Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Mountain News: X Games make Aspen ‘feel better, even right’

Mountain News: X Games make Aspen ‘feel better, even right’ Compiled by Allen Best ASPEN, Colo. — Aspen, not unlike a host of other skis towns, has been struggling to emerge from an economic and intellectual malaise.

Mountain News: X Games make Aspen ‘feel better, even right’

Compiled by Allen Best

ASPEN, Colo. — Aspen, not unlike a host of other skis towns, has been struggling to emerge from an economic and intellectual malaise. It may not be the whole answer, but the snowmobile flips and all the rest of the X Games seem to be at least part of the solution.

First hosted in 2002, the games were held for the third straight year at Aspen during January, drawing a crowd estimated at 50,000. Moreover, Aspen – mostly the ski company, but with direct and important contributions from the town government – has now committed to host the event through 2007.

The Aspen Times, a generally reliable follower of public opinion, reflected that the X Games were doing something right for the resort. "It’s hard to put your finger on it, but suddenly Aspen feels better, even right," said the newspaper. "People are all over the streets. Restaurants, shops and lodges are filled to capacity, and for the most part, visitors and residents alike seem to be smiling and having a great time."

The newspaper pointed special attention to a concert held in the downtown area, put on by the ski company and sponsored by Budweiser. The high-octane and profanity-peppered performance had "people dancing in the streets. Aspen had finally, if only for a moment, shed its stodgy high-society image. Messy vitality run rampant."

Girls protest no-skin code

KETHCUM, Idaho — Girls at Wood River High School conducted a sit-in to protest a new dress code that they contend violates their right to self-expression. The code bans midriff and cleavage skin, as well as sunglasses, caps, and hoods.

The school’s principal, Graham Hume, seemed reasonably tolerant and amused by the protest, says the Idaho Mountain Express. He said it was sparked, in part, by Victoria’s Secret issuance of thongs, which fashionably are seen above the top of the pants.

But teachers are getting uncomfortable at times. "If a girl has a low-cut top and a teacher needs to help her at her desk, it’s uncomfortable," he said. "With sexual harassment out there, we can’t afford to not pay attention."

Swifts strengthen hold on Colorado newspapers

VAIL, Colo. — Vail long ago ceased to have a newspaper headquartered in the town. At one time three newspapers with the name "Vail" were being published, but all were located down-valley. Now, there are two, but owned by the same company, Swift Publishing, a Nevada-based chain.

Swift, owner of the Vail Daily, the dominant publication in the market, purchased The Vail Trail, a weekly and the original newspaper. In announcing the acquisition, Vail Daily publisher Steve Pope promised that the weekly would continue to have an independent and left-leaning voice, while the daily would have a right-leaning voice – but neither one getting very far from center.

With this purchase, Swift strengthened its hold on the Colorado high country. It now owns seven weekly newspapers and four daily newspapers from Aspen to Glenwood to Frisco. It is also the dominant publisher in the Lake Tahoe area, although there a monopoly has not produced a very high bar for journalism.

Kennedy helped get Park City going

PARK CITY, Utah — A lot of ski areas have been having their 40 th anniversaries – Crested Butte, Steamboat, Breckenridge, and Vail all began in the early 1960s. Often, politics were involved, but Park City may be alone in getting special help from President John Kennedy.

Jack Gallivan recalls that he became acquainted with Kennedy in the 1940s, when Kennedy, then a freshman congressman from Massachusetts, visited the publisher of the Salt Lake Tribune, where Gallivan worked. When Kennedy came around again in 1962, this time as both a friend and a president, Gallivan knew what favour he wanted – a $1.2 million federal loan. The money was needed to revitalize the decaying, old mining town by opening the ski area. Immediately the ski area founders began seeking to host the Olympics.

Park City would eventually have been given the federal loan anyway, but the presidential intervention just sped it up, Gallivan told the Park City Record.

More Latinos picking up skis & skates

TELLURIDE, Colo. — Latino immigrants don’t ski, right? No, that’s wrong. The Telluride Watch reports a growing number of students who are categorized as English language learners are participating in the school ski and skate physical education programs.

Many Hispanic parents who considered skiing to be a dangerous sport have changed their minds, while others think skiing is too risky. The key thing, said Kathleen Morgan, a specialist in teaching English as a second language, is to support parents in whatever decisions they make.

"As the Hispanic community has gotten larger and more established, they understand more and there are more kids getting involved," she told The Telluride Watch. From only six students receiving ESL instruction in the mid-1990s, the school district now services 54, nearly all of them Hispanic.

New Durango-Moab bike route likely

DURANGO, Colo. — It appears that a new, 200-mile mountain bike trail connecting Durango and Moab will up be and running this summer. The trail will follow existing tracks and roads beginning at Durango Mountain Resort, past the Telluride area, and then onward to Moab. The route will be interspersed with six small huts, which will be removed at the end of each summer.

