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Mountain News: Teton County ups housing requirement

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. – Teton County commissioners took little time in boosting the affordable housing requirements of builders. Before, builders had to allocate 15 per cent of units to affordable housing, and now it’s 25 per cent.

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. – Teton County commissioners took little time in boosting the affordable housing requirements of builders. Before, builders had to allocate 15 per cent of units to affordable housing, and now it’s 25 per cent.

In other words, explains the Jackson Hole News & Guide, a developer building 100 homes must now provide 25 affordable units, instead of 15. This is in comparison to 60 per cent at Aspen, where a hotel developer recently volunteered to up the ante to 100 per cent.

Within Jackson, the only town in Jackson Hole, town councilors are moving more slowly, but a preliminary 3-to-2 vote suggests they will follow Teton County’s lead. Some of the hesitation is caused by the belief that there are fewer trophy homes within Jackson than in the unincorporated county, and hence fewer impacts.

Also a discussion item is whether requiring more affordable housing of developers will in fact boost the cost of all housing, putting it beyond reach of developers. Some say that, similar to Aspen, virtually all housing is already beyond the reach of local workers, and hence it won’t make any difference.

In the past several years, home prices have increased 79 per cent, compared to 22 per cent for wages.

 

Swim-to-live theory disputed

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. – Few people would expect to ever need to know what to do if caught in an avalanche. But in Jackson Hole, where avalanche deaths among backcountry skiers and sledders are a staple of winter news in the Jackson Hole News & Guide, it’s no academic subject.

Since at least 1864, reports the newspaper, the conventional wisdom for the hapless person has been to mimic a swimming motion, in an effort to stay atop the snow or even get out of the current.

That convention has been challenged in recent years by Colorado-based avalanche expert Dale Atkins. At a meeting of 300 skiing professionals in Jackson Hole recently, he again explained why he believes it’s better to keep your hands around your face, so you can create an air pocket when the movement of snow begins to slow.

Slab avalanches move extremely fast, Atkins points out, but then stop rapidly. In a flash of time that survivors found remarkable, they cease to move like a liquid and then, setting up like concrete, move like a solid mass. At that point, the person no longer can move. If swimming, arms akimbo, the victim will be unable to get a hand around his or her face and an arm to the surface.

Atkins said that human bodies are likely to end up closer to the surface anyway. He illustrated this principle by shaking a bowl of mixed nuts. The large Brazil nuts come to the surface.

He was challenged at the meeting by Martin Radwin, who argued that waving and kicking, as if in swimming, makes a person larger, and hence increases the chance of the that person rising like a Brazil nut.

There seems to be no empirical evidence to support either hypothesis.

 

Manifest put to bed

WINTER PARK, Colo. – After 30 years and spare change, the Winter Park Manifest has published its final issue. The newspaper name has been retired in a new publishing regime of the Sky-Hi News, which is now putting out five issues a week. Swift, the media chain that also owns daily newspapers in Aspen, Vail, and Summit County, bought the papers.

The Manifest was started in March 1977 by Jim Davidson, who later started another newspaper in Telluride and now lives in Southern Colorado. In a story headlined “Bittersweet Goodbye,” Davidson recalled the primitive printing technology of the time. Production started on Wednesday afternoons and didn’t finish until midnight or later on Thursday.

“We were much younger then and incredibly idealistic — we felt we were doing a great thing for the community,” Davidson said. “And they felt the same way. And so, it was well worth it. It really was.”

Marianne Klancke, who has done cartoons for the paper for nearly all those 30 years, confessed that she has read no other newspaper over these years, “being content to concern myself with the small, mountain view from this personal, pertinent pisser of a paper.”

 

Dick Bass eyes Everest again

SNOWBIRD, Utah – The height of Mt. Everest, the world’s tallest peak, has increased only a few feet, topping out at 29,035, according to the latest survey. Not so the age of the climbers.

The record for the oldest person to climb Everest has been broken six times during the last seven years, with Katsusuke Yanagisawa, now owning the title at the age of 71 years and 63 days.

It may not last long. One of the earlier record holders, Yuichiro Miura, who summited at the age of 70, is aiming to reclaim the record next spring, when he is 75. Others, including Utah’s Dick Bass, are considering bids at even older ages.

“It feels like the goddess of Everest is beckoning me to come back,” Miura told the Associated Press’s Chisaki Watanabe. Estimated cost for the expedition is $1.7 million

Miura is blessed with good genes. His father skied down France’s Mont Blanc at the age of 99. Japanese have among the greatest longevity in the world, owing to a diet heavy in vegetables and fish, superb medical care, and trim physiques.

For Miura, it would be at least his third Everest ascent. In 1970, he became the first person to ski from the summit down the mountain. He was then 37, or four years older than Sir Edmund Hillary when he, with Tenzing Norgay, first climbed the mountain.

