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Mountain News: Gaglardis invest in Revelstoke

The Gaglardi family of Vancouver, who are at the helm of the proposed Garibaldi at Squamish ski resort, have bought a significant equity interest in Revelstoke Mountain Resort development.

The Gaglardi family of Vancouver, who are at the helm of the proposed Garibaldi at Squamish ski resort, have bought a significant equity interest in Revelstoke Mountain Resort development.

The purchase was more than $10 million according to a report in the Vancouver Sun.

The billion dollar Revelstoke development is set to open Dec. 22 for the ski season.

The principles in Revelstoke Mountain Resort now include four partners: Denver developer Don Simpson, Toronto developers Hunter Milborne and Robert Powadiuk and the Gaglardi family.

The Revelstoke resort is expected to be completed over 15 years and will include more than 5,000 housing units and 500,000 square feet of commercial and retail space and a golf course.

 

Beacon saved sledder

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. – A happier report was filed from Bondurant, Wyo., where a snowmobiler from Jackson was caught in an avalanche on Dec. 2. The slide was relatively small, but it buried his head under two feet of snow.

“When it started slowing down, that’s when I started freaking out,” said Jason Blair, 33. “It got tight, and I couldn’t move.”

Ending up face down, he told the Jackson Hole News & Guide that the weight was “unbearable,” as if somebody had dumped snow from the bucket of a front-end loader onto his back.

Luck was with him. He had eight companions that day, and they immediately rushed to where they believed he was. He was wearing an avalanche transceiver, and it worked. His companions also had beacons, although some discovered that their batteries were dead. One of those without a workable beacon began probing, and within the fourth try luckily hit Blair’s helmet.

Within five minutes, the companions got air to Blair’s mouth and nose, which were packed with snow.

He was also lucky in another way. He had put the beacon into his backpack. It wasn’t ripped from his body in the slide, but it could have been. From now on, said Blair, his beacon goes around his body.

 

Mining history on the move

SUMMIT COUNTY, Colo. – Breckenridge continues to reconfigure its landscape, softening the hard edges of its mining heritage. That heritage included the churning of vast piles of gravel in rivers and creeks by steam-powered dredges, yielding minute quantities of gold. In some cases, the rivers were dredged up to 50 feet deep, down to bedrock.

Although the dredge mining ended in 1942, vast piles of rock remained piled high in the Blue River at the town’s entrance well into the 1980s. Some piles remain even now in the Blue, as well as its chief tributaries, French Creek and the Swan River.

That is changing. The Summit Daily News reports that the piles of rock have been removed from the Swan, one truckload at a time, for use elsewhere as fill material below houses. In exchange, topsoil is being provided for the river restoration. As well, a small portion of the old dredging operation has been restored, as a sort of outdoor museum.

Another segment of the river restoration is being launched, explained Brian Lorch, Summit County’s open space and trail director. Within a few years, he hopes to see trout once again hiding in the waters of the river.

 

San Juan mining renews

OURAY, Colo. – With renewed mining continuing at Yankee Boy Basin, near Ouray, officials are adopting a policy governing who snowplows the road into the basin.

A major concern is the potential for avalanches. The history books are rife with stories of avalanches along that road in the heyday of mining, when ore was transported by mule trains from the basin.

In past decades, companies plowed the road as necessary without seeking formal permission. But things are different now. More people are snowmobiling and skiing on the slopes above the road than in the past. As such, Ouray County Commissioners wanted a more clear designation of responsibilities and liabilities. Among the agreements is that a sign will be posted at the road’s entrance noting that it is being “maintained only for mining activity.”

 

Seasons change quickly

SILVERTON, Colo. – How different are people in cities and mountain towns? A few weeks ago it was 55 degrees out, there was sunshine all around, and not one bit of snow in the San Juan Mountains, or for that matter, anywhere in Colorado.

In Denver, people were exulting in the “good” weather. In mountain towns, that same weather pattern evoked grumpiness.

But then the skies darkened, and the snow was being measured by the foot in Crested Butte. “People were excited to have to dig five feet of snow off their cars,” said one visitor.

In Silverton, where the mid-December snow was about 120 per cent of average, columnist Freddie Canfield reported arrival of the “good old days”. The highway by Silverton on its way to Durango and Ouray “looks like a two-lane toboggan run with nearly 10-foot berms,” he reported in the Silverton Standard.

 

Home Depot hoping to Summit

SUMMIT COUNTY, Colo. – Home Depot has submitted an application for a 100,000-square-foot The Home Depot store in Silverthorne. The application was incomplete, but it’s possible that the project could be presented to planning commissioners in January or February, reports the Summit Daily News. The newspaper also notes immediate questions from the existing business community about whether the chain franchise will be a good addition to the community.

 

Opponents close to legal victory

PAGOSA SPRINGS, Colo. – Opponents of a major real-estate development adjacent to the Wolf Creek ski area in Southern Colorado may be close to a second significant legal victory.

Earlier this year, Colorado Wild and other groups won a court judgment that found Mineral County’s approval of the 2,600 housing units violated its own procedures. Those groups, including Alamosa-based San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council, also sued the Forest Service, claiming its environmental review was fundamentally illegal in its scope.

The case stretches back nearly 30 years, to a time when the Pitcher family, which owns the ski area, wanted to build lodging at the base. It forged an agreement with Billy Joe “Red” McCombs, who agreed to finance the development work. A land exchange was consummated in the 1980s, providing an island of private land in a sea of federally administered property. No real-estate development currently exists at the ski area.

For the development to occur, however, McCombs needs access roads across the Forest Service property. The Forest Service has authorized those roads, but Colorado Wild says the review process was fundamentally flawed. First, it uncovered evidence of collaborative efforts between the agency and the developer that Colorado Wild says were improper.

But the environmental impact statement reviewed only impacts of the roads, and not of the real-estate development itself. Colorado Wild says that the real estate cannot occur without the roads, and hence the impacts of the real estate must also be considered.

Ryan Demmy Bidwell, director of Colorado Wild, says no settlement has been reached in the Forest Service case, but confirmed a report in the Durango Herald. “We’re still working on details,” he said. “But in general, I think the Forest Service is coming around to the fact that it doesn’t want to follow this litigation to its conclusion.”

Bidwell said Colorado Wild remains committed to forcing a new EIS that considers the impacts of the real-estate development as “either a direct or indirect effect of the Forest Service decision on access.”