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Mountain News: Cheney speaks, protestors rally

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. – It was a shimmering day of irony in Jackson Hole. U.S.

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. – It was a shimmering day of irony in Jackson Hole. U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney gave a speech to dedicate an $18 million building in Grand Teton National Park — a park enabled, in part, by the philanthropy of the original oil baron, John D. Rockefeller.

Meanwhile, on the bicycle path leading to Cheney’s declared primary home, located in a rural subdivision called Teton Pines, a group of about 250 people walked, carrying anti-war signs, accusing Cheney of being the mastermind of a war on behalf of oil.

At the gate to the subdivision, reports the Jackson Hole News & Guide, the crowd gathered at the feet of a giant statue of Cheney holding a fishing rod in one hand and a spurting oil derrick in the other. Where a heart should have been was a black hole. The giant effigy towered over a tiny George W. Bush head wearing red devil horns and a blindfold over its eyes.

“Operation Iraqi Liberation,” sang an entertainer. “Tell me, what does that spell?”

“O-I-L,” responded the crowd, composed in age from elementary school to great-grandparents. It also included a Democratic state legislator from Jackson Hole.

The following week, the newspaper had eight letters on the subject. Most expressed disgust at the protest. “This was not a peace rally, like this group would lead you to believe. It was a hate rally. Nothing more, nothing less,” wrote Bill Scarlett, the local Republican Party chairman. Other similarly spoke of the “hatred and venom” and “over-the-line antics.”

As well, one letter-writer said a paid advertisement in the Jackson Hole Daily “accusing the vice president of personal responsibility for casualties in Iraq far exceeds the community norms for decency and reasoned, civil debate.”

 

Jumbo causes rumble

INVERMERE, B.C. – Yet more high-spirited comment is seen in the pages of the Invermere Valley Echo, where the contentious issue of the proposed Jumbo Glacier Resort has been praised and vilified for a number of years.

Seemingly confident of the results, a good many of the locals have called for a local election. Renewing that call in a letter to the editor is Doug Anakin, who says that before the proposed ski area gets any more approvals, “it would be only proper and democratic that a vote be held, in the regional district and in the towns and villages of the valley…”

Elsewhere, the paper offers some evidence of the project getting further traction within the provincial government.

 

Green-building chain started

CARBONDALE, Colo. – The first in what a businessman from Snowmass hopes will be a chain of green-building stores is being planned at Carbondale.

“Think Ace Hardware meets Whole Foods; it’s a high-service model,” said Christopher W. Jacobson of Snowmass Village, the chief executive officer of GreenSpot, Inc.

He tells the Valley Journal in Carbondale that the store, when it opens in September, will offer lumber certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, as well as paint absent volatile organic compounds, or VOCs. The company will provide documentation on invoices to allow customers the receipt of LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) points on their buildings.

 

Local-food advocates feast

CARBONDALE, Colo. – Food has become very dependent upon transportation, mostly trucks. The average item of food in the United States (and probably Canada) now travels 1,500 miles.

One response has been to emphasize local food production. In Telluride in May, organizers of the Mountainfilm Festival offered a lunch at which all items came from within 105 miles, if most of those partaking of the samples did not.

At Whistler last weekend, some 2,000 cyclists were scheduled to pedal all, or at least part of, a 50-kilometre loop winding through farmlands of the Pemberton Valley, near Whistler. The event is called the Feast of Fields, and the goal is to introduce people to the local carrots, raspberries, and potatoes.

In Carbondale, 30 miles down valley from Aspen, Brook LeVan and his wife, Rose, operate a business called Sustainable Settings. The Aspen Times explains that he grows organic vegetables and fruits and raises livestock, all of which is sold locally.

LeVan tells the Times that he, like others, foresees the “collapse of a lot of systems that govern our lifestyles. Our national food security is incredibly fragile.”

