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Mountain News: Defending the (other) Fraser River

FRASER, Colo. — Segments of highway get named after people. Why not rivers, too? That's the intention in the Fraser Valley, which includes the Winter Park ski area.
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FRASER, Colo. — Segments of highway get named after people. Why not rivers, too?

That's the intention in the Fraser Valley, which includes the Winter Park ski area. It's the closest valley of the water-rich Colorado River accessible to metropolitan Denver, which is located on the more arid lee side of the Rocky Mountains. Beginning in 1936, Denver began diverting water — and it hopes to tap even more, up to 80 per cent of the river's annual flows.

Local fishing groups continue to object. As part of their campaign, they now propose to name a three-kilometre segment of the Fraser River after former U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower. It would be called the Eisenhower Memorial Reach.

"These are presidential waters, plain and simple," says Kirk Klancke, from the local chapter of Trout Unlimited.

Eisenhower fished the Fraser River and tributary creeks from 1952 to 1955, before he suffered a heart attack. Because his wife, Mamie, was originally from Denver, they vacationed there.

The designation, if approved by the Colorado General Assembly, would "draw attention to the fact that the Fraser River is a pristine environment, pristine enough to have drawn the leader of the free world back in the '50s," Klancke told the Sky-Hi News.

If the river is so designated, it would join the Ronald Reagan Memorial Highway, also known as I-25 as it goes through Colorado Springs. Also in Colorado, the Gerald Ford Memorial Highway goes through Vail and past Beaver Creek, where Ford kept a vacation home. It is otherwise known as I-70.

Cow carcasses a conundrum

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. — What now brown cows? That's the question the Forest Service is being asked as it considers the plight of frozen cattle that were found in a cabin near treeline, adjacent to the Conundrum Hot Springs.

At 3,400 metres in elevation, Conundrum is said to be the highest-elevation hot springs in North America. It's 14 kilometres from Crested Butte and about the same distance from a trail originating on the outskirts of Aspen. In March, two cadets from the U.S. Air Force Academy snowshoed into the springs and found six dead cows. A Forest Service team got to the site last week and found more.

The working hypothesis of forest rangers is that the cattle wandered away last fall from a herd grazing above Crested Butte and took shelter in the cabin from an early storm. Somehow, the door closed, and the cattle couldn't figure out how to open it. And so they died.

The Forest Service is uncertain about what to do. As people start trekking into the hot springs, the cattle will be moldering, creating a sanitation issue. Plus, there's a strong possibility that black bears, an omnivorous species, will be drawn to the putrid smells for easy meals.

Because the cabin is remote and within a designated wilderness area, there's no easy way to remove the carcasses. Scott Snelson, the district ranger for the Forest Service in Aspen, told National Public Radio last week that options include creating a big bonfire or exploding the cabin and its contents.

However, there are also worries that the cabin may contain asbestos, reports Bill Kite, public information officer for the agency. In that case, neither explosion nor fire is viable.

Corporate travel on rise

AVON, Colo. — Corporate and business travellers are returning to the resorts of the Vail and Beaver Creek area in greater numbers, reports the Vail Daily.

"Not only are the corporate meetings coming back, but so are the incentive trips, the corporate rewards," said Bob Trotter, general manager of the Westin Riverfront Resort & Spa.

That hotel opened just as the financial meltdown was occurring in 2008. For the first few years, group business was split between corporate travel and social affairs such as weddings. Now corporate gatherings have edged to 60 per cent of all group sales.

The Vail Valley Partnership reports a 14 per cent increase in corporate travel year over year.

Best wait until June to put out the plants

BRECKENRIDGE, Colo. — It seems like summer, but the calendar says otherwise. Gardeners in Summit County, where communities range from 2,700 metres to more than 3,000 metres in elevation, are reminded that it's best not to put out plants until June 15.

The Summit Daily News reports that Summit County this summer will have five community gardens, with room for 200 plots. The newest is at Breckenridge, which is to be coupled with a recycling and educational facility. The new garden cost $6,000, most of it paid for by the town, and will have raised beds.

Women head up the police, fire agencies

BRECKENRIDGE, Colo. — One of Colorado's oldest communities, with roots dating to the gold rush of 1859, Breckenridge now has a distinction in that both its police and fire departments are headed by women.

