happened later, Park City Mayor Dana Williams told the Park Record.

Also passing this year was Merrill Hastings. A native of Massachusetts, he was in Colorado before World War II to ski at Berthoud Pass, and was also in the 10 th Mountain Division before a shoulder injury forced him out. He ended up in Italy anyway, enlisting with the British, and what a spectacle it was, he later would say.

After the war, he went to college, but was quickly bored. Besides that, Hastings could never be second fiddle to anything or anybody. He ended up in Colorado where in 1948 he founded a magazine called Rocky Mountain Skiing, later shortened to Skiing, which he sold in 1964. He also started a trade magazine. He also played a key role in Colorado gaining the bid for the 1976 Olympics.

But while he loved skiing, he was always interested in the broader world, and subsequently founded Colorado magazine and Colorado Business, among other titles.

He was also vociferous and effective in his advocacy of public land management, arguing repeatedly for preservation of wildlife and wilderness. He spent his later decades on a small ranch between Vail and Steamboat Springs, always forthcoming with a brash opinion, usually backed up by tart observation.

“He didn’t do anything halfway,” said Scott Miller, business editor of the Vail Daily. “He always went full throttle.”

Learning of his incurable cancer, he said, “Well, we all have to go sometime.” He was 85.

 

Grizzly deaths concern Banff

BANFF, Alberta – Sow grizzlies are dying in Banff National Park at a rate that is concerning wildlife biologists. The park has an estimated 60 female grizzlies, but a large number have died in the Lake Louise area, commonly as the result of interactions with people.

Parks Canada studied all known bear mortalities since 1990 in Banff as well as in six other national parks: Jasper, Yoho, Kootenay, Waterton, Mount Revelstoke and Glacier. The resort found that 46 of the 61 known grizzly bear mortalities were at the hands of people.

Some die when hit by trains. The trains often spill grain, attracting the bears to the tracks. But the Rocky Mountain Outlook also reports that hikers and bikers in Banff National Park are much more likely to have an aggressive, dangerous encounter with a grizzly bear than in any other mountain national park in Canada. There were 183 encounters in Banff and more than twice as many in Jasper. But of those 183 encounters, bears actually attacked people in only 10 instances.

“It’s pretty clear that we’re losing more grizzlies over the last six years to human causes than the estimated population can sustain,” said Kevin Van Tighem, superintendent of Banff National Park. He said trails might need to be redesigned, to avoid interactions. “A lot of what we’re doing is trying to figure out if we’ve got trails and facilities in the wrong places, and how we can get people to areas where they can still enjoy the park but not disturb bears,” he said.

Defenders of Wildlife Canada said the report highlights the need for a formal grizzly bear management plan similar to one in Yellowstone National Park.

 

Dalai Lama a hot ticket

ASPEN, Colo. – It will be a typical Aspen summer, with many of the world’s best-known musicians, politicians and billionaires dropping by.

The Dalai Lama doesn’t fall under any of those headings, but will be in Aspen this year as part of a symposium on June 24-26 celebrating Tibetan and Himalayan culture. Some 4,000 tickets were available, half of them free for lawn space outside the tent where the Dalai Lama is to speak.

The other half of tickets cost $80 each, and to get them some people waited in line for more than three hours, reports The Aspen Times. Denison Levy told the newspaper that $80 was no problem. “I study Buddhism, and he’s an amazing person,” she said. Asked if she might scalp her tickets, Levy frowned: “It’s bad karma to do that.”

Those waiting in line also included former mayor Bill Stirling, who in the 1990s led the fight to outlaw fur coats, and Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis, perhaps more broadly known as a buddy to the late writer Hunter Thompson.

 

First for families

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. – It was a milestone year at Jackson Hole High School. Nine of the graduating students this year were the first in their families to collect diplomas. Usually, there are one, two or sometimes three.

Anyone up to the age of 21 who lives in Teton County is entitled, by law, to a public education. Still, the first-ever graduates overcame great odds, says the Jackson Hole News & Guide.

