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Houstonians leave heat in waves for Steamboat

Compiled by Allen Best STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. -- The busiest July in five years was recorded at the Yampa Valley Regional Airport, with planes typically being three-quarters full.

Compiled by Allen Best

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. -- The busiest July in five years was recorded at the Yampa Valley Regional Airport, with planes typically being three-quarters full.

Much of this business seems to be a result of daily flights from Houston, for which the business community posted $200,000 in minimum revenue guarantees, noted The Steamboat Pilot. Andy Wirth, marketing executive for the Steamboat Ski and Resort Corp. told The Steamboat Pilot he's seen enough to reassure him that the Houston flight will return next summer.

Trophy home of another kind

TELLURIDE, Colo. — At 2,500 square feet, the new Cutler Bench house overlooking the San Miguel River about 10 miles west of Telluride isn’t what most people would consider a "trophy" house. Nice? Yes, but not sprawling big.

But it is quite a trophy in another way, explains The Telluride Watch. From start to finish, the builder tried to use the least environmentally impactful techniques and materials, a concept labelled "sustainable."

For starters, contractors Glen Harcourt and Stephen Jallad erected two-kilowatt solar panels to give them the electricity they needed to power their tools. For backup, they set up a generator to be powered by biodiesel. However, the backup generator ran only 133 hours during the 13 months of construction.

Builders solicited wood guaranteed to be not part of clear cuts, and when possible they used wood recycled from other sources, such as old bridges. All of this added 10 to 15 per cent to the project’s cost. No mention of the buyer in the article.

Aspen buying ‘clean’ energy

ASPEN, Colo. — About 1991, Aspen chose to return to the practice of when it was a silver-mining town, tapping local creeks and rivers for hydroelectric power. Now, the city gets 57 per cent of its electricity from hydro or wind generation, with the balance of 43 per cent coming from conventional coal-fired power plants.

Now, the city is getting ready to push the percentage of "clean" energy to 80 per cent, even if the alternatives cost a smidgeon more. Although it’s not a done deal, a report in The Aspen Times suggests that electrical rates, now unchanged for 12 years, will be increased to pay for the added purchase from alternative sources. The city is one of the several thousand municipalities in the United States that is also an electrical utility.

The city is also looking at encouraging conservation by charging those residential customers who use the most power to pay the highest incremental cost. Currently, all residential consumers pay the same rate.

The underlying premise for all this is to reduce Aspen’s part in creating greenhouse gases. Emissions from coal-fired plants have also been implicated in such unpleasantries as acid rain and has been implicated in reduced snowfall.

Buses switch to biodiesel

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. — The bus shuttle at Crested Butte has joined the few bus services in resort towns that use biodiesel. Also using biodiesel are Breckenridge and Jackson Hole and, to a smaller extent, Telluride.

The buses will use 20 per cent vegetable-based diesel to go with 80 per cent petroleum-based diesel, the usual mix for climates where the temperature habitually gets below zero. The major benefit is that vegetable-based oil emits less carbon, a key greenhouse gas, and also less small-particulate pollution, called PM-10, which is dangerous to lungs. Biodiesel also can lengthen the life of a diesel engine and improve gas mileage.

Hispanics missing housing

ASPEN, Colo. — More than most other ski towns, Aspen’s economy hums along on the backs of immigrant labourers. Most live down-valley in Carbondale, Rifle and other bedroom communities. Very few live in Aspen, despite Aspen’s reputation among ski towns as having the most ambitious affordable housing program.

That should change, says Mayor Helen Klanderud. "By the way we've structured our housing, we've excluded – not by design – an entire group of people," she complained during a recent session after the lack of diversity had been noted by a local newspaper columnist. "I'm not sure we practice what we preach," she added.

Council members said that greater efforts, such as advertising openings in Spanish as well as in English, could be made to attract applications from Hispanics and Latinos. Such advertisements would cost another $4,000 to $5,000 annually.

But one previous effort at broader advertising seemed to spark no interest in vacancies in seasonal units from Latinos and Hispanics, notes The Aspen Times.

Record real estate sales

ASPEN, Colo. — The Aspen area's real estate market is rolling past last year's performance and appears likely to shatter the single-year record for dollar volume, reports The Aspen Times.

Research conducted by the Land Title Guarantee Co. shows that the dollar volume of real estate sales in Pitkin County through July is up almost 50 per cent over the same period last year. The total hit $803 million, compared to $538 million during the same seven months last year. March was the only flat month this year. May, which is usually an off-season dog, was unusually strong this year, notes the newspaper.

But the more important story, says the company, may be increasing prices, a 32 per cent increase averaged throughout all housing types.

At the current pace, Pitkin County sales this year will hit $1.38 billion , a step ahead of the record set in 2000.

Backlash against smoking ban

SUMMIT COUNTY, Colo. — The ban on smoking at bars, restaurants, and other enclosed public places went into effect in June in most of Summit County. There are, reports the Summit Daily News, some unhappy campers out there.

"Tourists are just angry they have to go outside," said Scott Jackson, owner of the Goat, a bar in Keystone. "But locals, who are family to us, who used to spend their after-work hours with us to have a cigarette and a Pabst, they are going home for a smoke and a Pabst in front of their TVs."

Jackson wants an amendment to allow smoking after 10 p.m.

But one of the individuals who helped get voter approval for the bans, both in the unincorporated county and individual towns, says such a move would miss the point. "The biggest point of the ban in the first place is to protect the health of workers, visitors, and residents. To allow smoking at any time goes against that."

Bears hold Aspenites hostage

ASPEN, Colo. — Bears continue to be in the news in Aspen, where a late-June freeze devastated much of the acorn and berry crop, setting up what wildlife officials describe as the worst bear season in memory.