Others may also be in the hunt for the oldest-climber record. Bass, the owner of Utah’s Snowbird ski area and an early investor in Vail, is also thinking of giving Everest another shot. He’s now 78.

He became the first person in the world to climb the highest peak on each of the seven continents, capping it with his climb of Everest in 1985. At the time, he was 55 years old — then the oldest person by five years to summit. He held the record for the oldest summit for nine years.

Bass plans a return to Everest within the next few years, but has made no formal plans, Snowbird spokeswoman Julie Partain told Mountain Town News.

 

‘Everybody’s high’ no longer

ASPEN, Colo. – If you want an authoritative guide to the lyrics and life of the late singer John Denver, who died 10 years ago this month in a plane crash, don’t go to the park bearing his name in his adopted hometown of Aspen.

The Aspen Times says the lyrics etched into stone obelisks at the riverside park were bowdlerized. The last verse of his signature “Rock Mountain High” included the line “Friends around the campfire and everybody’s high.” But it’s not on the rock.

Another song, “Poems, Prayers and Promises,” had a line about “my friends and my old lady sit and pass a pipe around.” Not in the park. There, it’s “my friends and my old lady sit and watch the sun go down.”

The creators of the park said they consulted the family for lyrics, but his brother, Ron Deutschendorf, said he wasn’t consulted — and he’s sure John Denver would have been unhappy. “He’d be pissed like I’m pissed. It’s just not right.”

The newspaper says that it tried to contact Denver’s ex-wife, Annie Denver, but was unable to reach her.

 

400-sq.ft. homes considered

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. – Some places have enacted limits on size of homes, sometimes to great protest. In Gunnison County, the proposal is going in the opposite direction — to allow smaller houses.

The current limit there is 600 square feet, but county planners recommend 400 square feet. A smaller home will accommodate people who are constrained by budgets, they say.

Can a house be built so small and still have enough insulation? That was the concern voiced by the county building inspector, reports the Crested Butte News. Maybe not, but it will be up to the builder to figure out how to meet building codes, says a county commissioner.

 

Richest 1% earned 21% of all income

NEW YORK, N.Y. – Who’s bidding up all the real estate in ski towns? Everybody knows it’s people from cities, and obviously some very wealthy ones.

In fact, the wealthiest 1 per cent of Americans earned 21.2 per cent of all income in 2005, reports The Wall Street Journal, citing data from the Internal Revenue Service. That’s higher even that the previous mark of 20.8 per cent set in 2000.

The bottom 50 per cent of Americans earned 12.8 per cent of all income.

The Journal says IRS data go back only to 1986, but academic research suggests the rich last had this high a share of total income in the 1920s.

Jason Furman, a scholar at the Brookings Institution, said the inequality of wealth is a 30-year trend.

The source of the increased income for the affluent isn’t reported by the IRS, but the Journal says that, until this summer, soaring stock prices and buoyant credit markets produced spectacular payouts for private-equity and hedge-fund managers, and investment bankers.

A 2004 study by University of Chicago academics Steve Kaplan and Joshua Rauch found that the highest-earning hedge-fund manager earned double in 2005 what the top earner made in 2003.

 

Does ‘Heritage’ add value?

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. – Steamboat Springs continues to debate how much the future should look like the past. The city council this summer adopted a moratorium on razing or major reconfiguration of older buildings, anything older than 50 years. One objection has been that historic designations that curtail private property rights decrease market values of those properties.

Not so, says Dan Corson, an official with the Colorado Historical Society. At a meeting recently attended by the Steamboat Pilot & Today, Corson said there is no case recorded of values going down because of historic preservations. To the contrary, he cites a figure that heritage tourism — which is based upon a place’s history — makes up 40 per cent of Colorado’s total tourism industry.

Tim McHarg, formerly a planner in Steamboat and now in Durango, said the city’s previous standards would have allowed larger houses, what are often called McMansions, to destroy the character of historic neighbours. “What you end up with is a lot of houses on steroids,” he said.

 

Lot price tag makes news

BRECKENRIDGE, Colo. – In the context of Aspen, Jackson Hole, or Vail, the listing of a 17-acre in-town parcel for $5.4 million would not even merit a small story. Summit County’s real estate market is robust, but at a lower price point.

That listing was cited by the Summit Daily News as the single most expensive home site in Summit County history. The record price for a home sale in Breckenridge was set in August when a six-bedroom house sold for $5.5 million. Also, two lots, of a half-acre and one acre in size, sold for more than $2 million.

By way of comparison, a home in Vail close to the lifts was purchased in the early 1990s for $4.3 million — then promptly razed.

 

Opposition to new coal plant grows

DURANGO, Colo. – In the early days of space travel, the first artifacts of human civilization visible to astronauts were the smoke and steam from the two coal-fired plants in the Four Corners region, where Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico abut.

