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Mountain News: Business up, snow down at Aspen

ASPEN, Colo. - Relatively speaking, Aspen has done well this year in terms of visitors. Traffic at the local airport was up by more than 25 per cent in December, skier visits at the four ski areas at Aspen and Snowmass were up 2.

ASPEN, Colo. - Relatively speaking, Aspen has done well this year in terms of visitors. Traffic at the local airport was up by more than 25 per cent in December, skier visits at the four ski areas at Aspen and Snowmass were up 2.5 to 5 per cent during the all-important Christmas holidays, and bookings look strong through Presidents' weekend.

What hasn't been up was the snowfall. It's an El NiƱo year, and that almost always means sub-par snow for the north half of Colorado. This year is no exception. Powder days have been sparse.

At a recent community meeting covered by the Aspen Times , condo-hotel manager Warren Klug reported that he had admonished employees to keep complaints about the lack of powder to themselves. "I didn't hear a single complaint from our guests," he said, as they loved the blue skies and corduroy.

March remains the big question mark. Last year, Aspen emptied out during the most important economic month of the winter. After reporting the many bright spots this season, reservations guru Bill Tomcich at the recent meeting conceded some apprehension. "There's a lot of rooms that can be filled in late February and early March," he said.

In Telluride, meanwhile, town officials have reported a better year for 2009 than they had feared, thanks partly to a late pickup in real estate sales, reports The Telluride Watch. But town manager Frank Bell noted that any increases this year will be compared against 2009, which was a "really crummy year."

Added Bell: "Saying things are 10 per cent better is like being the best dancer in Laredo, Texas. That isn't a real milestone."

 

Wolves' deaths felt

BANFF, Alberta - Two wolves have been killed on highways near or within Banff National Park in recent weeks, leading some locals to call for stern measures to slow drivers.

In a case from early January, a 68-pound wolf pup was thrown 20 metres, suggesting that the driver was speeding.

Taking stock of the situation, the Rocky Mountain Outlook called for use of photo radar. The speed limit in Banff is 90 km/h, but speeds of 120 to 130 km/h are common. One letter-writer even proposed to close down a highway at night, when wildlife is hardest to see.

Interviewing a wolf biologist, the Outlook explains that wolves howl when pack members disappear, and in recent nights people in Canmore could hear howling from the woods adjacent to the town, where roughly 15 wolves live.

 

In-bounds slide kills local

KETCHUM, Idaho - If Tim Michael had any enemies, they certainly didn't show up in the Idaho Mountain Express .

"And in all our many adventures throughout those 54 years, I don't ever remember having any other feeling except that this was a kind, generous, and genuine person," said his brother, Sean Michael. "He liked the simple things that life offered. A good hike, a good ski run, a good friend."

"I didn't know Tim well," wrote another blogger. "I just always saw him with a smile on that kind face."

Tim Michael was killed in an avalanche on a ski trail on Bald Mountain, Sun Valley's main ski area. The avalanche was two to three feet deep and 40 feet wide. He was buried amid a dense stand of small trees under five to six feet of avalanche debris. The Express reports that local authorities attributed his death to "traumatic asphyxiation."

"He didn't duck a rope," said Janet Kellam, the avalanche centre director in Ketchum. "Witnesses saw him in the centre of the slope with the avalanche coming down from above."

He had lived in Ketchum for 35 years, living in a trailer for many years, and had a house-painting business. The portrait drawn was of a man devoted to his family and to the simple pleasures of being outdoors, whether backcountry skiing, kayaking, or camping along the Oregon coast.

 

Death by a thousand cuts

JACKSON, Wyo. - There is talk in Wyoming's Teton County of creating an environmental commission, with a specific mission of studying environmental impacts from various land-use decisions.

As judged locally, Teton County - which is approximately the same as the valley known as Jackson Hole - has an intact ecosystem despite more than a century of ranching, tourism, and now second-home development.

But the Jackson Hole News & Guide sees that ecosystem as imperiled. "Layers of development, poor decision-making by government, and increased traffic will inflict the 1,000 cuts that will ultimately result in the valley's character-defining environment dying a slow, only-visible-in-hindsight death," said the newspaper. "When that death comes, the very things that make the valley unique, the wildlife and relatively protected landscape, will be but memories."

To help prevent this, the newspaper wants to see creation of an environmental board, with a well-defined charter that does not allow it to be hijacked by special interests. "Isn't protecting the elk, streams, fish and their habitat the best possible business decision this valley could ever make?" says the newspaper.

