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Mountain News: Snow tallies upside down from last year

VAIL, Colo. — Other places get bigger dumps than Vail, but it's always been a point of local pride that Vail rarely gets shut out entirely by storms.
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VAIL, Colo. — Other places get bigger dumps than Vail, but it's always been a point of local pride that Vail rarely gets shut out entirely by storms.

"Vail has the most consistent snow of any place in the world," Mayor Andy Daly, who has been involved in the ski business at various Colorado resorts for more than 40 years, said at a community meeting last week.

But consistent or not, Vail went into Christmas for the first time since 1981 without opening its famous Back Bowls.

In Vail, as elsewhere, ski and community officials were trying to put the best light on the lack of snow in the busy week between Christmas and New Year's Day.

"You take last year's snow, and this year's snow, and between the two of them we have two average seasons," joked Chris Jarnot, chief operating officer for Vail Mountain, referring to last years' phenomenal snowfall. "Our grooming crew has been pulling rabbits out of hats so far," he added.

In Breckenridge, the Summit Daily News noted that Denver International Airport, located on the prairie 24-kilometres east of Denver, had received as much snow.

In Idaho, Brundage Mountain didn't open until Friday before New Year's Eve, the second latest opening in the 50-year history of the resort. The resort, located three and a half hours north of Boise, near McCall, brands itself as "Idaho's best snow."

Bogus Basin, located a half-hour from Boise, wasn't open as of New Year's. Rain was destroying the efforts of snowmakers, the Idaho Statesmen said.

For many resorts, Vail and Brundage included, the red-letter year of record was the 1976-1977 season. By then, a few resorts — Winter Park in particular — had begun investing in snowmaking. Another drought, in 1980-1981 was equally disastrous during December. In some Colorado resorts, only an inch of snow fell. Lingering doubts about snowmaking receded.

Of course, it's been warm enough to melt snow. On New Year's Day 1981, lift ops in Steamboat sported Hawaiian shirts. This past Friday, Steamboat hit a high of eight degrees celcius, reported Steamboat Today, causing grooming crews to resort to an old machine to break up the surface glaze on the ski trails.

Perhaps surprisingly, local officials in Colorado reported very few complaints. Adam Suttner, the director of sale and marketing for Vail Resorts, reported that surveys revealed customer satisfaction on par with last year when Vail and many other resorts were having epic powder storms.

In Snowmass, the gist was the same. "Our guests love the blue skies," said Russell Forrest, the town manager of Snowmass Village. Not so much the singer LeAnn Rimes, who tweeted to fans about a mishap: "Tailbone hurts from falling on a stump that tripped up my board 'cause THERE'S NOT ENOUGH SNOW."

Ski towns were busy. In Aspen, occupancy hit 90 per cent before New Year's last year. Bill Tomcich, who heads the local reservations agency, predicted this year will be busier yet — the busiest, in fact, since the 2007-2008 season.

But if rooms are filled now, they won't be through winter unless the jet stream hews to a more traditional path. "We need snow to really bump up the bookings," Crested Butte spokeswoman Erica Reiter told the Crested Butte News. "People are watching the weather in Colorado, and it's not snowing, so they're holding back."

Not to worry, said a National Weather Service meteorologist, Kyle Fredin. "This area has four solid months of snow coming up," he told the Summit Daily News. "The weather sometimes flips around, and I wouldn't be surprised if (you're) right back to near normal."

High-end real estate doing better

TELLURIDE, Colo. — Elements of the real estate market were clearly stronger in Telluride this last year, but the recovery was not uniform in all sectors. That same story played out at nearly all the mountain destination resorts of the West.

In Vail, for example, sales figures were up, and the price per square foot of properties increased significantly. Not so down-valley in Eagle and Gypsum, where prices continued to scrape bottoms established two years ago, agents tell Mountain Town News.

Ditto in Jackson Hole. The high-end market is returning, but across Teton Pass in Idaho, there's a glut of real estate inventory in the Driggs-Victor area.

Across Colorado, mountain resort counties report that new foreclosures in 2011 were close to even with those of 2010.

In Telluride, there's hope that the resort hews to tradition and follows in Aspen's footsteps in about six months. Aspen and Pitkin County, observes long-time real estate broker George Harvey, were up by 15 per cent in the number of transactions this past year and up 10 per cent in the dollar volume.