Now, a third power plant, called Desert Rock, is proposed. It’s in New Mexico, but on the Navajo Nation. Proponents cite the 420 permanent jobs the plant would offer in a place that has few, plus the $43 million a year in tax and royalty payments that the Bureau of Indian Affairs estimates the Navajo government will get.

But opposition is large and growing. One issue is mercury. Testing done at nearby Mesa Verde National Park as well as various reservoirs in the foothills of the San Juan Mountains reveal mercury levels that already exceed recommended levels — so much so that mothers and children are advised to limit their consumption of fish taken from them.

How much of this is mercury occurring naturally and how much comes from the nearby power plants, scientists cannot yet say. The new coal-fired plant will emit 80 per cent less mercury as compared to the old coal-fired plants. Still, that’s not enough in the eyes of many. Health regulators are considering rules in Colorado that would force new power plants to capture 95 per cent of their mercury.

Greenhouse gas emissions are also an issue. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson announced his opposition in July because of the estimated 12 million tons of carbon dioxide that the plant would emit annually. It would increase the state’s greenhouse gas emissions by about 15 per cent, making goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions difficult — if not impossible — to meet.

“I believe we need to be moving forward, toward new carbon capture ready technologies for power generation, not back to the old dirty coal plants of the past,” said Richardson.

Also opposing the project are Durango and other local governments, and now U.S. Congressman John Salazar, a Democrat from Colorado. The Four Corners area is already overloaded with significant pollutants due to the two existing power plants, he said. “A major new source of emissions as proposed by Desert Rock is simply unacceptable.”

In an editorial, the Durango Herald said that while the Navajo Nation deserves economic-development opportunities, it should not be at the expense of the environmental health of an entire region.

“Repeated attempts to end discussion at mention of jobs and revenue for the Navajo unrealistically ignores the broader — and no less significant — implications of Desert Rock,” said the paper.

 

Beetles find new homes

SUMMIT COUNTY, Colo. – It’s the same old story. The bark beetles that favor lodgepole pine had another successful summer, leaving behind their old host trees and spreading wildly to new hosts. Foresters tell the Summit Daily News that nearly all the pine forests in the northern portions of the Blue River Valley, north of Silverthorne, are likely to be dead or dying next year. A few paces back are the forests near Breckenridge, but they could catch up by next year. Some pine beetles have bored into spruce trees, inoculating them with the deadly blue-stain fungus, but the pine beetles can’t reproduce in spruce trees.

 

ATV use a concern

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. – All-terrain vehicles in Gunnison County are becoming a problem, or problems.

Part of the problem, explains the Crested Butte News, is that Forest Service roads have fewer restrictions than county roads, but riders may not realize when they leave the national forest.

Too, rules differ depending upon where you are from. Colorado-licensed ATV riders cannot drive on county roads. However, 27 states treat ATVs as cars, and so they can drive ATVs on roads in Colorado. In this case, a court has ruled, riders are subject to the rules from where they came, not where they are. Understandably, this is not the easiest idea to communicate — nor to swallow, if you’re a local rider.

But another problem, says Gunnison County Commissioner Jim Starr, is that many ATV riders need more respect for the land. If they don’t, he says, their rights will be curtailed.

A local ATV dealer, Adam Griffith, said nearly 1.2 million ATVs were sold in the United States last year, suggesting that the problems will continue.

 

Home Depot sizes up Silverthorne

SILVERHTORNE, Colo. – Is a Home Depot moving to Silverthorne? The hardware and lumber store chain has purchased a 4.5-acre site in Silverthorne, located along I-70 in Summit County. A consulting firm representative told the Summit Daily News that the company figured it was a no-lose situation. The company hopes to build a store, but if not, real estate prices in Summit County are expected to rise. The town already has a Target. Home Depot had hoped to locate in Frisco, about four miles away, but was rejected by the citizenry. The closest Home Depots now currently are in Avon, about 35 miles west, and Golden, 60 miles east.

 

Another hiker finds religion

MINTURN, Colo. – Yet another hiker has become lost while descending 14,005-foot Mount of the Holy Cross. It happens at least once a year, often several, but so far without fatality — a miracle. Among those miracle cases was of a retired music teacher who in 1997 was on the thin border of life after spending eight days huddled among rocks above timberline.

The victim this time was a 23-year-old from Lee’s Summit, Mo., who had summited with his brother. On the way down, at about 13,000 feet, the pair got separated as a snowstorm was coming in. He was only wearing jeans, tennis shoes, fleece and a rain jacket. He had water and an energy bar.

The Eagle County Sheriff’s Department told the Vail Daily that the man suffered some frostbite and was a little hypothermic from his two nights. About a foot of snow fell.

The path through the above-timberline talus is well trod, and some years ago was marked with an improved set of cairns, to better guide the uninitiated. Holy Cross being a formally designated wilderness, Day-glo tape and handrails are probably out of the question.