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Nothing Festival has become a draw

TELLURIDE, Colo. — Some years ago, as Telluride’s summer season steadily thickened with this festival and that, a local man named Dennis Wrestler called for a halt. Going before the town council, he proposed a Nothing Festival, reserving one weekend each summer – in mid-July – when Telluride would host no films, no banjo pickers, not any old thing.

Well, it wasn’t quite nothing. There was a parade – with a flat-bed truck with nothing on it. There were T-shirts with "Nothing" on it. But otherwise, there was nothing scheduled other than the normal spectacular summer weather and scenery.

But times change. In recent years, reports The Telluride Watch, there’s been less talk of too much of a good thing in Telluride, and more talk of a need to support a fragile economy. "Is Nothing an idea whose time has come and gone?" asks the paper.

No, says Wrestler, as long as Nothing is acceptable to the public. In fact, Nothing has become a draw of its own, with people visiting Telluride specifically because nothing special is going on.

All this leads The Telluride Watch to a paradox that it says is worthy of a lengthy town council debate: how is it that in Telluride the more things change, the more Nothing changes?

Park City wants commitment

PARK CITY, Utah — Although Robert Redford’s Sundance Film Festival is named after his ski resort, Sundance, it is actually held in another ski resort, Park City, while the festival offices are in yet another location in Salt Lake City.

But the festival headquarters may move to Park City and, if that happens, organizers will commit to staging the festival in Park City for 10 to 20 years. The festival is currently committed to remaining in Park City through 2008. The festival, which has been described as America’s premier showcase of independent films, last year generated an estimated $36.5 million in economic activity in Park City and surrounding Summit County.

One question is whether Park City will need to come up with a subsidy. The film festival currently gets $480,000 in arts funding because of its headquarters in Salt Lake City, which is located about 25 miles away.

Gonzo idea not so good

ASPEN, Colo. — Aspen hosted an Ideas Festival last week, and several dozen intellectual heavy-weights – among them potential presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her husband, Bill – stopped by to share observations, land a few tautological punches, and otherwise reminisce about what could have been.

Meanwhile, The Aspen Times had got festive with some ideas of its own – reporting what it thought were the really, really bad ideas visited upon Aspen through the years. Chief among the thoughts gone wrong, says The Times, is the idea of shooting the ashes of Hunter S. Thompson, the author who committed suicide in February, out of a cannon. "The hero worship is out of hand," said the newspaper. "It’s a bad idea, it sets a precedent that celebrities can do any hare-brained idea that suits their large egos."

But a worse idea than the cannon shooting, said the Times, is the idea of making it an invitational-only affair. Plenty of Thompson fans want in, and, like their late hero, many of them crave weirdness and violence. To deny them an opportunity to be part of it is to put the entire upper Roaring Fork Valley in peril, adds the newspaper.

Business and thin air don’t mix

DENVER, Colo. — Don’t mix fun and business at ski resorts. That would seem to be the message from a book called "Disney War" by David Kipen, a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Kipen says Michael Eisner, chief executive of Walt Disney Co., made three critical errors that cost the company billions of dollars while he vacationed at mountain resorts. Eisener, he says, made his hastiest and worst decisions while in Aspen or Sun Valley. "Management by altitude sicknesss is not a prescription for good corporate governance," he writes.

The Denver Post found additional evidence for lapses of judgment in mountain resorts. "There’s no question you aren’t operating at full capacity," said Dr. Robert Roach, who directs research at the Colorado Center for Altitude Medicine and Physiology in Denver.

Just the same, it might be useful to remember that Sun Valley is only slightly higher than Denver. And Whistler is the same elevation as Tucson. So the elevation of vacation and not the hypoxia of thin air might be the more rationale explanation of why Disney’s chief made some Mickey Mouse decisions.

Town declares time out

HAILEY, Idaho — The Sun Valley region doesn’t seem to be growing at the same break-neck speed of the resort towns in the I-70 corridor of Colorado, but just the same, town officials in Hailey, the county seat, have declared "time-out" for six months.

The moratorium on hearing new proposals for development was declared so that the town, which is 11 miles down-valley from Ketchum and Sun Valley, can address such issues as affordable work-force housing and historic preservation. As well, the town wants to talk more about increasing density in the city core in order to reduce sprawl, reports the Idaho Mountain Express.

"This isn’t anti-growth; it’s doing it right," explained Councilwoman Carol Brown.

