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Mountain News: Hillary recalled for no-nonsense tenting

ASPEN, Colo.

ASPEN, Colo. – Edmund Hillary, the mountain climber, died in January, and among his eulogies there was yet more mention of the old nonsense – the stuff about whether it was he or Tenzing Norgay who set the first foot upon the summit of Mount Everest in 1953.

Why this doesn’t matter is perhaps explained best by Jeremy Bernstein, a physicist, author and mountaineer in his own right who lives part time in Aspen. Bernstein, in a letter published in the New York Review of Books, notes that there was a snobbery toward the Sherpas on the part of the British climbers in the 1953 expedition.

“The Sherpas resented it, and it took all the diplomatic skills of Tenzing Norgay, the head Sherpa and the leading Sherpa climber, to keep them from quitting before the expedition left Kathmandu. Without the Sherpas who carried equipment to very high camps, the British would have had no chance to climb the mountain,” he says.

Tenzing knew more about the mountain than anybody else and had nearly climbed it the year before when climbing with the Swiss, says Bernstein. And with the Swiss, he had been treated like a team member and not a glorified hired hand.

“On the British expedition none of the climbers, other than Hillary, would have shared a tent with a Sherpa. It was just not done. But Hillary, a New Zealander, was an outsider, too, and impervious to the prejudices of race and class,” writes Bernstein.

It was, he concludes, fitting that “these two outsiders were the first to climb Chomo-Lungma – the Goddess Mother of the World.”

 

Global warming now a real estate selling point

REVELSTOKE, B.C. – Climate change is now becoming a real-estate selling point.

That’s the observation of Toronto’s Globe and Mail after visiting the new Revelstoke Mountain Resort, which opened in late December and expects next year, after extension of the gondola, to have the most vertical of any ski resort in North America.

The newspaper notes that the ski area gets an annual average of 15 metres of snow, or nearly 600 inches. “If, 20 years from now, we only get half the snow, it’s still much more than anyone else,” says one of the four developers, Hunter Milborne, the managing director of Sotheby’s International in Toronto.

Zul Haji, a Calgary-based investor, tells the newspaper he was intrigued by the concept of climate change real estate. He paid $450,000 for a condo last March. That same day, Revelstoke sold $70 million worth of real estate in its first offering.

“With global warming, as we get less and less snow at lower elevations, a lot of ski hills will be out of business,” says Hahi. “That was my main motivation.”

Don Simpson, a Denver-based developer of apartment buildings, is another of the four major developers. He has helicopter skied in the mountains around Revelstoke for 20 years. “Snow in Revelstoke is just so dependable,” he says. “It’s always abundant.” It is, he says, the best snow in the world.

The resort is near Rogers Pass, about five hours west of Calgary and six hours east of Vancouver.

 

Vail employee situation keeps restaurant closed

VAIL, Colo. – The employee situation in Vail has come to this. Even during winter, Vail’s Sweet Basil, renowned as one of the town’s best restaurants, will remain closed two days a week during lunch.

The shut sign – the first during ski season in 30 years of operations – was posted after many of the kitchen staff worked an 84-hour work week during the holidays.

This, reports the Rocky Mountain News, is despite wages that for some positions have increased nearly 40 percent during the past two years, plus health insurance and ski passes.

Alas, while the restaurant has 70 employees during peak season, it has employee housing for only four.

While employee housing is being added in Vail and elsewhere in the Eagle Valley, it’s not keeping up with the growth in jobs. The newspaper notes that 1,500 new jobs are being added as a consequence of redevelopment in Vail now underway. Another 2,115 jobs could result from development projects now pending. Plus, down-valley in Avon and Edwards, another 7,400 jobs are expected in the next decade.

 

$496 million in building permits pulled in Vail VAIL, Colo. – Construction permits for nearly a half-billion dollars were pulled last year in Vail, most of it at the base of the ski lifts. About 70 per cent of the total was in four projects, and a majority of it falls under the heading of redevelopment.

The largest project underway is a $110 million condo and fractional project called the Ritz-Carlton Residences being built by ski area operator Vail Resorts Inc. The next largest is a $104 million project called Solaris, which is replacing a late 1960s-style condo, office, and retail complex. Down the list further is an $89 million Four Seasons, which is to have condos and fractional units.