Joe Ryan, owner and operator of San Juan Hut systems, is so confident that he will get approval by federal land agencies for his plans that he has started taking reservations. He already has a Telluride-Moab mountain bike trail, plus a network of ski huts near Ridgway.

Exasperated that the federal land officials weren’t moving fast enough, Ryan prodded the agencies through his development-minded Republican congressman, reported the Durango Telegraph.

‘Affordable’ units get the boot

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. — The story from Steamboat Springs about a trailer park should sound familiar to many resort towns. There, the owner of a 39-space trailer park wants to convert it into a townhome and retail project.

What this means for one young couple – he a carpet-layer and bartender, she a secretary – is that their plans have gone awry, explains The Steamboat Pilot. In buying the trailer in 1999, they knew the land was for sale, but still saw it as their last, best hope to get into real home ownership. They hoped they could save money to build their own house. But now, their savings are tied up in a 1973 trailer that no trailer court within 50 miles or more will take.

In Routt County, where Steamboat Springs is located, about 11 per cent of housing, both owner-occupied and rental-occupied, is in trailers. The median price of those homes is $37,500, compared to a median price of $199,000 for condominiums and $325,000 for single-family homes.

Displacement of Steamboat’s five trailer parks pushes Steamboat further along the path toward being the province of only rich people. While other communities have a "no-net-loss-of-housing" requirement or a mandate to provide financial assistance such as a relocation allowance, Steamboat does not have such a policy.

Banff aiming to reduce light pollution

BANFF, Alberta — Add Banff to the list of towns where laws are being drawn up to reduce light pollution.

"Light pollution results from fixtures that are unshielded or shine upward or outward and cause glare," explained Banff planner Ann Kjerul to the Banff Crag & Canyon. "So one aspect is to try and control the light pool and try to have more shielded fixtures, which direct light downward."

Down-valley in Canmore, a 10-year-old law controlling light fixtures has had the effect of leaving the town "perhaps somewhat darker at night," said municipal planner Alaric Fish. "It goes back to preserving the mountain feel, the natural environment, as opposed to a more suburban lit-up, artificial feel. It’s somewhat dimmer, more subdued."

Officials in Canmore report no complaints of increased crime. "We’re not trying to discourage lighting, we’re just trying to encourage better-directed lighting," added Fish.

Meanwhile, in Durango, city officials have unveiled their plan to reduce light pollution. Installing fixtures that meet the code will be easy in new construction, and no more expensive. The challenge is how long before existing lights that violate the code must be replaced. The city planning staff proposes seven years, a time that predictably pleases neither those who are offended by the lights nor those offended by the law.

Jackson Hole becoming ‘Land of Generic Luxury’

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. — Four Seasons opened at the base of the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort this winter, the latest of several new hotels that Jonathon Schechter calls a "Bermuda Triangle of Luxury" in Teton Village.

"Most striking is that service levels seem a lot higher," said Schechter, who writes a business analysis column for the Jackson Hole News & Guide. "I detected little trace of the vaguely sullen, vaguely ‘whatever’ approach to service that has so long been a hallmark of numerous village venues."

The base area’s physical appearance has also changed. "Gone is much of the funky slovenliness that distinguished the village until a few years ago," he observes.

Delivering this "Land of Generic Luxury," as Schechter calls it, obviously cost a great deal of money, which in turn means hotel managers will be expected to fill the summers and shoulder seasons, ski areas managers to boost skier days, and the community overall to support tourism, particularly higher-end tourism.

All this he adds, will be part of an insidious pressure to homogenize, something painful to people in Jackson Hole who have been fiercely protective of their specialness. "As dowdy as the village may have been, at least it was different than any other major ski area," he concludes. "Now we’re less so, and the forces of world-wide globalization will keep pressuring us to be increasingly like very other resort."

Silverton developers wait for land use decision

SILVERTON, Colo. — In March, the federal Bureau of Land Management is expected to announce how Silverton Mountain Ski Area can use adjoining federal lands. In the meantime, reports The Denver Post, investors who see strong potential in Silverton’s niche ski market have begun to swirl around Silverton.

The ski area has 385 acres of private land on which an old lift from Mammoth Mountain was erected. But to offer commercial use on the several thousand adjoining acres of public lands the developers, Aaron and Jenny Brill, have had to pay $600,000 for various studies. Chief among the concerns is the avalanche threat to customers. This potential ski area has among the steepest ski terrain in North America and also among the most slide prone snowpack.

For the time being, the ski area is selling limited access to deep, deep powder that, unlike at more established resorts, does not get skied off before noon.

Rec fee program may be killed by Congress

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A new round of recreation fees for use of non-park federal lands may be on its way out. A U.S. Senate committee last week voted 23-0 to make the Recreation Fee Demonstration Project permanent for only the National Park Service.