But even in Carbondale, million dollar homes are appearing. Can land worth that much be harnessed for agriculture production? LeVan thinks so. He envisions leasing land from owners of large estates, which in turn qualifies the landowner for tax breaks.

“We’ve got to move now” to begin making changes in how food is produced and distributed, he said.

 

Passions ignited by housing plan

SUMMIT COUNTY, Utah – A plan to insert deed-restricted affordable housing into a middle-class neighbourhood near Park City drew a crowd of 150 people.

The Park Record reports that tension at the meeting was palpable as neighbours testified their fears that affordable housing will bring crime to their neighbourhood, even as community planners presented the affordable housing as the sort of thing needed for teachers, firefighters, and others. One speaker described it as a potential “ghetto in the meadow.”

But while the potential for minorities as neighbours may have been an issue for some, a homeowner association president, Rick Alden, said density, not diversity, was at issue. He and others say the plan calls for too many units clumped together.

A county commissioner, Ken Woolstenhulme, noted that affordable housing is popular as an ideal — but only as a concrete detail when located in somebody else’s neighborhood.

The county is aiming to create housing such that 36 per cent of the county’s workforce can afford to live within Summit County. Being only 25 freeway miles from Salt Lake City, Summit County has a large commuting workforce.

Less controversial, says The Record, is proposed inclusionary zoning, which would require 20 per cent of all new development and redevelopment be comprised of affordable units.

 

Bear makes itself at home

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. – Stories of bears invading houses continue. The Crested Butte News tells of a 230-pound bear that pushed or opened a door (it had a lever-type handle) and walked up the stairs, strolled unnoticed past somebody who was reading, and then behind a woman who was standing at a counter.

The woman left, closed the door, and called for police. The bear was shot, even though it had never been caught before because, in the words of wildlife officer J Wenum, the bear clearly had lost any fear of humans.

Many mountain towns have had reports this summer of large numbers of bears upsetting garbage cans and invading houses and other buildings. However, there have yet to be any injuries caused by bears, although wildlife officers for years have said it’s only a matter of time.

 

Aspen anguishes over bear deaths

ASPEN, Colo. – Seven bears had been killed this year by state wildlife officers in Pitkin County, where Aspen is located, and nine have been moved elsewhere. Many more of both are expected in what is shaping up as the worst summer for people-bear interactions since the desperately dry summer of 2002. That year, 12 bears were killed.

The killings have left Aspen both argumentative and anguished. Randy Hampton, a Colorado Division of Wildlife spokesman, estimated that 70 per cent of Aspenites oppose killing bears, while 30 per cent favor an aggressive policy.

Also at issue is whether the state should feed bears during droughty summers. Many people think it’s only proper. But the state biologists reject feeding, saying it will create a population too large for the habitat. Drier conditions resulting from the hotter, changed climate may not sustain as many bears, they say.

Snowmass Village was the first municipality in the nation to adopt regulations tightly governing trash, and Aspen followed relatively soon after. But this year’s rash of bear deaths has left Aspen as the role of imitator. State wildlife officials are pointing to Vail, which last year killed two bears — and quickly led to a stiffened law that has been tightly enforced by police. This year, no bears have been killed in Vail, nor have there been reports of house break-ins.

Aspen, says Hampton, leaves enforcement to just one officer, who works mornings. More than half of bear encounters occur between 6 p.m. and midnight, he says.

Is enforcement really the key? Hampton says state officials believe it is.

“That’s not to say that Vail has a silver bullet,” he adds. “There will always be bears in Vail, and there will always be bears in Aspen. The difference is that Vail last year made a commitment.”

Meanwhile, reports The Aspen Times, officials in both Aspen and Pitkin County are reviewing regulations that proposed more aggressive policies. Aspen is looking to stiffen the fine for violators, now at $50, to $250.

The county regulations propose to allow animal safety officers and other law-enforcement officials to hand out tickets to those who do not have trash containers bear-proofed as specified by the county. Before, such tickets were given out only in response to complaints. Violators will get fined $350 on first offense, unless they quickly purchase the requisite bear-proof containers.