The Vail Daily explains that there’s more where that came from. For example, Vail Resorts is briskly moving forward on plans for a new $1 billion project called Ever Vail which would replace a gas station, an aging office building and other properties. Several other major redevelopment projects are also in the planning and review pipeline.

People contacted by the newspaper agreed that Vail needed to redevelop. “To remain a world-class resort, we needed improvements to our town,” said Kim Newbury, a Vail councilwoman since 2003.

 

The normally unskiable getting skied this winter

ASPEN, Colo. – The snow is so deep in Aspen this year that several people have skied Red Mountain, which is opposite the valley from the main ski mountain.

The sun-drenched slope, which is full of rocks and scrub oak, holds little snow most winters. This may have been the first winter anyone has skied it since 1983-84, reports The Aspen Times.

“It was fun,” said one of the skiers, Neal Beidleman, who co-enlisted fellow adventurers Chris Davenport and Ted Mahon for the feat.

Beidleman summited Mt. Everest some years ago, while Davenport has skied from the summit of all of Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks. With snow on it, Red Mountain isn’t exactly in the same league.

“It’s not a long ski. It wasn’t hard. It’s just novel,” said Beidleman. “It’s one of the bellwether events that shows how good the snow is.”

Several new records have been set at Aspen’s ski areas, and the storms continue to arrive into February almost without so much as a break for popcorn. City crews in Aspen, now deep into the overtime budget, are struggling to find places to dump the snow. However, down in the valley, at the town’s water plant, 1957 still remains the year against which all others are measured.

 

Avalanches hit houses in Ketchum-Sun Valley

KETCHUM, Idaho – Avalanches big and small were evident across the Ketchum area after a storm deposited 20 inches of snow.

In the town’s Warm Springs neighbourhood, near the base of the Sun Valley ski area, an avalanche swept over one home, the second time in a month the house has been hit. An avalanche wall absorbed most of the impact, and no damage was detected in the house, but an outlying garage got knocked about.

The Idaho Mountain Express states four other homes were hit, but reported no damage. However, emergency services personnel were worried enough about the potential to human health that they evacuated all homes in that area.

Elsewhere, an avalanche dammed a river, which caused water to back up to a depth of 40 cm in one subdivision.

Freidman Memorial Airport, located down-valley at Hailey, has had to close for about six days because snow piled between the taxiway and runway has reached a height of at least six metres. That prevented long-winged aircraft from taxiing. Extra help was hired to haul away the problematic snow.

Curiously, the snowfall for the winter is only slightly above average.

Elsewhere in Idaho, snowfall was so heavy in Sandpoint, at the foot of the Schweitzer ski area, that the school board chairman and his sons were on the roof shovelling, aided by school district employees on paid holidays. The Idaho National Guard was being summoned to assist, reports the Bonner County Daily Bee. The newspaper also mentions that one local youth managed to make $1,900 so far this winter shoveling snow.

 

Dream come true for those who love snow

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. – By now, the big winter was supposed to be over, turning to drought. But the U.S. Weather Service was wrong, wrong, wrong! The snowfall total this season at the Steamboat ski area has now pushed past 7.6 metres, with additional snow falling rapidly in the early days of February.

The Steamboat Pilot and Today found both people who love and hate the prodigious powder. Brian Bonsell, a hotel worker and avid surfer, had decamped Hawaii several weeks before. “In order to leave there, I had to come to a place like this,” he told the newspaper. “I always wanted to live where it just snows every day.”

Riding that much powder was, he said, like riding waves.

But Bob Wakefield, who came from Kansas, really would prefer corduroy. “I’m not really to the point where I can ski in the deep snow like this,” he said. “Powder days are not my favorite.”

Snow fell on 80 per cent of the first 73 days of the ski season at Steamboat.

 

You do the math on this real estate asking price

ASPEN, Colo. – A measure of the real-estate market in the Aspen area is revealed in the news that one 600-acre parcel is now on the market for $450,000. Only two homes, one of them a caretaker unit, would be allowed on the property as per a previously negotiated conservation easement.

 

Real estate volume sets record in Telluride area

TELLURIDE, Colo. – Buoyed by several sales of large ranches on the mesas above Telluride, the real estate market in the Telluride last year reached $756 million. Although paltry by standards of the Vail and Aspen areas, where sales last year remained above $2 billion, it nonetheless is a four per cent gain over Telluride’s previous record year.