 

Aspen raises energy efficiency code

ASPEN, Colo. - Aspen and Pitkin County have now set the bar higher for energy-efficient building. But the rest of the world has been catching up.

The two governments several years ago adopted an energy code that was more stringent than the generally accepted building codes of the time. But the latest iteration of the International Building Code, adopted in September 2008, had leap-frogged past the formerly cutting-edge code in Aspen.

So, Aspen last fall raised its own bar again, and Pitkin County has followed suit.

Tony Fusaro, chief building official for Pitkin County, told county commissioners that adoption of the new code will likely give the local governments a better shot at grants coming out of the federal stimulus package that intend to stimulate energy efficiency.

Aspen and Pitkin County have also expanded their Renewable Energy Mitigation Program, first applied to houses in 2000, to commercial buildings. The original program required homes of 5,000 square feet or more to offset a portion of their fossil fuel consumption or pay a mitigation fee. Outdoor energy uses, such as heating swimming pools and driveways, also triggered payments - unless an on-site renewable energy generation was installed.

Some $10 million in in-lieu fees have been collected and used to pay for energy efficiency and renewable energy devices, such as on the local recreation center.

The Aspen Times explains that an 800-square-foot heated driveway would, unless mitigated by renewable energy fixtures, such as solar hot-water panels, be assessed a fee of nearly $30,000.

A commercial building, such as a hotel, that installs a 700-square-foot heated swimming pool, an 80-square-foot heated spa, and a 1,200-square-foot heated driveway would be assessed $223,000, unless mitigation measures were adopted.

 

Town rejects fines

CANMORE, Alberta - Jim Ridley, a councillor in Canmore, didn't get much support, but he seems to have launched a good discussion when he proposed fining people who toss recyclable goods such as aluminum cans and corrugated cardboard into the trash.

"This is impossible to prosecute without someone standing over every dumpster," said Ed Russell, another councillor. The mayor, Ron Casey, said enforcement is impractical until there are recycling bins close to or adjacent to all disposal bins.

The municipality, reports the Rocky Mountain Outlook, expects to roll out a program to spur broader recycling across the community next year.

 

Out-of-bounds skier dies

DRIGGS, Idaho - Death by hypothermia was in the news in two ski towns this past week, one the result of alcohol and the other in a skiing case.

In Teton County, Wyo., 46-year-old Edward Fitzgerald had skied outside the Grand Targhee Ski Resort and got lost. He used a cell phone to call 911 that evening, but the connection was thin and fleeting. As such, search teams were uncertain where to look.

Instead of hunkering down and building a snow cave, he apparently fell into a creek. By the time he was found with aid of a helicopter the next morning, emergency medical technicians could detect only the faintest evidence of life, reports the Jackson Hole News & Guide. He was later pronounced dead.

A mailman in Queens, a borough of New York City, Fitzgerald had a master's degree in chemistry and liked skiing and sky diving, said the newspaper, citing the New York Post.

In Winter Park, Colo., authorities declared that Kevin Gilbert had died of hypothermia on the morning of Nov. 25. An autopsy revealed that Gilbert had a blood-alcohol level of .225 per cent. He had been found on the ground, having spent the morning lying in the cold without sufficient clothing. Police, reports the Middle Park Times, had arrested Gilbert's companion and charged him with negligent homicide. They say the two had been drinking together the previous night.

No shotgun shooting on Main Street

PARK CITY, Utah - Some towns, seeking to play off their frontier-days mythology, stage shoot-outs on their main streets. But no staged shooting was allowed on Main Street in Park City when a film production crew filed for a permit.

The film, tentatively titled Vengeance, was to have included a scene in which a shotgun with blanks was shot. The film features the hip-hop artist known as 50 Cent, a.k.a. Curtis Jackson III.

The Park Record reports that city officials worried that gunfire, even if feigned, would have frightened others on the busy street during the Sundance Film Festival, and it might draw gun-toting security officers employed during the festival.

 

Marijuana reform on ballot

LEADVILLE, Colo.-Voters in Leadville may be asked in November to decriminalize marijuana. City officials tell the Summit Daily News that Leadville will look at the experience in Breckenridge, where 70 per cent of voters last November voted to decriminalize possession of less than one ounce of marijuana. The sale is still illegal, though, except at medical marijuana dispensaries.