As defined by Pitkin County, a bear-proof container must be latched to prevent animals from getting in, and that lids must be steel — and thick enough to withstand the weight of a bear.

 

Who is this guy?

BANFF, Alberta – The Rocky Mountain Outlook tells of a 24-year-old man who was detained by police after crossing a primary street in Banff with his pants around his ankles.

That was last Nov. 11, at about 2:20 in the morning. Just how the man managed to run with his pants around his ankles, the newspaper didn’t say. If that spectacle — cited as “conduct disturbing others” — wasn’t enough, he was detained an hour later by police who found him staggering and yelling at people with slurred speech.

But the judge found neither offense as great as the fact that he had two driver’s licenses, from Australia and Alberta, one of them stolen. He was fined, but the judge said he could expect to spend considerably more time in jail than two days if caught doing something of the sort again.

 

ATV regulations ‘anti-family’?

SILVERTON, Colo. – With Silverton at its heart, San Juan County is a maze of gravel and dirt roads, some of which connect to the neighbouring towns of Telluride, Ouray, and Lake City. The roads climb around and over the sea of 13,000-foot peaks, and they become busy during summer months with all-terrain vehicles.

Colorado law requires only that operators of the ATVs be a minimum of 10 years old and within line of sight of an adult, although the minimum age for drivers of cars and trucks is 15 years, 3 months of age for a learner’s permit.

But San Juan County several years ago mandated a driver’s license and proof of insurance for anybody driving an ATV within the county.

This, reports the Silverton Standard & Miner, has not set well with everybody in the community. One motel operator, noting that ATV operators “bring a lot of money to this area and keep us all going,” urged the county’s regulations be brought in line with the state’s. Another speaker said that the requirement of a minimum age of 16 seemed “anti-family.”

The Standard reports a well-attended meeting, and overwhelming sentiment — including the county commissioners — for staying the course. Among the arguments, reports the Standard, is safety, as young ATV riders nationally have a very high accident rate.

San Juan County Sheriff Sue Kurtz was among those urging no change to county regulations. “The problem is 20 times more than it was 10 years ago.” She wished for seamless regulations and enforcement among the interconnected counties of the San Juan Mountains.

Animas Forks — a ghost town between Silverton and Lake City — has become a major staging area for ATVs, she noted. “It’s a dangerous situation. We have too big a volume of traffic.”

 

Lake Tahoe warming rapidly

LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – Nights have become warmer, cold days more rare, and more precipitation at Lake Tahoe is falling as rain, instead of snow.

These are among the findings of an inaugural State of the Lake report issued by scientists from the University of California at Davis. Warming is clearly evident, and the manifold repercussions of that increased heat does not bode well for the clarity of that lake that has fascinated visitors since the time of Mark Twain.

Reliable weather records date to 1911, and the average low temperatures at night have risen more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit, say scientists. Days are also warmer. The number of days with average air temperatures below freezing has dropped from 79 to 42 days.

With that increased warmth comes more rain. A century ago 52 per cent of precipitation arrived as snow. Now, it’s 34 per cent.

More recent observations show the lake itself is also warming. The average surface water temperature during July has increased almost 5 degrees since 1999, with the record warmth — 78 degrees — registered in July 2006.

Geoff Schladow, director of the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center, said the persistent warmer temperatures observed since 1978 are “beginning to have a noticeable impacts on the entire Lake Tahoe ecosystem.”

For example, increased warmth has advanced runoff by two weeks, giving algae a longer season to grow.

“The types of algae we see in the lake are changing, and they are starting to be present earlier in the year,” he said in a press release. “The lake is becoming more hospitable to invasive plants and fish, with warm-water species like bass and carp increasingly common.”