Just the same, some real estate agents are thinking that 2008 could be lower. “The national slowdown hasn’t flushed people out of our market by any means,” said Jim Lucarelli of Real Estate Affiliates, although “phones aren’t ringing as steadily or robustly as we may be used to.”

The view from Telluride is that, relative to Vail and Aspen, it still remains a bargain. All things are relative, of course. The lowest priced single-family home in Telluride during the last several years was $1,076,000.

 

Real estate soars more in Jackson Hole in ‘07

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. – Real estate sales in Jackson Hole topped $1.5 billion last year. There were fewer transactions, but dollar volume rose 19 per cent. The median sale price last year rose 27 per cent, and the average sales price rose 24 per cent. Those statistics come from David Viehman, who owns Jackson Hole Real Estate and Appraisals. He said real estate appreciated more in 2007 than any other year so far this century.

The Jackson Hole News and Guide says that Sotheby’s International Realty, relying on the more narrow data from the Multiple Listing Service, echoed those findings. Its data show that the higher end market is becoming a large part of the total pie – a clear trend for several years both in Jackson and most other resort-based valleys in the West.

Will it stay the same? Some say yes, but Clayton Andrews, of Sotheby’s, pointed to the elections and economic turbulence as potential causes for a downturn. “Jackson Hole has been protected from these issues in the past, and we will have to wait to see what effects they will have this year.”

 

Slipping dollar expected to help tourism in Park City

PARK CITY, Utah – The slipping value of the dollar is resulting in more foreign visitors to Park City. International ski pass sales are up 20 per cent this year, reports Bill Malone, executive director of the Park City Chamber/Bureau, although sales were also up 16 percent last year. Malone, according to the Park City Record, is projecting an increase in visitor nights this year, and also an uptick in real-estate sales, after a year of declining sales last year.

 

Presidential wannabes and has-beens hang in ski towns

RED RIVER, N.M. – It seems like you can’t go to a ski town anymore without bumping into presidential types.

In New Mexico, news agencies reported that former president Bill Clinton was in Red River, a ski town of 500 people north of Taos, to watch the Super Bowl in the company of Bill Richardson, the New Mexico governor and former presidential candidate.

The Clintons, both Bill and Hillary, also passed through Aspen frequently last summer, while Mitt Romney has been something of a regular in Park City. Of course, he owns a house there, one of three identified recently by the New York Times. He also has digs in Boston and a palatial-looking weekend escape in New Hampshire.

 

Story about Breckenridge was thin on one element

BRECKERNDIGE, Colo. – The New York Times recently had a travel piece about Breckenridge, but one reader, Rudolph Pick, from Florida, thought the story incomplete. That belief is based on his personal experience.

“My first night was a horrible experience – I could not breathe. First thing in the morning, I went to he first-aid station, where it was determined that the oxygen content of my blood was 70 per cent only. The high altitude of the resort – almost 10,000 feet – was the cause.

“They immediately put me on oxygen and that helped. I was able to ski during the day, but at night, I had to use a rented oxygen cylinder.”

Visitors from sea level, he advised, should first stay at an intermediate level, take pills, or both.

 

Visa hassles eliminate many potential tourists

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. – U.S. ski areas would get many more foreign visitors if not for the paperwork, says Roger Dow, president and chief executive of the Travel Industry Association.

Dow told an audience at the Airline Partners Summit in Steamboat Springs that citizens of 27 counties do not give visas to travel to the United States. However, in some of those where visas are mandated, the trouble of getting one is enormous. For example, Brazil has just four cities with offices, and it can take several years. Travelers from India face several hurdles.

Further discouraging visits are the hassles faced at customs at U.S. airports.

California resort says no to tobacco smoke

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – Heavenly Mountain has banned smoking on chairlifts and in lift lines. The ban follows complaints from several Heavenly customers, reports the Tahoe Daily News. One customer, Diana Woodbury, complained that she had an asthma attack after riding in a chairlift behind a cigar-smoker, “My throat and lungs are raw from coughing, my lungs hurt, and I had an asthma attack,” she said.

The Tahoe Daily News reports several Tahoe-Truckee resorts restrict smoking to specified areas.

