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Mountain News: In-bounds slide claims victim

JACKSON, Wyo. – For the second time this season, an in-bounds skier has been killed at a ski area. The first, in mid-December, occurred at Utah’s Snowbird ski area.

JACKSON, Wyo. – For the second time this season, an in-bounds skier has been killed at a ski area. The first, in mid-December, occurred at Utah’s Snowbird ski area. Then, two days after Christmas, a 31-year-old skier died after being buried under eight feet of snow at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort.

Avalanches on ski trails within ski areas are relatively rare, and fatalities resulting from them are even rarer.

At Jackson Hole, the slope where the avalanche occurred had just been opened a few hours prior. However, it had been skied quite a bit, resort spokeswoman Anna Olson told the Jackson Hole News & Guide , and other “normal precautions” had been taken. Those precautions usually include the use of explosives to trigger avalanches.

The skier had been wearing a transceiver, and so ski patrollers were able to pinpoint the location of his body within six minutes, and then recover the body another four minutes later. Patrollers administered cardio pulmonary resuscitation and then a defibrillation device, but without success.

The slab avalanche broke a crown six to eight feet deep, patrollers said. Up to 30 inches of snow had fallen on the mountain, with a total depth of snow of 138 inches at mid-mountain.

On the same day, at about the same time, two snowmobilers were killed by an avalanche in the Rabbit Ears Range west of Grand Lake, Colo. One snowmobiler who was with them was partially buried and was able to dig himself out. When rescue personnel arrived, cardio-pulmonary resuscitation was being performed on one of the victims.

It took rescuers an hour and 45 minutes to find and dig out the second snowmobiler. Both victims, one aged 38 and the other 19, were declared dead at the scene.

“We hate it when this kind of thing happens,” search leader Mark Foley told the Sky-Hi Daily News , “but they were in a bad place at a bad time, and they had no beacons (transceivers) on. If they had beacons on, it’s possible they could have been saved.”

 

Aspen whispering about Madoff

ASPEN, Colo. — There are hushed talks in Aspen about local victims of Bernard Madoff’s alleged Ponzi scheme. At least two residents are said to be selling their homes because of losses suffered in the scam.

“I did not invest in him, but I know at least 10 people (in Aspen) who did,” said Aspen businessman Leonard “Boogie” Weinglass. “But I’m not giving their names,” he added.

A disproportionate number of Madoff’s victims were said to be Jewish, and Aspen has a large Jewish community, with three congregations.

“I can tell you dozens and dozens of people,” said one resident, well connected to Aspen’s Jewish community, who spoke with The Aspen Times on the basis of anonymity. “I would not be surprised if the impact is half a billion dollars.”

Victims of the Ponzi scheme were also rumored in Vail.

But if there were victims, there were also beneficiaries. The New York Times says that most of the vanished money was probably paid out earlier to beneficiaries, as that’s how a Ponzi scheme works. The reason Madoff got investors is that he magically seemed to produce 10 per cent returns, even in down markets. How many ski town homes were purchased with the proceeds there seems to have been no speculation, at least none reported.

 

Revelstoke now leads in vertical

REVELESTOKE, B.C. – Revelstoke Mountain Resort now has bragging rights for the most lift-serviced vertical rise of any ski area in North America.

The resort has 5,620 feet of drop. A website, verticalfeet.com, lists the other top 15 as follows. Not included is the vertical that requires hiking. Not all vertical, however, is continuous.

5,133 feet, Blackcomb, B.C.

4,978 feet, Whistler, B.C.

4,406, Snowmass, Colo. (includes rope tow used only a few weeks per season).

4,180 feet, Big Sky, Mont. (3,400 vertical in one continuous run)

4,139 feet, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, Wyo.

4,131 feet, Kicking Horse, B.C.

4,040 feet, Beaver Creek, Colo. (3,400 continuous vertical)

3,845 feet, Telluride, Colo.

3,820 feet, Panorama, B.C.

3,635 feet, Aspen Highlands, Colo.

3,580 Timberline on Mt. Hood, Ore.

3,514 feet, Sunshine, Alberta

3,500 feet, Heavenly, Calif. and Nev.

3,484 feet, Steamboat, Colo.

Whistler Blackcomb says that Blackcomb Mountain has 5,280 feet of lift-serviced vertical, while Whistler Mountain has 5,020 feet.

Revelstoke has two new lifts this year, the resort’s second season, giving skiers access to 3,031 acres, reports the Revelstoke Times Review . That’s a hair less than Snowmass, which has 3,132 acres. Jackson Hole has 2,500 acres. Vail Mountain is the king of this hill, with 5,289 skiable acres. Whistler Blackcomb has 8,171 acres over the two mountains.

 

It’s a guy thing: butting heads

EAGLE, Colo. – You’ve heard the cliché about “locked horns.” Cindy Cohagen had a rare opportunity to observe the phenomenon while walking her dog recently in the countryside near Eagle. Two deer bucks were smashing their antlered heads together across a fence. Then the smashing stopped — they had locked horns.

“It was absolutely one of the most incredible spectacles of my entire life,” Cohagen told the Eagle Valley Enterprise .

Tranquilizers are sometimes used, but it was too cold. Instead, state wildlife officer Bill Andree lassooed one side of the entangled antlers, and with the aid of assistants, wrestled the deer to the ground. He then sawed off one of the antlers. That did the trick. The bucks, freed of one another, bounded off into the hills.

Andree said he has never had to physically untangle deer, even if bucks often lock antlers. “Usually they get apart before officers can get there. Once in a while, they die,” he said.

The antler-bashing routine is part of what bucks do during mating season. “They’re doing it because they’re guys,” he said.