“They come from a community in which many of their friends and families are not in the country legally and they were schooled during a time when immigration issues and immigrants are under increased scrutiny,” notes the paper.

The newspaper tells about one student, Arthur Diaz Miranda who worked about 50 hours a week in addition to attending school. He lost his father at age 16 when his father, while fishing in the Gros Ventre River, jumped in to save another son. The other son, Oscar, survived, but not the father.

Stan Morgan, who was the English-as-a-second-language teacher for Miranda, said he sometimes bumps into Arturo and his mother in the grocery store.

“And he’s paying for the groceries,” Morgan said. “These guys worked really hard to get here. They made it happen. They’re definitely not the typical American teenagers.”

The newspaper reports that several of the Latino high-school graduates will be going on to college in Wyoming on soccer scholarships.

 

Energy debated in co-op elections

GUNNISON, Colo. – The debate about coal and renewable energy sources has been at the crux of several elections of rural electrical co-ops in Colorado this summer. Now, two incumbent directors for Gunnison County Electric Association standing for re-election are facing challengers who say the co-op has been too flat-footed as it looks at the future.

The two challengers, Steve Schechter and Schuyler Denham, say it’s past time to move away from coal-generated electricity and instead invest heavily in solar, wind and other renewable sources.

“The attitude of this current board is that coal is the most reliable, cheapest form of energy,” said Schechter. That, he said, is short-term thinking.

An incumbent, George Besse, tells the Crested Butte News that the story is more complex than the challengers describe it. “Everybody on the board is very aware of global warming,” he said. “We know it is happening, and we are trying to address it. There really is no quick fix, however. Technology got us into this mess, and hopefully technology will help get us out of the mess.”

He added:” We are striving to find a balance between the environment and keeping the lights on. We have to meet our growing demand in the valley. Everyone likes to have the lights go on when they flip the switch.”

The association serves the Crested Butte, Gunnison, and Lake City areas.

The background for the elections are plans by Tri-State Generation and Transmission to build a new coal-fired power plant in either Kansas or Colorado. Gunnison County, San Miguel Power, which services Telluride, and LaPlata Electric, which is in Durango, all agreed to participate.

Challengers say Tri-State must more aggressively promote technologies that achieve energy efficiency. They also warn that with Congress now debating a tax on carbon dioxide emissions, coal-fired electricity is sure to become more expensive than it is now.

The larger story in the Rocky Mountains is that even utilities lauded for their rapid embrace of wind and solar still get most of their electricity by burning either coal or natural gas. Natural gas produces half as much carbon dioxide per unit of heat than does coal.

Even rural co-ops considered relatively progressive, including Holy Cross Energy, continue to rely largely on fossil fuels. Holy Cross last year got 92 per cent of its electricity by burning coal or natural gas, reports The Aspen Times. Challengers charge that Holy Cross has lagged in its declared goal of getting 15 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources. Among the challengers in the election is Dave Campbell, a real estate agent based in Vail who deals in ranches and farms of Northwest Colorado.

In nearly all cases, the goal of shrinking the carbon footprint of utilities is made more difficult by the fact that electrical demand is increasing, the result of population growth, per capita increases in consumption, and increased need for power in the natural gas and oil sector of the Rocky Mountains, explains Colorado Biz Magazine

 

Lots of talk about affordable housing

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. – Housing, housing, housing — that’s just about all that candidates are talking about in Jackson Hole this summer. The town council in Jackson has two spots up for election, and virtually all 10 candidates are talking about affordable housing. Ditto the Teton County commissioner wannabes, where two spots are up for grabs.

There don’t appear to be clearly defined lines of debate similar to the U.S. should-we-stay-or-go discussion regarding Iraq. But it’s easy to see why affordable housing is on the lips of candidates, says the Jackson Hole News & Guide.

“As real estate prices skyrocket in Jackson Hole and commercial development continues, a record number of people are turning to public and private affordable housing programs to find shelter. The odds of getting a house are becoming longer and longer. There are now more than 1,400 families who have signed up for affordable housing, a figure that is growing at a rate of about 200 families per year.

