Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Mountain News: Silver lining to no snow in Colorado

VAIL, Colo. – You need go back to only 1998 to find a winter that began more slowly than this in Colorado. Thanksgiving that year offered prime conditions for climbing 14,000-foot peaks. Snow remained scarce until well into December.

VAIL, Colo. – You need go back to only 1998 to find a winter that began more slowly than this in Colorado. Thanksgiving that year offered prime conditions for climbing 14,000-foot peaks. Snow remained scarce until well into December.

Still, this is a year to remember. The Aspen Skiing Co. provided porkchop dinners for new-hires who hadn’t yet got a paycheck under their belts — and won’t have at least for another week, due to the dearth of snow. Such dinners, the company’s Jeff Hanle said, were not available for the part-time ski instructors who sold real estate.

For people who sell real estate, the lack of snow was a silver lining. In Vail, for example, one real estate agent said he was “the busiest I’ve ever been.” People, explained the agent, who wanted to remain anonymous because he feared it would sound like bragging, who can’t go skiing then have time to shop for real estate.

Vail had ribbons of snow, thanks to snowmaking. After every previous drought year, the resort invested heavily in additional snowmaking.

There have been plenty of snowless Novembers in the past. Vail had soup lines for unemployed workers until almost Christmas during the great drought of 1976-77.

The winter of 1980-81 was not only snowless, but also warm. The Denver Post had photos of lift operators at Steamboat in lawn chairs and Hawaiian shirts. The Breckenridge Journal jokingly ran a photo of somebody skiing on talus with no hint of snow. It wasn’t far from the truth.

But unlike in the past, there may be a new element of jitteriness this year. In drought winters past in the Rockies, global warming was not necessarily embraced. Now, there’s a tendency to ascribe every anomaly to global warming, despite the warning of scientists against ascribing one weather event to the effects of increased greenhouse gases.

If ski towns this year mostly shrugged off the snowless Thanksgiving, there will be increasing jitteriness if the skies stay blue, as is forecast by the National Weather Service, as Christmas approaches.

 

First it’s elk, then wolves

BANFF, Alberta – The elk population around Banff is growing once again, with 220 counted this year compared with 93 only three years ago. The worry is that the elk will, in turn, draw wolves and lions.

This is not new. In the 1990s, so many elk were in Banff itself that they leisurely congregated in streets and occasionally attacked people — an average eight times a year, notes the Rocky Mountain Outlook.

Such problems led to the relocation of elk about five years ago. The working theory now is that the elk are returning to the town’s perimeter in hopes of seeking safety from mountain lions and wolves. If so, it doesn’t always work. Earlier this year, a cougar killed an elk near a playground.

Wildlife officials are doing their best to keep elk in the hinterlands. A six-foot-tall fence is being erected along the Trans-Canada Highway in an effort to keep the elk north of the town, where they are more likely to be killed by the predators. Jesse Whittington, a wildlife specialist with Banff National Park, says opinions are divided whether six feet is tall enough to contain the elk.

 

Shoppers start at midnight

SUMMIT COUNTY, Colo. – Can there be any doubt that Summit County is becoming ever more like a city? Although it has had factory outlet stories since the 1980s, last year those stores in Silverthorne began participating in the Black Friday phenomenon, when shopping begins well before sunrise.

The first opening was at 5 a.m. last year. This year sales began at midnight, and soon nearly all parking spaces in the vast shopping mall were occupied, reports the Summit Daily News.

The biggest draw for midnight shoppers/skiers was the giveaway of 100 ski passes to nearby Loveland Ski Area.

As for the skiing itself, it has been distinctly marginal, as Thanksgiving skiing is wont to be, with what base that existed due primarily to snowmaking operations. Still, the Breckenridge Resort Chamber’s Central Reservations reported reservations were down only slightly compared to last year.

 

Developer of Aspen rejected

ASPEN, Colo. – There’s plenty more talk about a new resort called Aspen — the one in Utah, south of Park City. The developer, a veteran of 30 years of real-estate development in Arizona, says it’s an honest name, given that the property near Heber City is thick with aspen trees.

But the proposal by the developer, Dean Sellers, and 34 other landowners to incorporate the town called Aspen has been rejected by Wasatch County. He tells the Park Record there may be a lawsuit.

Meanwhile, other residents of the affected area are trying to annex into another town, called Daniel, to make sure their land cannot be condemned should Sellers ultimately prevail with his incorporation plans.

One of those aggrieved property owners, Kasey Bateman, called Sellers a “greedy man who wants to make a billion dollars and ride off on his white horse while using us as stepping stones.”

In Colorado, editorial writers for The Aspen Times had a feast with the initial news announcement of a duplicate Aspen.

“The next time you see a fake Rolex dealer, think of the developer of Aspen, Utah,” the newspaper advised. But, added the editorial, there would be problems:

“First off, what will the paparazzi do when they learn they booked a trip to Aspen, Utah? Unless he’s embroiled in a scandal, photos of Donny Osmond sipping a decaf latté at the corner coffee shop won’t pay the bills for Us and People magazines.”