Lori Miller last year became chief of the Red, White and Blue Fire Protection District. That made her the first female fire chief of an all-career fire department in Colorado. Last month, Shannon Haynes became the police chief.

As well, notes the Summit Daily News, two of the town council members are women, although that's hardly an anomaly. The Mormon-founded town in Utah, Kanab, had an all-female council in 1912, the first in the country.

Ironically, this same town of 4,000 people, located between Lake Powell and Zion National Park, in 2006 adopted a resolution that identified a "natural family" as consisting of young women who grow up to become wives, homemakers and mothers. And homes, according to this definition, are to be open to a "full quiver of children."

Truckee tilts hard against use of coal

TRUCKEE, Calif. — In 2007, the utility that delivers power to the Truckee area got 92 per cent of its electricity from coal-fired generation and just eight per cent from renewables. Now, the utility claims only half of its power from coal and 33 per cent from renewable sources.

How did it achieve such a sharp change in such a short time? A report in the Sierra Sun points to a variety of sources, including small hydropower and landfill gas. This summer, a new wind farm in southern Idaho begins generating electricity.

Lynx filmed using highway overpass

BANFF, Alberta — A rare image of a lynx using a highway overpass in Banff National Park has been getting considerable attention. It's the sixth lynx recorded using either the underpasses or overpasses since monitoring began in 1996.

But the larger story is that it represents what may happen in other places, such as in Colorado. Advocates for years have been pushing for a highway overpass across I-70, somewhere between Vail and Georgetown. At least four lynx have been squashed in that segment of highway since lynx were reintroduced into Colorado in 1999.

"If we can educate people about these safe passage measures and the importance of them, we'll get better traction when we try to mitigate highways elsewhere," said Tony Clevenger, of the Western Transportation Institute.

The Rocky Mountain Outlook says at least 11 species of large mammals have used the crossing structures in Banff National Park, including grizzly and black bears, wolves, cougars, moose, deer, elk, bighorn sheep and, more recently, wolverine and lynx.

Mountain valleys brace for drought

GRANBY, Colo. — Records continue to topple at the headwaters of the Colorado River and its tributaries in this unusual year in which winter ended in February. The Colorado River Basin has its lowest snowpack recorded in the last 45 years.

On Lake Granby, a reservoir near the river headwaters created for transmountain diversion, the ice had cleared by April 10. That's earlier than even the warmer, droughtier years of the last decade, 2002 and 2004 being the most memorable.

Aspen has approved regulations that, if the drought persists into summer, it will allow city officials to impose surcharges of 175 to 200 per cent on customers who continue to use high volumes of water. The city last enacted such a water shortage law in 2002, notes the Aspen Daily News.

The Steamboat Pilot & Today reports that Routt County commissioners have banned open fires, including the smoking of cigarettes in the open. Of 11 wildfires this spring, nine were human caused, mostly the result of ranchers burning vegetation to clear ditches.

Average temperatures in the Vail area during March were four to six degrees higher than average, launching the spring snowmelt a month early.

So far this year, weather is tracking as even hotter and drier than 2002. That year ended up as one of the driest in centuries, helping draw down Lake Powell to levels from which it hasn't fully recovered.

Last year was phenomenally wet, so reservoirs are full in Colorado and the soil remains more saturated than was the case in 2002. Taken together, the last two years have been about average.

Will it stay hot and dry? Two benchmark years for winter drought, 1976-77 and 1980-81, ended up being not too bad because of summer storms, says Nolan Doesken, the Colorado state climatologist.

But seeing trees leaf out in April, three weeks earlier than usual, does create a sense of uneasiness. "It's an uncomfortable balance," says Doesken.

Composting toilets good to go

ASPEN, Colo. — What do you do when you have the need for up to 50,000 trips to the bathroom each year at a very public location?

At Aspen's Rio Grande Park, the answer lies in composting toilets. They will cost $400,000, enough to raise eyebrows even in Aspen. But that's no more than laying a new sewage line.

Human waste shrinks to 20 per cent of the original volume, thanks to bacteria used in the composting process. The vaults can be pumped just once every 12 to 14 months, producing a product that can be sold to landscapers.