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Mountain News: Can global climate change explain this?

TELLURIDE, Colo. - It's been a wet, wet summer in the mountains of Colorado, but firecracker hot and dry in British Columbia.

TELLURIDE, Colo. - It's been a wet, wet summer in the mountains of Colorado, but firecracker hot and dry in British Columbia. Does global warming have anything to do with either one?

Near Vail and Aspen, microbursts have caused waves of water and mud to flow across highways. And at Telluride, it has left the forests full of mushrooms.

This dampness bodes well for this weekend's Telluride Mushroom Festival, now in its 30 th year. "Boletes, chanterelles, hawkwings, oysters - everything's out, and as it keeps raining, we can expect more edibles than ever before for this year's Shroomfest," said Art Goodtimes, the event organizer and poet-in-residence.

The festival has four days of all things fungal, including forays into the forests, lectures, and tastings - of mushrooms, of course. And mushroom promoter Paul Stamets will travel from Washington state to explain how mycological spores can be used for everything from forest remediation and cleanup of oil spills to nontoxic insecticides and cardboard packing boxes.

In British Columbia, it has been hot and dry. Fires have popped up across the province, and fire danger at Whistler was classified as "extreme" beginning Aug. 12. Campfires are banned, and even use of power tools within 20 metres of forests has been banned.

Squamish had a record-breaking temperature of 36.7 degrees Celsius. More stunning than the temperature was that it broke the old record by 5 degrees C.

While climate scientists repeatedly warn against ascribing any one thing to global warming, this increased warmth does fit in with a trend. Despite the cold weather of North America's eastern coast last winter and snow in places like Houston and Dallas, 2010 has been the hottest year on the planet since broad and reliable record-keeping began in 1880, scientists from the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration reported recently.

But how about the big rainstorms? While certainly not talking about the rain in Colorado this summer, the New York Times asked climate scientists whether the more global extremes - the floods in Pakistan, for example - can be attributed to the accumulating greenhouse gases. "Probably," they said.

 

Big changes for Canyons

PARK CITY, Utah - Talisker has big changes in mind for The Canyons, one of the three ski areas at Park City. There will be more employees, a new high-speed quad, and more snowmaking - plus a new name. Sort of.

The new name is to be simply Canyons, as in we were going to Deer Valley but instead went to Canyons.

The new lift will increase uphill capacity by 47 per cent. In addition, the bottom terminus of the existing gondola will be moved closer to the parking lot, so people don't have to walk so far. The company also plans to expand snowmaking and add 100 employees.

Talisker gained control of the ski area several years ago after a bidding war with Vail Resorts. The ski area had been the last property in the one-time ski empire called American Skiing, one of three chains that were busy acquiring new ski areas in the mid-90s. The other two were Intrawest and Vail Resorts. American Skiing is now gone, Intrawest greatly diminished and only Vail seems interested in - and capable of - growing.

 

Foreclosures rising

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. - Foreclosures continue to rise in Gunnison County. The Crested Butte News reports 130 this year, outpacing last year when altogether 183 foreclosures were started.

That eclipsed the old record of 132, set in 1987. And it also compared with just 10 in 2006 at the height of the real estate boom.

How many properties in this current wave of foreclosures can be traced to Crested Butte itself? County Treasurer Melody Marks said all price ranges and parts of the large, ranching-dominated county have been affected.

 

Gallegos defied stereotypes

VAIL, Colo. - Gerald Gallegos died last week, although his name will live on in ski towns of the West through the company that he founded, Gallegos Masonry. But he defied stereotypes in several ways.

First, although he had a Spanish surname, he was part of the indigenous Latino culture that existed in the Vail area long before the ski mountain was built. He was actually born in Colorado's San Luis Valley and he spent his first years not far from the ranch where Ken Salazar grew up. Salazar now is part of the Obama cabinet as secretary of the Department of Interior.

The Gallegos family was among many Hispanics who migrated from northern New Mexico and southern Colorado to work in the mining industry in the Leadville area. Both his father and, on his mother's side, his grandfather worked in a zinc mine located near what later became Vail.

Gerald Gallegos showed an entrepreneurial bent as a youngster, displaying no fear of selling his mother's knitted items in door-to-door salesmanship. During his college years, he worked summer construction at Vail, which was then just starting. After several years he decided to start his own company, which is now 40 years old.

From a few employees the company expanded to ultimately 800 permanent employees during the construction peak several years ago, plus more than 200 temporary employees. The company had also expanded, first to Aspen and then Telluride, eventually to the Lake Tahoe, Yellowstone, Jackson Hole and Sun Valley areas, plus a sizable presence in construction of high-end homes in metropolitan Denver.