Concluded the newspaper: “If there were Darwin awards for bad business ideas, this would be a top candidate. It may make sense to name a cologne or a car or even a bottled water after Aspen. But why name a ski town after a ski town?”

Of course, there are already plenty of Aspens — 444, according to the U.S. Board of Geographic Names, which keeps track of every named meadow, wash, stream, and reservoir in the nation. As for populated Aspens, there are only two, however, with the lesser-known Aspen being in the interior of Virginia, too small even to warrant its own website.

 

Open doors questioned

BANFF, Alberta – Mike Reid, who lives in Banff, is annoyed to no end about the “open door” policy of businesses along Banff Avenue, the town’s tourist-friendly strip. Many of the doors to those businesses are left wide open during winter, as a way of inviting customers inside.

“Do the owner/managers of these businesses seriously believe that customers will not venture into their shops unless the doors are left wide open to welcome them?” he asks in a letter published in the Rocky Mountain Outlook. It is, he adds, an irresponsible waste of energy.

“Global warming,” concludes Reid, “it starts with warming the air on Banff Avenue.”

 

YMCA lights given hoodies

KETCHUM, Idaho – The $22 million YMCA has finally been completed in Ketchum — whoops, guess not. The Idaho Mountain Express reports that the exterior lights flunked the town’s dark skies ordinance. The light fixtures are being hooded, to avoid light trespass. The city adopted its lighting ordinance in 1999. As for the YMCA, the aquatics pool seemed to provoke the biggest splash.

 

Many babies born into poverty

GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colo. – The population continues to rapidly increase in Garfield County, and with it has come a boom in babies. But the statistics revealed about the mothers suggests troubles ahead.

Garfield County serves as a bedroom community for Aspen and, to a lesser extent, Vail. It is also a base for the boom in gas and oil development.

The number of births last year increased 16 per cent from the previous year, reports the Glenwood Post Independent.

But nearly a third of those giving birth last year had fewer than 12 years of education, and 27 per cent were unmarried.

“Moms who have less than a high school education and who aren’t married have a tendency to have greater difficulty in terms of finding the personal assets and the financial assets to raise that baby,” said Sandy Swanson, director of the Family Visitor Programs.

Those statistics were greater for Latino mothers, and less for Anglos. Overall, 44 per cent of births last year were to Latinos, and 53 per cent to Anglos.

 

It’s all about location

KETCHUM, Idaho – It’s all about location, say the real estate guys, and that can be said about ski mountains.

Take California’s Mammoth Mountain. Fifty miles north or south, and the snowfalls are much, much less, says Jeff Dozier, a snow hydrologist from the University of California at Santa Barbara. Mammoth, three seasons ago, got more than 600 inches of snow.

But Sun Valley has the reserve problem. The ski area was located there not because the snow was the best around, but rather because the Union Pacific railroad was looking for passengers, and it already had rails to Ketchum, which was a shipping point for sheep.

In fact, Bald Mountain gets around 160 inches of snow, while a few dozen miles away are locations, not that much higher, with 210 to even 330 inches of snow per year.

 

Solar collectors affordable?

JACKSON, Wyo. – The city council in Jackson has enthusiastically embraced a green agenda. It has signed the mayor’s agreement on climate change. It is going through an exhaustive in-house process intended to reduce energy use.

Still, decisions to support their declarations can be hard. Consider the plan to outfit the new downtown parking garage with photovoltaic solar panels. The panels would generate almost as much power as the facility uses at its peak use, which is during winter.

“Placing these solar panels on a building, which will act as a community anchor, we have an opportunity to share the message of energy efficiency and independence with the millions of visitors who come here every year, as well as our own citizens,” said Larry Pardee, the city public works director.

Pardee, who once held the parallel title in Vail, was among several visitors to Aspen in October 2006 attending that city’s Canary Initiative program on climate change.

But the cost of the facility has inflated from $8.2 million to nearly $10 million. Although not all that is due to the solar component, nonetheless some council members are questioning whether the solar gains are worth the incremental cost. Also at issue is obtrusiveness of the solar panels.

 

Mercury found in brown trout

KETCHUM, Idaho – There is some alarm in the Big Wood River Valley, where Ernest Hemingway once snagged fish while at his second-home in Ketchum. Unhealthy levels of mercury have been found in Silver Creek, one of the tributaries to the river.

“I just hope this doesn’t hurt us as a world-class fishery,” said Commissioner Sarah Michael, in an account reported by the Idaho Mountain Express.

Paid for by The Nature Conservancy, the study was conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey. The study didn’t pinpoint sources of the mercury, but the hypothesis is that at least part of the mercury came from gold mining operations in Nevada and a concrete plant in Oregon, both upwind from Silver Creek.

Similar studies are underway in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains. There, anecdotal speculation pinpoints mercury to the nearby Four Corners coal-fired power plants. However, there is also some native mercury in the ecosystem, scientists say.