After the end of breeding season, in about a month, the antlers will start dropping off.

 

Another weekly bites the dust

CARBONDALE, Colo. – Another newspaper has headed to the great morgue in the sky. Carbondale’s Valley Journal, a name used in local newspapering since 1934 but continuously so since the mid-1970s, is ceasing to be published. Readers of the weekly are advised to get their news from either The Aspen Times or the Glenwood Springs Post Independent. Both of them daily papers owned by the same company, Swift Communications. Since it arrived in the Colorado mountains in 1993, Swift has been killing weekly newspapers and either purchasing or starting daily newspapers. It now has six daily newspapers on Colorado’s Western Slope.

 

She did it all wrong, but survived

CANMORE, B.C. – A woman out walking her dog on a trail on the edge of Canmore had the fright of her life. Wildlife officers suggested it was only good luck that allowed her to walk away.

The dog was running off leash, sniffing up the adjacent forest, when it came streaking past her, a cougar bounding close behind. The cougar stopped 10 feet from the woman, who shrieked and ran off.

Bad decisions all around, a wildlife expert tells the Rocky Mountain Outlook. Kim Titchener said when encountering a cougar, it’s best to always maintain eye contact, look big (by spreading a jacket, for example), and speak in a commanding voice, all the while backing away slowly. Running could trigger an attack, she said.

 

Carbon-neutral subdivision proposed

CRESTED BUTE, Colo. – Crested Butte officials are reviewing a proposal for a new subdivision of 234 units that has the significant and difficult goal of being carbon neutral. Just how the developers, Ken Hill and Cliff Gross, hope to achieve that isn’t entirely clear. Still, the plans clearly represent a different type of housing project than what is commonly seen in ski towns or, for that matter, just about anywhere.

For advice, the developers have turned to Dan Richardson, a former city councilman in Glenwood Springs, Colo., who later gained broader recognition as the first director of the Canary Initiative, Aspen’s municipal greenhouse gas-reducing program. He is now an energy consultant in the private sector.

Homes in the development are to be closer together, similar to the arrangement of mining towns that preceded many of the ski areas. Walkability will be emphasized, and so will energy efficiency. As well, homes are to be situated in ways that best take advantage of solar energy. Also, home are to be wired in a way to accommodate telecommuting.

 

Tongues wag about Obama visit

PARK CITY, Utah – A wisp of conversation from September 2007, when Barack Obama gave a stump speech in the Park City area, has local tongues speculating about whether the president-elect will return to vacation once he has been installed in the White House.

An aide in the Obama team told Summit County Sheriff Dave Edmunds that he could expect to see Obama again.

If he does return, points out the Park Record, Obama will follow in the footsteps of former President Bill Clinton, who took two skiing vacations to Park City in the late 1990s, and President George W. Bush, who was there in May. As well, former Vice President Al Gorge has been a sporadic visitor, while Mitt Romney, the unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination in 2008, has a home in Park City.

 

Happy life ends in snowslide

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. – The sad work of finding the body of avalanche victim Mike Bowen was completed three days after he died on Mt. Emmons. He had been reared in Iowa, but sloshed coffee at a local beanery and was described as a person with a great sense of humor and an avid fan of the backcountry. He was 36. His body, reports the Crested Butte News , was buried under four feet of snow. He had used a bicycle to get to the base of the mountain, which is a short distance from Crested Butte. At least six medium-sized avalanches had run in the immediate area around the avalanche that killed him.

 

Crack in boiler makes school chilly

SILVERTON, Colo. – The school in Silverton — there is just one for the town of 500 people — got chilly after the coal-fired boiler cracked in early November.

The boiler can still be used, but not sufficiently to warm the building. As a result, electricity-driven space heaters have been used to warm the classrooms. A propane heater keeps the gymnasium at 40 to 50 degree, reports the Silverton Standard, although water has been turned off there. This makeshift situation will have to make do for the winter, superintendent Kim White says.

Silverton was the last public school in the state to burn coal. With a certain amount of irony, Oak Creek, a town located about 20 miles from Steamboat Springs, this past fall replaced its coal-fired boiler with a combination of heating devices for school buildings. The irony lies in the fact that Oak Creek can legitimately claim to be a coal-mining town, as one of Colorado’s largest mines, Twenty Mile, is located nearby.

Last summer, a large geoexchange system was installed, using electricity to help draw heat from pipes coiled 8 to 10 feet deep in the ground, where the year-round temperature runs 55 to 60 degrees. As well, heat is being drawn from the burning of wood pellets created from lodgepole pine killed by bark beetle.

 

Gunnison commissioners withdraw

GUNNISON, Colo. – Gunnison County has now withdrawn from Club 20, the advocacy group for the 20 Western Slope counties in Colorado. County commissioners said they found the group’s domination by oil and gas interests unacceptable.

This is the third significant dissent within the last year. Art Goodtimes, who represented San Miguel County (Telluride), resigned as an official of the group, citing the same concerns. San Juan County (Silverton) has also withdrawn, and Pitkin County (Aspen) has talked about it.

 

Eagle hires intern

EAGLE, Colo. – Eagle town officials have hired an intern for the community development department for six months. The intern, Roman Yavich, is looking into getting energy audits performed for town buildings, the potential for curbside recycling, and the possibility of installing solar panels at the local swimming pool and ice rink, among other tasks.

“Sustainability is kind of a buzz word,” says Yavich, who has degrees in international economics and finance from the University of Colorado in Boulder. “But for me it always deals with the economy, the environment and the community.”

He added that sustainability is not a state. Rather, it is a process.