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Mountain News: Seminal figure in skiing dies

ASPEN, Colo. – D.R.C. Brown Jr., a seminal figure in Aspen’s modern ski-based era, has died. He was 95. Brown piloted the Aspen Skiing Co.

ASPEN, Colo. – D.R.C. Brown Jr., a seminal figure in Aspen’s modern ski-based era, has died. He was 95.

Brown piloted the Aspen Skiing Co. from 1958 to 1979, a time of enormous growth for the company, which expanded operations to Breckenridge in Colorado, Blackcomb in British Columbia, and Fortress Mountain in Alberta.

When Brown became president and chief executive officer of the company in 1958, it had three lifts and a staff of 40. When he left the company in 1979, there were nearly 1,200 employees and operations in three countries.

More remarkable yet is that Brown’s father, David Robinson Crocker Brown Sr., was one of the seminal figures in Aspen’s roots as a mining town.

The senior Brown had been working at Blackhawk, a mining camp west of Denver, and was headed to New Mexico when he was drawn by the mining excitement in the Roaring Fork Valley. That was in 1880, and the senior Brown drove a wagon from the Gunnison Country across the Elk Range and into the emerging camp of Ashcroft, eventually making his way to Aspen.

In Aspen, the senior Brown became a millionaire mine owner — with properties on Aspen Mountain, where the ski area is now — but was wise enough to diversify prior to the silver crash of 1893.

Darcy, the junior, was born in 1912, when his father was 48. Although summering in Aspen, he was reared mostly in Denver, and attended high school at a boarding school in New Hampshire before graduating from Yale University in 1935 with a degree in economics, and a minor in French.

After that, he worked as a roughneck in the oil fields of Colorado and Wyoming, later taking landman and other oil industry jobs. During the late 1930s he skied at Berthoud Pass, near Winter Park, but also at Aspen Mountain, where a ski trail had been laid out by Swiss skier Andre Roch.

During World War II, he hoped to become a pilot in the Navy, but was too old. Instead, he was a skipper of a PT Boat in the South Pacific. After the war, he bought a ranch near Vernal, Utah, and then at Carbondale. He also served one term, from 1952 to 1956, as a state senator in Colorado.

His family’s ownership of a mine on Aspen Mountain became the conduit to his involvement with the skiing company. The family leased the hundreds of acres to the ski company, and Brown, who lived in Carbondale, became the managing director and then CEO.

The Aspen Daily News explains that under Brown’s purposeful guidance, the company acquired Buttermilk Mountain, in 1964 agreed to launch the Snowmass Ski Area, and, in 1970, purchased Breckenridge.

By 1977, Aspen had taken over Alberta’s Fortress Mountain Ski Area, acquired 1,200 acres in Washington state in an effort to start the Early Winters ski area, obtained an interest in a Spanish ski area called Bazuiera-Beret, and secured the contract from provincial officials in British Columbia to build and operate the Blackcomb ski area.

Brown also helped form Colorado Ski Country USA and the National Ski Areas Association.

He was perceived as the most powerful man in Aspen, and he enjoyed the role, acquaintances said. Often he was scorned by locals, but he seemed to take it in stride, and perhaps even relish the role.

For example, Aspen for many years gave away season passes to all teachers and other locals. Bill Coors, 92, of the brewing family, was on the board of directors of Aspen then, and told Brown that he didn’t give away beer to all people in Golden just because they lived there.

Coors told the Rocky Mountain News that he remembers Brown being burned in effigy in Aspen.

In 1976, in an effort to get local skiers to ski less on an increasingly crowded Aspen Mountain, Brown started requiring an $8 daily surcharge, on top of the $200 season pass. That led to a Congressional investigation and a demand from the Forest Service that Brown change his pricing policies. Brown refused — and won.

Michael Kinsley, one of the Young Turks in Aspen during the 1970s and an architect of the stop-growth movement, told Brent Gardner-Smith of the Aspen Daily News that over the years he developed a strong respect for Brown.

“One of my regrets as a commissioner is not dealing with the old-timers who got the community through the Quiet Years here in a respectful way,” Kinsley said, referring to Aspen’s interlude between mining and recreation fortunes. “In our zeal, we were pretty disrespectful.”

Brown blocked the Teamsters Union when it attempted to organize the ski patrol.

“He wasn’t going to be negotiated into anything,” said Jerry Blann, now president of the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, who joined Aspen in 1970 as a management trainee and later, in the 1980s, became president.

“Yet he was truly a gentleman. He was a pretty sophisticated guy, but he could get down in the dirt with the best of them,” Blann told the Daily News.

A portrait compiled by John Colson of The Aspen Times similarly portrays Brown as a man of contrasts. He seemed humble, yet was firm and clear. Most prominent of all was his love of outdoor and physical life.