 

Another record year for real estate

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. – The real estate news from Steamboat Springs-dominated Routt County echoes that from other resort areas of the West. The town has established a new one-year record for real-estate volume, despite slowing sales during October.

Through October, the county had recorded $1.39 billion in real estate sales. The county had not elevated above $1 billion until last year.

The Steamboat Pilot & Today notes that this was accomplished despite fewer sales. But there is sharp appreciation, with much of the sales action now in the range between $1 million and $1.5 million. Overall, there is sharp appreciation across the range of properties.

With prices rising rapidly in Steamboat, real estate agents in the town of Craig, 42 miles west, are now starting to shop their lower-priced listings in Steamboat.

 

Dam collapse unlikely, but just in case

GRANBY, Colo. – What would happen if the dam that created Granby Reservoir, one of Colorado’s largest, should fail?

There’s no reason to think it will. Of the 375 dams and dikes built across the West in the last century, only one, Teton Dam, located between Jackson Hole and Sun Valley, has failed. That was in 1976, just as it was being filled for the first time. The death toll was 11 people and 13,000 head of cattle.

Just the same, the Bureau of Reclamation is helping emergency responders in Grand County plan their what-ifs, reports the Sky-Hi News. The worst-case scenario sees 30 feet of water inundating the new Orvis Shorefox development, a high-end fishing-based resort taking shape immediately west of Granby. Downvalley at Hot Sulphur Springs, where the valley of the Colorado River narrows, the hot-water spa would be under 50 feet of water.

 

Moratorium on demolitions lifted

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. – Several months ago the Steamboat Springs City Council declared a moratorium on demolition of buildings older than 50 years. But the moratorium was seen by many as a taking of private property rights, and it became a pivotal issue in city elections.

Now, with several new council members on board, the council has rescinded the moratorium. Although a public building official said he was unaware of anybody affected by the moratorium, a new council member, Cari Hermacinski, said the repeal was necessary to “right a wrong. According to an account of the city council session reported by the Steamboat Pilot & Today, the misconceptions about the moratorium led to a negative public perception of historic preservation. “If we recover that perceived punishment, people will be more open to historic preservation,” she said.

The Pilot & Today says protagonists in the case questioned whether Hermacinski had properly disclosed potential conflicts. A sister-in-law owns two houses that could be affected by the moratorium. But the question asked of council members, said Hermacinski, was whether they themselves owned any properties possibly affected.

The Historic Structure Policy Review Committee has until March 31 to prepare recommendations for historic preservation.

 

Uranium mining booming again

TELLURIDE, Colo. – The uranium boom of the early Cold War was a legendary thing in the Colorado Plateau. In his book “Desert Solitaire,” Edward Abbey wrote about what it was like in Moab. In smaller places across the border in Colorado, it was flush times as well for small towns like Naturita and Nucla.

Those towns, located west of Telluride, have never completed bounced back to life after uranium mining was curtailed. In fact, many of those miners are dead, the victims of lung cancer and other diseases brought on by breathing mining-induced radon.

Still, a good many of the old timers are ready for another boom — and it seems to be happening, reports The Telluride Watch. The newspaper’s Amy Levek traveled to John Brown Canyon, located on the flanks of the La Sal Mountains, about halfway between Telluride and Moab. There, she finds a proposed mine. Nearby in the Paradox Valley an ore-processing plant is proposed. It would be the first one to be constructed in the United States in 25 years.

San Miguel officials find nothing to like in this renewed mining. Uranium mining is, according to a 2006 letter from the county commissioners, “ecologically unwise, unhealthy to humans, and unsustainable.” The commissioners want the Department of Energy to withdraw all 27,000 acres of public lands in San Miguel and nearby counties into inactive status — at least until a solution can be found to the problem of radioactive waste disposal and storage.

But in Nucla, the idea of a potential mine is met with open arms. “For areas as economically depressed as these, it’s major,” said Mayor Roxy Allen.

Jean Moores, 76, lost her husband to mining-related lung cancer. Her brother similarly died of lung ailments. But she believes new efforts to ventilate mines will lower the danger to workers. “I see no harm, as long as there is air in the mines,” she told the Watch.

But in Grand Junction, where doctors saw dozens of miners afflicted with cancer, emphysema and other illnesses associated with breathing radioactive air, there’s not as much certainty. Regulations are tighter, says Teresa Coons, a scientist with the Saccomanno Research Institute, but she sounded skeptical that another generation of lung-caused illnesses won’t result.

 

Drawing distinctions in the snow

SILVERTON, Colo. – There aren’t more than 500 people in Silverton if all are at home. Still, they have their differences. Columnist David Hale, writing in the Silverton Standard, calls it a hate fest.

The example is at Red Mountain Pass, where snowmobilers last year ripped out the tracks made by skiers to a basin higher on the slopes. Not to be outdone, somebody — presumed to be a cross-country skier — scooped up a big doggie doo-doo and dumped it on top of a snow machine parked at the pass.