If the full Senate and then the U.S. House of Representatives agree with this bipartisan thinking, that means other federal agencies’ authority – the Forest Service, Bureau of Land management, and Fish and Wildlife Service – to charge additional fees for recreation will lapse.

Notable in this Senate committee vote is that it was co-sponsored by two Western Republicans, Idaho’s Larry Craig and Wyoming’s Craig Thomas, but supported by Democrats. The fee programs had been portrayed for years by Scott Silver, executive director of the Bend, Ore., based Wild Wilderness, as an attempt by industrial recreation groups to commodify and slowly privatize public lands.

Forest Service officials protested that they had no plans to expand the fees beyond specific, high-use locations, such as Aspen’s oft-photographed portal to the Maroon Bells. But critics weren’t so sure, pointing to how the Forest Service has allowed ski corporations unequal access to ski slopes. For example, at Copper Mountain those willing and able to pay up to $120 per day can get first dibs at powder and cut in lines at chairlifts. Recreation fee critics feared that, unless curbed, federal land agencies will similarly allow expanded access to those who pay the most.

Hearing such arguments, reports The Aspen Times, the Pitkin County commissioners agreed they will go on record opposing the recreation fee program. In so doing, they join several governments in the Telluride-Ouray area that have also lodged formal opposition.

Do federal drug agents have to obey state laws?

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Col. — A dispute between state and federal laws regarding marijuana could end up at the U.S. Supreme Court, some are saying.

In 2000, Colorado voters approved medicinal use of marijuana. As such, the state is among 10 that allow medicinal use of marijuana, although a 1970 federal law continues to define marijuana as illegal to possess.

Complying with the state law, a man from a town west of Steamboat Springs, Don Nord, applied for permits to use marijuana. Nord, 57, has diabetes and cancer and suffers from chronic pain. However, in October, a drug task force seized both his marijuana and the equipment that he used to grow it. The police were either U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency agents or else city or county officers deputized through a federal program.

When Nord went to court to get his drugs back, the county judge ordered the federal agents to return it. They have refused.

An attorney for Nord told The Steamboat Pilot that because the federal agencies had requested the search warrant through a state judge and because charges must be filed in state court, state rules cannot be ignored.

Another attorney, Jeralyn Merritt, a criminal defense attorney from Denver, told the newspaper that the case is not positioned to allow a ruling on whether the state law trumps the federal law. Rather the case is about whether the drug agents were justified in refusing to obey a state court order to return the drugs to Nord.

The case has national implications, as it could go to the U.S. Supreme Court, she said. "It’s telling the feds they can’t just thumb their nose at state law. They’re subject to the rules, too."

Durango helps recycle old computer equipment

DURANGO, Colo. — Durango city officials aren’t making a habit out of it, but they have offered to recycle old computers, monitors, printers, and scanners. Why?

First, helping recycle computer gear reduces how many get dumped into the city’s landfill. Toxic substances in computers includes cadmium, zinc, and chromium, as well as beryllium, antimony, and nickel. By the same token, getting this stuff recycled helps prevent it from being shipped to and polluting Third World countries.

The Durango Herald notes that old computers are becoming disposable. The life span of personal computers has steadily declined, and in 2007 is expected to be only two years. About 500 million computers are becoming obsolete during the decade.

Career walker setting out to do Pacific Crest

WINTER PARK, Colo. — To call Scott Bergmann a walker is like calling the pope religious.

During ski season, Bergmann walks between his two jobs, a four-mile round trip. Then, during the off-season, he walks around the country at an average clip of 20 to 25 miles a day. He has hiked the Colorado Trail, the Appalachian Tail, and in April will set out on the longest of them all, the 2,700-mile Pacific Crested Trail.

A Winter Park resident since 1986, he worked as a foreman on the construction of a hotel there and made good money – but then sold his house and his car, basically everything except his backpack and guitar. He wanted a stress-free life, he explained.

As for the art of hiking, the 40-year-old advises that it’s 95 per cent mental and only 5 per cent physical. "It’s only the first 500 miles that are tough," he told the Winter Park Manifest. "The first 500 miles either breaks you or makes you. After that you just keeping getting stronger and stronger."

Colorado picked on because Colorado has highest resorts

DENVER, Colo. — Recently the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page story about altitude sickness at Colorado’s highest ski resorts. At some resorts, up to half the visitors exhibit headaches, insomnia, and other symptoms of mountain sickness, which is caused by rapid ascent to higher elevations, such as from sea level to more than 9,000 feet.

Colorado Ski Country USA thought the story unfair. "They’re making it look like a Colorado problem, but it’s a problem for all high-altitude resorts," said Ashley Boyden, spokeswoman for the trade group.

"Colorado ski resorts have never tried to mask the problem," she added. "There is literature out there. We were a little frustrated that the story described altitude sickness as a ‘Colorado problem,’ which it simply isn't, although we do have the highest peaks and most terrain so they naturally targeted us."