Another $1 billion project

MINTURN, Colo. — In 1998, as the final approvals for Vail’s massive ski expansion were nearing, environmentalists seized upon the possibility that the new ski trails would connect to nearby private lands at and above the former mining town of Gilman.

Despite their protests, Vail Resorts got its ski expansion. However, as a condition of approval from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which was involved because of lynx habitat in the expansion area, Vail agreed that it would not try to build real estate.

Just the same, the 5,200 acres of former mining properties are now being readied by a developer. It’s not Vail Resorts, though. As it promised, the company backed out of the land-development scheme. Its former partners, a trio of lawyers, instead sold the property earlier this year for $32.5 million to a deep-pocketed Florida-based developer, Bobby Ginn. And boy, what big plans he has for that big chunk of real estate.

The lands are located in the triangle created by Vail and the two former mining and railroad towns of Red Cliff and Minturn. The property ranges from about 8,000 feet in elevation to 11,000 feet, the latter with lofty views of peaks around Mt. of the Holy Cross.

Ginn is plotting major, major development – some 1,700 housing units, plus a gondola to transport people from the valley floor to the real estate project, very much like what exists at Telluride and its slope-side sibling town of Mountain Village. There are to be ski runs, although not connecting to Vail. Naturally, there is to be a golf course, but it will be unusual – created on top of a Superfund tailings pile.

The property was patented for mining, mostly in the 1870s and 1880s. The core of the property is at Gilman, where a mine was for years the largest producer of zinc in the United States. It ceased production in 1979. After mining operations ceased, water running across the exposed mine tailings leached impurities that poisoned the Eagle River. The mine was designated as a federal Superfund site in 1986.

Ginn wants to annex to Minturn to get use of the city’s water but also to get more development rights. By Colorado law, he could build fewer than 200 units on the property. Moreover, in a sharp reversal of the trend for many years, Eagle County commissioners have been pointedly dubious of real estate developments – and this one in particular.

In turn, Minturn hopes to get a new sewer treatment plant and, with that as a key leverage, gain a larger municipal budget. Despite its proximity to Vail, Minturn has virtually no sales tax. The Vail Daily notes that the town’s budget last year was $1.2 million, while Ginn’s companies had $1.2 billion in sales.

The annexation agreement that spells out who gets what is expected to take 18 months to two years. While Minturn appears happy to get married to Ginn and his high-end project, leery outsiders warn that the town needs to be sure it will get steady revenues for years to come.

We are not worthy

TELLURIDE, Colo. — As do most ski towns, Telluride had a Fourth of July parade this year, and The Telluride Watch reports that the biggest hit was an entry called The Church of Celebritology.

Church members preach their own inferiority while adulating celebrities. "We all know that celebrities are better than us," said member Jeremy Baron. "We strive to reach their level someday."

The church won first place in the "Funny Parade Entry." Other entries included the "Men Without Rhythm, who danced to celebrate Elvis Presley’s 70 th birthday. Watching it all was Norman Schwarzkopf, the leader of U.S. forces in the first war against Iraq, a part-time resident of the Telluride area.

Meanwhile, Jackson Hole had its own celebrity, if politicians are classified as such. Since people were hounding Dick Cheney for autographs, he must be. The Jackson Hole News & Guide reports that the vice president, who claims Jackson Hole as his primary residence, caught an ear of corn chucked from a passing float. Even the notoriously serious Secret Service agents cracked a smile during the parade, notes the newspaper.

Peak named for Poulsen

SQUAW VALLEY, Calif. — A 7,742-foot mountain near Squaw Valley has been named Poulsen Peak, after Wayne Poulsen, a co-founder of the company that created the ski area.

Poulson grew up in nearby Reno and, while still young, became a volunteer who skied into the mountains each winter to record the water content of the snowpack, explains the Sierra Sun. He began his competitive ski career in 1931, and one year, he was the California state champion in downhill, slalom, ski jumping, and cross-country skiing.

But, like Pete Seibert while still a youth in New Hampshire, Poulson early on nurtured a dream of someday building a ski resort. Seibert later went on to create Vail, while work done by Poulson soon after high school was the basis for development of several ski areas in the Lake Tahoe and Truckee area.

After serving in World War II, Poulson became a commercial pilot, but joined with Harvard-educated Alex Cushing to make Squaw Valley happen – although the two had a falling out shortly before the ski area opened in 1949. Poulson died in 1995, but Cushing remains the head of Squaw Valley.