In time, Gallegos became a major benefactor of organizations. He served alongside Gerald Ford, the former president who lived part-time at Beaver Creek, on various boards.

The story here is that not all Latinos are immigrants. The Gallegos family had been in the United States before the land was wrested away from Mexico in the 19 th century. And the second lesson is that at least a few people who lived in mountain valleys prior to the ski boom of the 1960s and 1970s profited handsomely in the transition.

 

Jackson voters maintain tax

JACKSON, Wyo. - These may be hard times economically, but voters in Teton County bellied up to the bar to approve a raft of spending measures.

The largest single project will be $11.75 million for new surgery rooms, more treatment areas for chemotherapy patients and other improvements at the local hospital, Saint John's. Also getting the nod were an $850,000 pedestrian and bicycle bridge over the Gros Ventre River between Jackson and Grand Teton National Park, and $3.8 million upgrades of various public buildings to reduce energy use.

To pay for the projects a local sales tax will be maintained to generate $34 million over three to four years. This is not a tax increase, as voters had chosen to continue the tax.

The Jackson Hole News & Guide notes that an estimated 60 per cent of the sales tax collections come from residents of the valley. The average annual cost for each resident is about $50.

 

Voters to decide on pot shops

FRASER, Colo. - Voters in Fraser, a town located adjacent to Winter Park, will decide in November whether dispensaries of marijuana will be allowed within the town. Normally, town boards and councils have made that decision. Breckenridge said yes, Vail no. But Fraser Town Board has always tried to achieve consensus. In this case, explained Jeff Durbin, the town manager, it was clear that no such consensus was possible. One trustee strongly opposed the marijuana dispensaries, while others were inclined to support it. The unwritten policy is that, "If there's enough disagreement among us, let's just take it to the voters and see what they think."

 

Revelstoke may ban chemicals

REVELSTOKE, B.C. - Revelstoke looks ready to go ahead with a city-wide ban on herbicides and pesticides. Crucial in removing lingering doubts were presentations by representatives of the Canadian Cancer Society and the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment.

From the Cancer Society, the council heard of links between pesticides and certain cancers, reports the Revelstoke Times Review . The newspaper says that the railroad, highway and other rights of way would be exempted from the ban, as would fungicides for use at the local golf course.

In British Columbia, 31 municipalities have banned pesticides and herbicides. A strong public education component has been the norm, one official told the elected officials.

 

Dylan wows 'em

JACKSON, Wyo. - Wearing a broad-brimmed hat, alternating between the keyboard, guitar and harmonica, Bob Dylan played before 3,000 people at Snow King, the ski resort in Jackson. Reviewing the show, the Jackson Hole News & Guide says that Dylan had the crowd with him from the third song moving forward.

Still, the newspaper's reviewer thought the show sterile at times and over-polished. The reviewer also noted that Dylan never spoke to the crowd. "He could have been playing anywhere at any time."

But does Dylan ever speak to his audiences?

 

Telluride back on rise

MOUNTAIN VILLAGE, Colo. - Local mountain biking enthusiasts were hoping for 600 competitors and another 400 spectators when the Mountain States Cup held its Full Tilt bicycle race on the slopes of Telluride. The Telluride Watch spoke of Telluride's "burgeoning reputation as a mountain biking mecca," although with not much evidence to cite. The enthusiasm seems to be centred around a race course built in anticipation of the World Cup event held there in 2002.

 

Ketchum against wall

KETCHUM, Idaho - County commissioners in Blaine County have taken a dim view of a proposed noise-mitigation wall along the highway that bisects the Ketchum/Sun Valley area.

The wall would be eight feet tall but not much more than a few football fields long. The primary beneficiaries would be the residents of a trailer park. From a report in the Idaho Mountain Express, it sounds like the wall would diminish the sound only slightly. Better might be a reduced speed limit. But, at any rate, commissioners would prefer something less stark than a wall - say an earthen berm or a wooden fence.

Vail also has been tortured by highway noise. The town several years ago flirted with erecting walls, but concluded that because sound rises, and homes rise rapidly on hillsides above the town, walls would do little good. Instead, the town vowed to clamp down on speeding motorists, as the faster the truck or car, the greater the volume of sound. Speed limit through the town is 65 mph.

 

Camper injured by falling tree

FRISCO, Colo. - For the last several years, U.S. Forest Service officials have been warning that dead trees eventually fall. And there are plenty of dead trees now in northern Colorado, around places like Breckenridge, Vail and Winter Park. One of them fell recently near Frisco, along Interstate 70, when two backpackers decided to tie up swing hammocks. One of the trees they tied to fell over, injuring the camper sufficiently that he was flown to Denver for treatment.