For Telluride to successfully stay in Aspen's footprints, he told The Telluride Watch, sellers would have to drop their prices further. But buyers are seemingly becoming more tolerant of the world's constant financial tremors — suggesting a more lively market in 2012. Maybe.

$10.3 million rec centre enjoyed

PARK CITY, Utah — Park City now has a new recreation centre. Even as the recession arrived, by pinching pennies, the city council went ahead with the project, which cost $10.3 million. It includes four tennis courts designed to meet the U.S. Tennis Association specifications, reports The Park Record.

Comprehensive plan scrapped

DURANGO, Colo. — After two years, 150 meetings, and $1 million in costs, the La Plata County Comprehensive Community Plan was scrapped in December. This was the third time in recent years that efforts to craft a comprehensive plan for the county on the edge of Colorado's San Juan Mountains ended in a divisive stalemate, reports the Durango Telegraph.

The newspaper probes what went wrong, and the quotes suggest an echo of the national debate about the role of government. La Plata County, it would seem, has more of an ear for what the Republican presidential candidates are saying.

Travis Craig, the chairman of the planning commission, which first whittled the proposed 157-page document to 11 pages then killed it altogether, said the plan tried to create images of the future based on community values something he believes government has no business doing.

A county commissioner, Bobby Lieb, told the Telegraph he doesn't think the county needs a comprehensive plan at all. He believes the plan attempted to force gentrification and was, at heart, elitist. He said he didn't agree with the idea of sprawl. It is, he says, in the eye of the beholder. "I won't tell people where and how they can live; the market will decide."

Another county commissioner, Kellie Hotter, said the county government will get to work right away on simplifying the county land-use code and providing certainty while reducing the obstacles to building permits.

Hunt on for subterranean heat

PAGOSA SPRINGS, Colo. — Several communities in Colorado with geothermal resources manifested by hot springs continue to probe ideas of creating greenhouses, warming buildings, or even making electricity.

Pagosa Springs already uses hot water lying below the town to heat some of its buildings. Mayor Ross Aragon in recent months has been trumpeting the possibility of significant expansion. One idea is creation of three greenhouses. Another is development of aquaculture, i.e. fish farms.

A collaboration called the Geothermal Greenhouse Partnership plans to work with university experts from the Colorado School of Mines in May to better determine the extent of the resource.

The Pagosa Springs Sun, however, now reports that there's some possibility that the geothermal greenhouses might not be heated by hot water after all. Instead, the residual heat of the earth — about 13 C at about three metres — might be tapped to grow cool-weather crops during winter.

Date-rape drug less apparent

ASPEN, Colo. — A 44-year-old woman was found sitting in an idling car in downtown Aspen at 3 a.m., eating a grapefruit and with two top-shelf bottles of vodka.

How did this happen? Her lawyer told The Aspen Times she would be tested to see if she had the date-rape drug Rohypnol in her blood.

The Times explains that several people reported being slipped the drug in 2010. The same year, the Aspen Police Department and a nonprofit organization teamed to distribute 2,500 coasters. If color of the coaster changed after a few drops of drink were put on it, the drink had been spiked.

A police detective told The Aspen Times no bona fide case of the drug, informally called roofie, had been reported recently. "We've heard a few reports of people being roofied, but it's usually people with a high BAC (blood-alcohol content) combined with the high altitude," he said.

In this case, police aren't persuaded. They accuse her of driving while under the influence. A video surveillance from a high-end hotel shows her walking behind the bar and collecting the vodka bottles.

Longer Aspen runway allows more passengers

ASPEN, Colo. — The longer runway at Aspen-Pitkin County Airport is paying dividends, lengthened by 305 metres last summer, to 2.4 kilometres. The greatest payoff will come in summer, when warmer temperatures provide less loft. The longer runway allows planes more time to get off the ground, and hence they can carry more weight — passengers — and earn more profit. Or reduce the loss, as the case sometimes may be.

But even in winter, airlines are able to add more passengers and baggage on outgoing flights. Sky West Airlines, for example, can add eight to 10 passengers. On its flights to Chicago, the airline has been forced to leave an average eight seats empty.

The longer runway doesn't allow larger aircraft, because weight and wingspan restrictions remain intact.