Ski towns feel Denver’s thirst

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. — One of the interior dramas touching Colorado ski towns from Winter Park to Crested Butte is how Denver’s burgeoning southern suburbs will find more sustainable water supplies.

These suburbs are located between Denver and Colorado Springs, mostly in Douglas and Arapahoe counties. A headquarters for a variety of high-tech, cable, and communications companies, the area is a statistical wünderkind. The fastest growing county in the United States during the 1990s, Douglas County has among the best educated, most affluent and reliably Republican populations in the West.

But this fountain of wealth is mostly premised on underground aquifers that are steadily, surely falling. Already, many wells have to be drilled deeper every year to ensure water.

By nearly all accounts, these new and shiny patches of city must figure out new sources of water that rely on snowmelt from the Rocky Mountains. The big question is whether that means buying farms for their water (which originates in mountain snowmelt) or somehow tapping the remaining water that flows out of Colorado toward California.

Not much water remains in the headwaters streams. To get substantial quantities of unclaimed water means going to Steamboat Springs or even Grand Junction. Still, cities are trying to first grab what little water that remains along the Continental Divide, because it is closer and of higher quality.

To that end, Denver is trying to expand its diversions from the Winter Park area, where the Fraser River is a mere trickle of what it once was. Expanded diversions are also conceived at Dillon Reservoir, which is located in Summit County, and from the headwaters of the Eagle River, near where Vail is located.

Moving south, plans are afoot to take more water from the Roaring Fork River and tributaries in the Aspen area. And finally, one more watershed south, there is renewed talk of water from the Taylor Park area near Crested Butte. However, Steve Glaser, Crested Butte’s resident water expert, dismisses this project, called Union Park, as a "phantom." That doesn’t stop proponents from wanting to meet with local officials to talk about their proposed 474-foot-high dam, which would create the largest reservoir in Colorado. For now, local officials are saying no, partly because they are involved in litigation on the matter.

In Colorado, rivers west of the Continental Divide (an area called the Western Slope) generate 87 per cent of the state’s total outflow, but 89 per cent of the state’s population and 72 per cent of its irrigated farms are found east of the Continental Divide.

Wal-Mart scion dies

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. — John Thomas Walton, the No. 2 son of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, died when his ultralight aircraft crashed near the Jackson Hole Airport.

An obituary in the Jackson Hole News & Guide recalls that he moved to Jackson Hole in 1999 and became a supporter of local schools. His wealth, he said, would best benefit the public if devoted to education. As well, the 58-year-old Walton had fully embraced the outdoors, snowboarding in winter and mountain biking in summer. In his earlier years, he had been a Green Beret medic in Vietnam, then a crop-duster and a boat-builder.

Also dying in an accident in Jackson Hole was Heather Lynn Paul, 34, who fell while climbing in Grand Teton National Park. A nurse at the local hospice, her first love was climbing, followed by skiing, biking, and running.

Summit County market nears boil

SUMMIT COUNTY, Colo. — Aspen is going crazy in real estate sales and so is the Vail market. So what’s happening in Summit County?

Until recently, the word "tepid" applied, says the Summit Daily News. After all, values are up only 6 per cent in the last year, compared to 20 to 30 per cent in some places in the country. But the market is now heating, with one brokerage reporting sales now double those of last year.

Durango may tinker with river

DURANGO, Colo. — Add Durango to the list of communities planning to muck around in its local river to make it more interesting for kayakers. Calls for such tinkering were sounded as early as 1985, but the thinking stepped up several years ago. That has yielded a conceptual plan that proposes 10 recreational improvements in the Animas River at a cost of $50,000.

The river is anything but natural, says John Bennan, a kayaker and a member of the river task force. He sees it more like a tree that must periodically be pruned. "You can’t just let the river do its thing all the time," he says. The tinkering – such as has now been done by a dozen or so Colorado mountain towns – will make it more recreation friendly.

But another point of view comes from Michael Black, a river guide for 25 years. "There are no biological reasons for the modifications," he says. "The fisheries are fine; the river’s fine," he told the Durango Telegraph. Instead, he predicts that mucking in the river could stir up toxic sediments that have settled into the river bottom when smelters discharged into the river. Proponents respond that little of the river sediments will be stirred up. Nonetheless, they take his criticism seriously enough to consider bank-rolling a secondary study of sediments.