The newspaper goes on to explain that the median price of a single-family home reached almost $2 million this year. The mean, or average, home price has almost doubled since 2003.

The valley has been full of debate about development proposals, some of it specifically targeted for lower income workers, in pastoral areas near to the town of Jackson but outside of it. As well, Jackson itself in recent years has at times been consumed about proposals to increase density, partly to provide more housing for people near where they work.

Most of the candidates seem to be arguing for expanded public efforts to shore up the lower-income housing, to avoid sprawl into exurban outposts in valleys 45 minutes to an hour away. One of the rarities is Rick Roth, a Republican for county commissioner. “People have to do things on their own,” he said. “It’s not up to government to try to find you an affordable home.” Roth said he believes the county needs to find homes for only key employees. “Not everybody is going to be able to live in this valley,” he said.

 

Supernal spectating coming

GUNNISON, Colo. – A 30-inch telescope has been lifted by a crane into an observatory on the outskirts of Gunnison. The telescope will be available for public viewing for a nominal feel, but organizers hope to rent use of the telescope for research and private viewings.

The Crested Butte News explains that two local businessmen in 2001 decided a telescope in Gunnison would be a fine idea. The project faltered, but was eventually picked up by Gunnison County government, which provided land for the observatory and much of the money for the telescope. One of the county commissioners, Hap Channell, was a former earth science teacher at Gunnison High School. Total cost was nearly $500,000.

The telescope may be used for study of asteroids, extra-solar planets and stars relatively close to Earth that are in the latter stages of life.

 

Legal battle resolved

PAGOSA SPRINGS, Colo. – The legal battle between the owners of the Wolf Creek Ski Area and developers of 300 acres of private land at the base has been resolved.

The development, proposed by Texas-based billionaire B.J. “Red” McCombs, would yield more than 2,000 housing units at the base of the ski area. However, the project still has two hurdles: authorization from Mineral County and a road across U.S. Forest Service land.

Both agencies had given approval, but approvals were overturned by courts that agreed with Colorado Wild and other environmental groups that procedures specified by law had been violated. A new environmental impact statement reviewing road access across Forest Service property is also expected to take two years.

The Durango Herald reported settlement of the lawsuit between the former protagonist, but a spokesman for McCombs and the Pitcher family, which owns the ski area, refused to divulge terms of the settlement.

The Pitchers had been partners with McComb in the mid-1980s when McCombs negotiated a land exchange with the Forest Service that delivered the private land at the base. The Pitchers believed their ski areas needed a bed base, something it then lacked and still does. The closest motels and condos are more than 20 miles away in Pagosa Springs.

Then, as the real estate market tanked, the projected stalled. McCombs renewed work in the 1990s, but early in this century, after a hard-fought battle against Colorado Wild to get a new quad lift, it took a different tact, opposing the development. The lawsuit was filed in 2004.

Wolf Creek remains only one of three ski areas in Colorado that does not have snowmaking. Ski Cooper, near Leadville, and Silverton Mountain are the others.

Mountain passes may be open by mid-June

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. – With the threat of flooding diminishing, Gunnison County now has the staff to begin clearing the roads across passes in the Crested Butte that remain clogged with snow. Both Kebler Pass to the north and Cottonwood Pass to the east are often open by Memorial Day, but this year both are targeted for June 15 openings. The giant Ride the Rockies parade of 2,000 bicycle riders is scheduled to cross Cottonwood Pass on the way to Buena Vista on June 20.

 

Defensible space required

LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – A new law in Placer County requires property owners to create 100 feet of defensible space around housing and other structures, even if the perimeter extends into a neighbor’s undeveloped lot. There is no such requirement if the adjoining lot has a home or some other structure on it.

The law, explains the Sierra Sun, supplements an existing California law that requires homeowners to clear fire fuels from within 100 feet of their homes. However, that law stops at the property line.

Placer County extends from the foothills west of Sacramento to the Nevada border, taking in the northern part of Lake Tahoe.