Brown had been a good boxer in his youth, broke ribs while kayaking the big rivers of the West, and broke more ribs yet while trying to break a horse. He loved the ranch life, and after his years as ski executive he operated a ranch in Australia for 16 years. Later, returning to Colorado, he had a ranch near Creede.

Brown also loved poetry. Even a month ago, after a minor stroke, he was watching the news on television, complaining about President George W. Bush, when he recited the entire poem, “Kubla Khan.” But it wasn’t just familiar poems he could recite. Even to the end, he surprised his children with poems they had never heard before.

As well, he wrote some poetry of his own — including some that demonstrated his bawdy sense of humour.

He skied until he was 90, and rode a horse until last summer at the ranch near Creede. Finally, he gave that up, too.

“Well, I’ve been needing help to get on, and now I need help to get off, and that hasn’t happened since I was 3 years old. I think it’s time to give it up.”

 

Good snow not enough

VAIL, Colo. – There’s plenty of snow in Vail, but there’s not a chance that the bull wheels will keep operating past the scheduled closing of April 11. Business owners would like it, but Chris Jarnot, the chief operating officer for Vail Mountain, said it would be asking too much of his workers. As is, office personnel will be asked to bus tables and operate ski lifts, reports the Vail Daily.

“We’re going to be in a real serious challenge over the next four weeks,” said Jarnot at a town meeting.

Like many ski areas, Vail Mountain was unable to get as many foreign workers under the H-2B program. Fewer than 10 per cent of the 14,000 workers employed at Vail Mountain and the four other ski areas operated by Vail Resorts are covered under the H-2B and J-1 visa programs.

 

Steamboat looks at annexing

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. – The city of Steamboat Springs has not annexed land in 20 years, but it is now looking at 700 acres on the town’s west end, with hopes that housing there will retain the community’s rapidly disappearing middle class.

“We need housing,” said John Eastman. “Housing, housing, housing. We need housing for our work force because otherwise we’re not going to have a work force… I don’t know if prices will get as high as at Aspen, but that’s where they’re headed.”

As it looks to annex, and perhaps gain 2,000 homes, Steamboat is consulting others who have gone before. Granby, located 70 miles east along Highway 40, has gone on an annexation binge. Mayor Ted Wang told a Steamboat forum recently that Granby realized in the early 1990s that it had choices to make.

“It was either grow or die,” he said. Since then, Granby has annexed 8,000 acres, nearly all of it land now being carved up into vacation homes that are being billed as lower-cost alternatives to those hard along I-70.

As reported by the Steamboat Pilot & Today, Wang told the Steamboat audience that Granby made some mistakes in its first annexation, but got better in later annexations.

“Don’t leave things out on the table during the negotiations, unless you really intend to leave them there,” he said.” Bargain hard. Don’t be afraid to ask and don’t be afraid to dig in your heels.”

The project in Steamboat seems a natural for both the town and the developer. If annexed into the town, the project can get urban densities that county officials are unlikely to award. The annexation was estimated to take 18 months.

 

A premium for unleaded

LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – Milk is running above $4 a gallon, and gasoline is getting close in the Lake Tahoe area.

AAA reported $3.75 per gallon for regular unleaded in Tahoe City, the highest in Northern California. But the Tahoe Daily News says that premium grades of gas were going for more than $4 per gallon at some stations. Milk was going for $4 to $4.59 at a local Safeway.

 

Minor increase in foreclosures

GRANBY, Colo. – Newspapers in the mountain towns of Colorado keep looking for evidence of the tsunami of housing foreclosures hitting their communities. The real estate market has definitely slowed down, but nobody seems to find a wall of foreclosures about to crash.

A case in point is a report in the Sky-Hi Daily News, which reported that Grand County in the first two months recorded 29 foreclosures, compared to 59 for all of last year.

Christina Whistmer, the Grand County treasurer, said foreclosures are “only slight up.” Susan Penta, the marketing director for Grand Elk, a housing project geared to the upper-middle-class vacation-home buyers, maintained that the second-home market is generally healthy. “The vacation home buyer generally has the discretionary income to withstand the current storm.”

But for Ross Cooney, who built three prize-winning homes in the $500,000 to $1 million category in Granby’s Grand Elk project, hoping to later find buyers, the current storm is substantial. “I really like Granby and I like Grand Elk. It’s a beautiful spot. But boy, the economy is a disaster.”

The newspaper also tells of a foreclosed property, originally priced at $800,000, which was sold at an auction for $350,000.