A ‘high country’ definition

BRECKENRIDGE, Colo. — Several newspapers in Colorado commonly use the expression "High Country." However, they have never specified where "high" begins. Does "high" begin at 5,000 feet, 8,000, or 10,000 feet or more?

A somewhat more empirical way of defining high country comes in the form of a new cookbook called "Pie in the Sky: Successful Baking at High Altitudes." Bakers must adjust for the effects of both the thinner air and drier air as elevations rise, and this book offers recipes that take these into account. Doing so, notes The Denver Post, will keep the meringue in lemon look peaked and the apples in pies still apples, and not sauce.

By several definitions offered in the book, the "high country" might begin at 7,000 feet. Below that elevation, crisp cooking apples – Granny Smith, Jonathan, or Rome – can be used for baking pies, says the author, Susan G. Purdy. Above 7,000 feet, she says, soft eating apples like Golden Delicious and McIntosh will bake more quickly and hence more effectively.

Reading all this, one baker who long lived – and baked apple pies – in the Colorado mountain town of Red Cliff says Jonathan’s bake just fine at elevation 8,674 feet, as long as you do every thing else right.

Still, if there are quibbles, none can discount Purdy’s methodical approach. She field-tested each recipe at sea level, 3,000, 5,000, 7,000 and 10,000 feet, finding that most one-size-fits-all adaptations just didn’t work.

As for where the high country begins, could it be the point where deer turn into elk?

Is more better?

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. — The debate in Crested Butte continues about whether the community needs a new ski area, called Snodgrass.

Proponents say that Crested Butte has struggled because it doesn’t have enough intermediate terrain to hold the interest of destination guests for more than a couple of days. Lacking that skiing variety, relatively few destination skiers return for a second year.

But opponents say the argument has holes. For example, Chuck Shaw wrote in a recent issue of the Crested Butte News that terrain expansion does not increase skier days. "Some expanded ski areas have lost skier visits, some have gained, but overall there’s been remarkably little growth in either the Colorado or national ski industries."

That’s true, relatively speaking. Growth has been slow. Still, skier days have increased in the last several years. And while some ski areas with new terrain have not grown, others have grown rapidly. While Vail itself has grown very slowly in skier days, despite massive increases in terrain, neighboring Beaver Creek has grown by almost double-digit strides for the last decade. It has had both lodging and terrain expansions.

Public transit needs help

ASPEN, Colo. — You’d think Ralph Trapani would be a devout believer in automobiles. After all, he first supervised construction of Interstate 70 through Glenwood Canyon and then oversaw the four-laning of Highway 82 into Aspen.

But more lanes of pavement are not the means to link Aspen with the broader Roaring Fork Valley, he said at a recent transportation conference. Mass transit is. The valley’s bus systems accounted for 30 per cent of transportation in past years, he noted.

He dismissed criticism that mass transit needs too much of a subsidy. Highways receive 82 per cent of transportation dollars in Colorado, compared with 18 per cent for transit, he said. Highways are heavily subsidized in America.

He says more funding is needed to make mass transit more effective in the Roaring Fork Valley, Congestion is causing buses to take up to 100 minutes to make the 45-mile trip from Aspen to Glenwood Springs.

Eagle County may be next to toss butts into the streets

EAGLE COUNTY, Colo. — The trend to ban tobacco smoke in bars and restaurants is finally hitting Eagle County. The Vail Daily says county commissioners there plan to ask voters in November if the county should ban smoking in bars and restaurants. While such a ban would affect only businesses outside of towns, Commissioner Arn Menconi said he hopes a countywide ban would prompt the towns to follow suit. That is what happened in neighboring Summit County.

Fire officials enforcing defensible space rules

TRUCKEE, Calif. — Fire officials intend to beat the bushes in rural areas around Truckee this summer to enforce a state law that mandates that flammable vegetation be removed from within 30 feet of homes and other buildings. As well, California has a new law that requires 100 feet of defensible space, and the fire officials will be advising people of that.

Creating defensible space includes cleaning off roofs and rain gutters, cutting tree limbs around chimneys, and trimming and managing vegetation surrounding a structure. Fire officials suggest a gap of 10 to 15 feet between large shrubs or trees.

Park City considering outdoor retail displays

PARK CITY, Utah — City officials in Park City are considering bending the town’s rules that strictly limit outdoor displays at retail stores. The consideration was spurred, in part, by a trip to Jackson Hole, where a council member noticed a sculpture garden that he found very attractive. Others agree that outdoor dining areas can promote vibrancy in a community center.