This has repercussions for the legendary clarity of Tahoe, the world’s 11 th deepest lake. Clarity has declined from an average of 102 feet when Twain visited in the 1860s to a low of 64 feet in the late 1990s. Scientists, explains the Tahoe Daily Tribune, have said that clarity is falling because of fine particles and nutrients that enter the lake through erosion, runoff and atmospheric deposition. The fine particles scatter light. The nutrients fuel the growth of algae, which absorb light.

During the last decade $1 billion has been spent to halt this decline in clarity. Rochelle Nason, executive director of the non-profit League to Save Lake Tahoe, said it could cost between $2 billion and $3 billion during the next decade to stabilize the lake. “Climate change poses a new kind of threat to Lake Tahoe,” she told the Los Angeles Times.

On the wish list: purchase of many of the 1,400 parcels of land around the lake, to be conserved as open space. Also, restoring more than 1,000 acres of wetlands, to filter sediments and pollutants before they wash into the lake.

Schladow, the lead author of the study, said urgent measures should be taken to eradicate invasive species such as the Eurasian water milfoil, a plant that roots in the lake’s shallows and can grow 4 feet tall. Although still confined to the marinas, the non-native species “could be all over the lake within five years,” he said.

 

Mid-winter torching the answer

TELLURDE, Colo. – Phil Miller understands why people of Summit County, Vail, and Grand County are anxious about the dead trees killed by mountain bark beetles. As a young man after World War II, he was on U.S. Forest Service crews dispatched from Eagle and Kremmling that doused large areas of trees with insecticide.

He spent a career in the Forest Service, but chose to live in retirement in Telluride, where he is active in town affairs. Writing in The Telluride Watch, he says there are easier and cheaper ways to deal with the fire hazard than logging the trees.

Torch them in mid-winter, he advises, when there is plenty of snow on the ground. “Torching the red-tops will burn off all of the needles and small branches. What is left, the main stem and large branches, will not carry a crown fire.”

“I can tell you it is fun,” he adds. “The people could have torching parties in the winter.”

 

Lightning strikes

LEADVILLE, Colo. – Colorado has a reputation of getting more lightning than other places. Not true. It is 24 th in density of cloud-to-ground lightning, says Steve Hodanish, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service and a lightning specialist.

But Colorado during the last decade rose to No. 2 in the nation in lightning deaths, up from 11 th place in prior years, a ranking Hodanish says is explained by the state’s outdoor lifestyle, particularly the hobby of peak-bagging the state’s 14,000-foot peaks.

A few Sundays back, a 28-year-old man from Boulder nearly became one of those statistics.

It was about 3 p.m. Hail was falling, and lighting bolts were booming around Justin Eggleston as he and his girlfriend, Jamie Willett, jogged from the summit of Colorado’s tallest mountain, 14,440-foot Elbert. It was his first high mountain.

“The next thing you know it felt like I got swept off my feet and I thought I was rolling down the mountain in water,” Eggleston told the Summit Daily News. “Then I woke up and I wasn’t going anywhere. I was just lying there.”

His girlfriend, who had been 125 feet behind, had also been knocked over, but rushed over to him. So did a group of three hikers who had seen what happened. One of them was a doctor from Aspen.

“I started hyperventilating and crying, and then they tried getting me to calm down and breathe deeply,” he told the newspaper. Amid continued flashes of electricity, two of the hikers carried him down the trail, although it took two and a half hours. He was hospitalized, and doctors told him the unwanted electricity may have damaged his muscles, but he’s expected to recover.

The moral of the story? “I’m definitely not going to be coming down any mountains at 3 o’clock,” he told the Summit Daily. “I guess the rule of thumb is to come down by noon, so I’m going to stick to that.”

 

Cavers search for snottites

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. – Care to venture a guess as to what a snottite is?

Before forming your answer, it may be useful to know that it’s the sort of thing that cavers may seek. In this case, the cavers assembled in Steamboat Springs, and after a highly toxic gas called hydrogen sulfide was pumped from Sulfur Cave, entered it in search of these snottites.