Even the city’s mayor, Helen Klanderud, admits to keeping her windows and doors locked. Another homeowner told The Aspen Times that she felt like a hostage in her own home, unable to use the patio and yard, and she had even considered fleeing the resort until the bears had left.

While most businesses in the downtown core have steel trash bins that are impervious to bears, residents are required to have only plastic containers, which bears have proved repeatedly that they can easily mangle. The city may well follow the lead of Pitkin County in requiring residents to invest in more expensive but secure steel containers. As well, they are considering whether a second officer may be needed in this interface between bruins and citizenry.

West Nile at 8,000 feet

GRANBY, Colo. — There had been hope that the ski resorts of the high mountains would be spared the worry of West Nile Virus. Some limited studies at 10,000 feet and other, anecdotal evidence suggested that the species of mosquitoes that transmit the virus are not found above 8,000 feet.

But the Sky-Hi News reports that a bird infected with the virus was found at Granby, which is right at 8,000 feet. Overall, the spread of the disease slowed this year in Colorado, apparently due to the uncommonly cool weather.

Name that park

EAGLE, Colo. — Big cities sell the naming rights to stadiums and auditoriums to defray construction costs. Why not to parks in mountain valleys?

The Vail Daily reports that this is an idea under consideration for a skate-board park in the Miller Ranch, an affordable housing and educational campus being developed at Edwards, located about halfway between Vail and Eagle.

As plans for the park get bigger, so do the costs, leading Eagle County Commissioner Michael Gallagher to suggest offering naming rights to a company. "I would like to see us make a nickel on it," Gallagher said.

Vigilantes after speeders

PARK CITY, Utah — Residents of Park City who think cars are speeding through their neighborhoods can check out radar guns from the police department. So far, however, they are learning that there are fewer speeders than they thought.

"Speeding exists, but it’s not as aggressive as the complaints are," police officer Robert Lucking told The Park Record. The citizen radar-gunners do not have powers to ticket motorists or signal them to slow down. Nonetheless, Luckig credits the program with helping police identify and address traffic problems.

Voters to decide on college

TRUCKEE, Calif. — Voters in the Truckee-North Tahoe region in November will be asked to approve a $35 million bond to pay for a permanent campus in Truckee for Sierra College.

The campus would get a 35,000-square-foot building, more than triple the existing building, allowing enrolment to grow from the existing 350 students to eventually 500 full-time students, reports the Sierra Sun.

Hypothermia does in hiker

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. — It wasn’t a grizzly bear that killed him, although a grizzly did nibble on his body after he was dead. Instead, it was probably his decision to continue hiking through the night, off trail, and still wet that caused the demise of 24-year-old David Anderson.

Hypothermia, noted the Jackson Hole News & Guide in telling the story, can cause a delirium that results in bad decisions.

Anderson and a friend had been hiking toward a fire lookout when they became confused. After camping one night, they were retracing their steps back to the lookout the second day when the missing man got off trail again.

What motivated Anderson to leave the trail, and hence his companion, was not clear to searchers who easily retraced Anderson’s route because of the impressions left by the soles of his Merrill boots, reports the Jackson Hole News & Guide. Perhaps he thought he was taking a short-cut to the lookout. But instead he wandered in another direction. Later, he crossed another clearly marked trail, but did not stay on it, and instead ended up wading through a creek, sometimes waste deep.

That’s what ultimately did him in. Out for a second night, he did not get into his sleeping bag and get warm as the temperature dropped down to the 30s, but instead kept rambling, bloodied by a tumble that fractured a vertebrae in his neck and caused other injuries. Finally, he laid down in a meadow and died of hypothermia. He was only an hour’s walk from a highway.

Mufflers on jake brakes is key to noise reduction

VAIL, Colo. — Vail’s town government continues to grapple with how to reduce the annoying noise from Interstate 70, which bisects the town.

The latest "ah-ha" moment for council members came during a recent test, when council members listened and watched as various trucks, motorcycles, and cars went by, some with mufflers and some without. All were noisy enough, but what hurt ears and sent decibel-readers soaring were those vehicles – and not just the big trucks – that had no mufflers, reports the Vail Daily.

Jake brakes alone were not a problem, the council members decided, unlike what they had thought before. A relatively new Colorado law requires mufflers on jake brakes, as the devices that use engine compression to slow trucks are often called. However, about 15 per cent of truckers seem to be ignoring the law. Some truckers believe the mufflers impair the performance of the jake brakes, a claim stoutly refuted by the manufacturer.

A Colorado truckers trade group wants co-operation in stepped-up enforcement and stiffened fines against those truckers and others who operate without mufflers. They also want similar laws requiring mufflers on jake brakes in other states.

DA in Bryant case has lots of stamina

GEORGETOWN, Colo. — While various lawyers and writers have occasionally questioned the legal expertise of Mark Hurlbert, the district attorney who is prosecuting basketball player Kobe Bryant, none should question his physical fitness.

Hurlbert, who makes his home at Breckenridge, elevation 9,600 feet, recently ran a half-marathon from Georgetown to Idaho Springs. He turned in a respectable 1 hour, 39 minutes, reports the Summit Daily News.

Steamboat High may get girls softball team

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. — Steamboat Springs High School may get a fast-pitch softball team for girls this fall.

If the team is approved, players must figure out a way to pay for it themselves. Other sports in the same category are golf, hockey, and lacrosse, as well as cheerleading, baseball and tennis. The cost is expected to be at least $125 per player, reports The Steamboat Pilot.

There are six such high school softball teams on Colorado’s Western Slope, where most of Colorado’s ski resorts are located.