 

Autosock could be a godsend for truckers

VAIL, Colo. – Truckers are excited about a new product called Autosock, which is a high-tech fabric that can be slipped over a tire, delivering the same traction in snowy and icy conditions that now require chains. The Autosock can be installed on tires of tractor-trailer trucks in about 5 minutes, instead of 35 to 40 minutes, product representatives tell the Vail Daily.

The product still hasn’t been approved for Colorado highways, although the state is developing reviewing criteria for approval.

For Vail, this new product would have substantial benefits, as trucks commonly are lined up in chain-up areas, belching diesel smoke, before crossing Vail Pass. As well, notes the newspaper, chaining up has been dangerous to truckers in Vail. One trucker died of a heart attack recently while chaining up, and another was hit and killed during October.

 

Economist proposes I-70 congestion tolls

INTERSTATE 70, Colo. – As a temporary fix for Interstate 70 west from Denver to the mountain resorts, Chris Romer, an economist and state senator in Colorado, proposed an old idea: congestion pricing. In other words, when the highway is very busy, mostly winter and summer weekends, tolls would be charged, in theory encouraging people to choose other times or ways to travel.

The idea bombed, to use the description of one Denver newspaper, the Rocky Mountain News – or so it would seem. Certainly, the ski industry wasn’t amused. “I give him credit for thinking outside the box,” said Melanie Mills, the public affairs director for Colorado ski Country USA. “But we’re not enamored of the idea of charging skiers for using an existing highway.

Romer also has a plan B: he wants to create a Wikipedia website, in which people can contribute ideas, and help him draft a bill to be introduced into the Legislature.

 

Hey Barack, how’s about changin’ this?

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. – If Barack Obama is all about change, he ought to embrace a full makeover of the Mining Act of 1872, says the Crested Butte News.

Crested Butte has a personal stake in the matter. Nearby Mt. Emmons has been contemplated for molybdenum mining for decades, and a mining company has finally secured 155 acres atop the mountain at a total cost of $875, based on the formula worked out by Congress 135 years ago.

That law, said the newspaper in an editorial, needs to be changed. Town officials recently testified in Washington D.C. on behalf of a proposed revision which would give federal agencies the ability to deny and approve mining applications based on suitability and public input. The bill would also impose royalties of eight per cent of gross revenues on new mining operations, such as those proposed at Crested Butte. Obama, on his website, said he opposes the steeper royalties.

 

Exum offering winter descents of the Grand

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. – Exum Mountain Guides is expanding its guided trips to ski descents of Grand Teton during winter. About 10 clients have now completed descent of the mountain during spring.

One potential client is awaiting a weather window to make the trip, but it’s not just a matter of phone-in-your-reservations, company officials tell the Jackson Hole News and Guide.

Clients must be very fit physically, explained Nat Patridge, Exum’s director of winter programs, but the guides also must feel comfortable with how the client performs in a variety of conditions in very steep terrain. Presumably, he wasn’t talking about runs at the ski area.

 

Energy advocacy group organized in Durango

DURANGO, Colo. – First Aspen and the Roaring Fork Valley set up an organization called Community Office for Resource Efficiency. That was in 1996, and the goal of the organization, called CORE, was to figure out ways to reduce use of fossil fuels.

Lately, something similar has been set up in Crested Butte and the Gunnison Country, only it’s called ORE, for Office of Resource Efficiency.

Now, using $12,000 in seed money from primarily local governments, a foundation for something similar is being set up in Durango and La Plata County. The Durango Telegraph reports directors have been elected, and an executive director is to be hired in coming months. The group is being called 4CORE, as in Four Corners Office of Resource Efficiency.

“Once it gets off the ground, we expect it to take a leadership role in advocating and advancing energy efficiency,” explained Eric Aune, the interim county planning director.

 

Could jets return to Lake Tahoe Airport?

LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – Could the airport at Lake Tahoe see a resurgence? That’s the speculation in the Tahoe Daily News, which notes that the airport in its heyday in the 1970s recorded nearly 300,000 passengers.

Service dropped off for reasons not fully explained, although there seems to have been some connection to complaints about noise. However, the city council in South Lake Tahoe last year adopted a document that envisions a “world-class general aviation facility” with the right retained to develop commercial airline service.

Rick Jenkins, airport director, speaks of “when” scheduled service resumes, rather than “if.” However, he sees smaller, quieter regional jets.