And the cave does have the snottites. They are, reports The Steamboat Pilot & Today, similar to stalactites, which hang tightly from cave ceilings. But the texture of a snottite is very different from a rigid stalactite. A snottite has — here it comes — the consistency of snot, or mucus. They are composed of single-celled bacteria.

“As I blew on them, they’d start to sway back and forth,” Mike Frazier, a caver, told the paper. Cavers said that a cave in Mexico also has the snottites.

 

Paying to keep ranching

EAGLE COUNTY, Colo. – Although horse pastures and such can still be seen from Interstate 70 as it passes through the resort country of Colorado, not much real ranching remains. The story almost entirely is of the New West.

But off the pavement a few miles, in a place called Burns Hole, with the buzz-headed Flat Top Mountains in the background, the story is different. There, on a mesa above a canyon cut by the Colorado River, are a variety of working ranches, some of them tended by descendents of the original settlers who homesteaded the land in the 1880s and 1890s.

The lingering question for the last decade has been whether these old working ranches will inevitably be divided into weekend and vacation homes, even if the restaurants of Vail and Steamboat are almost 90 minutes away.

In an attempt to keep the ranch as a working ranch, the Eagle Valley Land Trust is trying to raise $3.65 million to buy the development rights for the 740-acre Gates ranch. The ranch will remain undivided, and as a working ranch, although the public will not gain access, explains the Eagle Valley Enterprise.

The land trust was involved in a similar preservation effort several years ago that was highly controversial. The land trust helped raise money — including $2 million from Eagle County government coffers — for purchase of the Bair Ranch, a private working ranch located in Glenwood Canyon, at the west end of the valley. Opponents protested that the purchase of development rights merely subsidized the lifestyle of the ranching family, and were annoyed that no public access would be allowed.

 

Open space case heads to court

TELLURIDE, Colo. – For now, adults and children and sometimes their dogs are cavorting on the former cow pasture at the entrance to Telluride. But, as expected, the landowner whose land was seized in a process called condemnation has appealed the case of the Colorado Supreme Court.

The essence of the San Miguel Valley Corporation in the 42-page legal filing is a classic strict-construction argument, explains the Telluride Daily Planet.

The case goes back several years. With Telluride threatening condemnation of the land, to eliminate potential development, the landowner, Neal Blue, had representatives propose a state law that was subsequently passed by the Colorado Legislature in 2004. Called the Telluride Amendment, it banned home-rule towns, which Telluride is, from using eminent-domain to condemn land outside their borders for open space.

Telluride sued, and a district court ruled in favour of the town. The new state law, said the district court, was unconstitutional — that it illegally stripped powers from towns that had already been conferred by the state Constitution.

But the landowner, who has turned over the 570 acres pending resolution of the legal case, argues the opposite view, namely that towns can condemn land only for those purposes expressly granted by the Constitution.

The case is expected to take until next spring for resolution by the Colorado Supreme Court. It is also assumed this case could go to the U.S. Supreme Court.

 

Drivers disconnect

VAIL, Colo. – Highway officials may add signs in advance of construction work after a truck carrying soda pop slammed into cars stopped by the project on Interstate 70.

The crash killed a man who was an occupant of one of the stopped cars. Traffic engineer Peter Kozinski told the Vail Daily that there were already two signs warning drivers of the work ahead, but he intended to install two more signs. Still, he wondered whether it will get the job done.

“We have to examine where people get numb to signs, when they kind of blank them out, and when they are useful information,” he said.

 

Canmore considers curbside recycling

CANMORE, Alberta – Curbside recycling will be on the public agenda in Canmore this fall. The goal of the proposal is to divert 50 per cent of waste going to the landfill within three years. Potentially at issue, says the Rocky Mountain Outlook, is whether recycling containers will draw wildlife. The town in the past had a difficult time with bears, since largely eliminated with the creation of community bear-proof garbage containers that, says the newspaper, have become a model for other communities. Curbside recycling must be easy, says the newspaper, or people won’t do it.