 

Durango real estate ‘flat’

DURANGO, Colo. – The Durango-area real estate market continues to tread water. Bob Allen, a real estate analyst there, said home values in 2008 will be “flat, at best.” This flies in the face of press releases issued by the National Association of Realtors, which continue to argue that the market has been stable or stabilizing. “It just keeps stabilizing and stabilizing and stabilizing,” he said. The Durango Herald also notes that John Wells, of The Wells Group, sees fewer real-estate brokers locally by the end of 2008.

 

Colorado isn’t that big

LEADVILLE, Colo. – After building dozens of backcountry ski huts in the 1980s and 1990s, the 10 th Mountain Division has been lying low in recent years. Now, it is proposing to build another hut, this one near Tennessee Pass, between Leadville and Vail. Several local residents are very displeased at the prospect.

Tom Weisen, a backcountry guide who lives in nearby Red Cliff, says the area is already getting crowded, with snowmobilers and dogsledders, and huts will worsen the situation. “When are they going to stop building huts?” he wants to know.

Marjorie Westermann, a long-time resident of the area, with a home along Highway 24, frets about the impacts to Canada lynx and other wildlife. “Colorado isn’t as big as people think, and the wildlife are losing out.”

The 10 th Mountain Division’s Ben Dodge says the proposed hut on public land would be easier to reach than Vance’s Cabin and, because it is on public land, will remain even if the private hut is sold.

The hut association operates 29 backcountry huts between Crested Butte and the Front Range, 14 of them on Forest Service land.

 

Telluride won’t cater to bikers

TELLURIDE, Colo. – If you’re a mountain biker at Telluride, there’s no real place to thrown the wheels down a steep fall line — not legally, at least.

That’s not to say it doesn’t happen. In fact, it’s getting to be a real problem at the Telluride ski area. The Forest Service, which administers the land, says the trails tend to go straight down fall lines, resulting in erosion that removes the shallow forest earth down to bare rock. When that happens, mountain bikers go elsewhere, to repeat the scarring, erosive process.   Thus created, the ravines tend to enlarge even more over time.

At some ski areas, such as at Whistler and Blackcomb, operators have catered specifically to extreme mountain bikers. That will not happen at Telluride.

The reason, said Dave Riley, chief executive officer of the Telluride Ski and Golf Co., is the lack of money to make it worthwhile. Some of the mountain-bike parks in North American work best when they are near a large city, he went on to explain. “If you can get a high level of participation, then you come close to breaking even,” he said.

A major cost, a report in The Telluride Watch indicates, is liability.

 

Park City bagging it

PARK CITY, Colo. – The snowpack is now at 126 per cent on the lee side of the Wasatch Range, but that’s enough for city officials to take precautions against flooding during spring runoff. They usually get 5,000 sandbags, but this year ordered 10,000, at 30 cents each. Cost: $3,000.

“We would be fools not to,” said Hugh Daniels, who manages emergency programs for the city. “Have you looked and seen how much snow is out there?”

The last time Park City had this much snow was only three years ago. There was not significant flooding that year. However, a great deal depends upon the timing of the warmth. A cool spring followed by sudden heat could result in swollen creeks, officials tell The Park Record.

Meanwhile, in Basalt, 18 miles downstream from Aspen, city officials are conferring with residents of two mobile home parks along the Roaring Fork River, reports The Aspen Times.

 

Fatal anniversary

OURAY, Colo. – Forty-five years ago, a minister and his two daughters were driving the highway between Ouray and Silverton. It’s one of the most spectacular — and dangerous — segments of highway in North America. The minister, the Rev. Marvin Hudson, was scheduled to perform Sunday services at the First Congregational Church.

It was mid-morning, and Hudson had stopped to put on chains when an avalanche roared down, killing him and his two daughters.

The Silverton Standard reports an eerie echo. The widow, Mary Hudson, died March 3, on the 45 th anniversary of the avalanche. She was 87.

 

1,200 Democrats turn out

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. – By the numbers, it was an astonishing show. Teton County, which is virtually the same as Jackson Hole, has about 20,000 residents, of which about 6,600 are registered Democrats.

About a third of them — 1,200 people — turned out for the county convention. Four-fifths of them voted for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.

The Jackson Hole News & Guide didn’t say the last time that many people showed up for a meeting — possibly, because it hasn’t happened before. But usually, at county assembles, only a few dozen people show up.

That Wyoming’s few votes still matter in this year’s exceedingly tight primary race between Obama and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton is itself uncommon.

 

Vancouver firm to pull plug?

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. – Is one of the partners that wants to develop a molybdenum mine near Crested Butte about to pull the plug? That’s the conjecture of John. A. Kaiser, an analyst who tracks high-risk Canadian securities in his review of Kobx Resources, a firm based in Vancouver.

“What they didn’t understand is that the rules for permitting in Colorado aren’t mine-friendly, and this could be dragged on for some time, Kaiser told the Crested Butte News. “They’re now glumly aware that this is much, much more difficult.”

Kobex raised more than $28 million for the project, but has already spent $8 million in rehabilitating the existing Keystone Mine and must now decide whether to bore a $14 million tunnel, called a drift, 3,600 feet into the mountain, to get a better idea of the richness of the ore deposit.

Reporting increasingly impatient stockholders, Kaiser said he’s betting Kobex will withdraw from the project.

Local opponents concurred that time is on their side — at least in the short term. “We all believe that Kaiser is right in concluding that this is a process that could go on for 20 or 30 years, or longer,” said John Norton, special consultant to the Crested Butte Mountain Resort, the ski area.

Still, Kaiser, wasn’t willing to completely bet against the mine. It just might be a mine that Kobex may not be involved in.

“The prize is enormous,” said Kaiser, who has a firm called Kaiser BottomFish Online. “The core (ore) is worth $6 billion, and the overall value is $36 billion at today’s prices.” Even if Kobex withdraws from the project, landowner U.S. Energy Corp. may hold on, as it has much deeper pockets.

Meanwhile, the Crested Butte Town Council is laying low. The town has ordinances to protect its watershed from the impacts of mining, and as such it will serve as jury should an application be submitted. As such, it cannot show impartiality in advance.

Not all townspeople understand this legal principle. “I would really appreciate it if you come out of the woodwork, one local residents complained to the council recently.

The town manger, Susan Parker, pointed to efforts by the town council to protect the community, to see a change in legislation governing mining on federal lands. “We’ve done more in the last 18 months than this community has done (for years),” he told the newspaper.

 

Mining company adds staff

SILVERTON, Colo. – The talk of renewed hardrock mining around Silverton continues. The Standard reports that Colorado Goldfields has hired two managers, for exploration and environmental affairs. The exploration manager, Dean Misantoni, has 27 years experience in small, producing underground operations in Colorado.

 

What to do with I-70

I-70 CORRIDOR, Colo. – The ideas for easing congestion on Interstate 70 west of Denver keep on a-comin’.

The latest proposal, to charge a $5 toll at the Eisenhower Memorial Tunnel Complex, comes from Andy McElhany, a top-ranked Republican in the Colorado Senate. He projects that the tolls would yield $40 million per year, enough to secure a $1 billion bond for widening the highway for 14 miles through Clear Creek County, between metropolitan Denver and Summit County. He sees the tolls eventually yielding a third bore through the Continental Divide.

Clear Creek County residents bristle at the idea, notes a Denver newspaper, the Rocky Mountain News. For 10 years, they have insisted that the answer to congestion is not widening of the highway in an already narrow canyon, but to hold out for some form of rail-based transit system.

The idea-fest was launched this winter by another state senator, Chris Romer, a Democrat from Denver. Romer took the unusual tact of creating a website where people could propose ideas. He proposes congestion pricing, such as is now being done in New York City, but also reversing the flow of traffic on Sunday afternoons. The fees collected for cars carrying fewer than three occupants during congested times would be used to subsidize bus service, something now lacking.

Bloggers have used words such as “cockamamie” to describe Romer’s proposal. And Dan Gibbs, a state representative for several of the mountain valleys, urges caution. He notes that five planning processes are currently underway.

But Romer said Denver drivers are fed up with waiting in standstill traffic to go skiing. “I didn’t fill the powder keg, I just lit the fuse. And the mountain communities need to know this one’s ready to blow,” he told the News.

 

Taos Pueblo gets biomass burner

TAOS, N.M. – Greenhouses serving the Taos Pueblo are now being heated by burning wood that has been gathered from a nearby forest. The Taos News reports that a forest fire in the mountains above the pueblo led to thinning of forest, to abate the fire danger. The rising price of hydrocarbon fuels is making greenhouses in colder climates impractical, notes the newspaper, but the pueblo wants to continue growing some of its own food.

 

Feathers ruffled

MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif. – Like a lot of ski towns, Mammoth Lakes is atwitter about the height of a proposed 112-unit condo-hotel. The building would average 48 feet, topping out at 77 feet.

There are the usual complaints from adjoining property owners about disruptions of view sheds, impacts to traffics and also the light pollution. But The Sheet reports a new twist: A member of the Audubon Society warns about the impact to two species of birds, tree swallows and common night hawks.

The birds eat insects, which can be found in the creek that runs through the site. The birds fly up to 100 feet on either side of the creek — and bam! Yes, he sees the birds flying into the building. “Putting a tall building with reflective glass so close to Mammoth Creek would cause a great threat to these birds,” said Kent Wells.