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Mountain News:

Hunter Thompson kills self at age of 67

ASPEN, Colo. — The same day that a story appeared in The Aspen Times mentioning a plan in Sun Valley and Ketchum to conduct a festival devoted to the novelist Ernest Hemingway, writer Hunter S. Thompson killed himself near Aspen. As Hemingway had done in Ketchum in 1961, shooting himself, Thompson committed suicide by putting a .45-caliber handgun into his mouth. He was 67.

Friends said they were surprised on several counts. First, he killed himself with both his son and grandson in the same house. And second, he had seemed unusually upbeat recently.

With dozens of reporters buzzing around, Gaylord Guenin, a friend who lives nearby, told The Aspen Times that he still can't come up with an explanation. "I could see him driving into a river or overdosing on some bizarre drug, but not this way. To lose a friend is tough. But we didn't lose him. He ran away from us," Guenin said. "The weird thing was in the last few weeks he had been really upbeat."

Jimmy Ibbotson, a long-time neighbour and friend, said the author had been quite ill and had undergone three or four operations in the past few years. "He lived his life by his own rules, and he took his life by his own rules. Why he did it with his son and grandson in the (home)... that's the part that no one can get."

Dalai Lama to talk about 9/11

SUN VALLEY, Idaho — The Dalai Lama is scheduled to give a two-hour lecture in Sun Valley on the fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York City and Washington D.C. His appearance is expressly to send a message of peace to those who lost loved ones in the attacks, reports the Idaho Mountain Express.

Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne formally extended the invitation to the Dalai Lama, but instrumental in the invitation seems to have been Kiril Sokoloff, a financial researcher from Ketchum, who is a personal friend. He is president of 13D Research.

Meningitis death causes review

ASPEN, Colo. — Following the death of a 22-year-old seasonal employee in Snowmass from meningitis, health officials in Pitkin County were saying they might urge meningitis-preventing vaccinations among resort employees who live in dormitory-like housing.

The Snowmass victim was from a small town in Washington and had not travelled extensively before moving to Aspen. He had two roommates. He died within 24 hours.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that all college freshmen who live in dorms should be vaccinated for bacterial meningococcal illness. Two Colorado-based doctors who served on the CDC panel told The Aspen Times that seasonal employee housing in Aspen and other resort towns resemble dormitory conditions and likely see increased risk of the disease.

While the normal risk of meningococcal disease is lower than one in 100,000 people, college freshmen have a contraction rate of more than five in 100,000.

The Aspen Skiing Co. said the company’s extensive health insurance would likely cover the cost of the $100 vaccine.

Sun Valley wants to grow numbers

KETCHUM, Idaho — Like a bunch of other ski areas in the West, Sun Valley thinks it must create a bigger, more modern ski area in order to make sufficient money for Earl Holding, the owner.

Despite being the oldest destination ski resort in the West, Sun Valley’s skier days have been hovering at around 400,000 a year for the last decade. More skiers are needed to make some economic sense, says the resort’s general manager, Wally Huffman.

To that end, Sun Valley is planning two new bottom-to-top gondolas and several detachable quads to replace existing fixed-grip lifts. As well, there is to be more terrain for beginners, intermediates, and experts, although no major whole-sale expansions, unlike what is proposed at Crested Butte. The resort also proposes to plow some money into snowmaking and upgrade or replace some of the on-mountain restaurants.

All of this will make Sun Valley more like Vail, Aspen, and the rest of the industry leaders. The improvements are to occur in the next 10 years, Forest Service and BLM willing.

Still in the "dream" stage, reports the Idaho Mountain Express, is an expansion of the skiable terrain onto the backside of Baldy Mountain.

Telluride wants into the million club

TELLURIDE, Colo. — Sun Valley is not the only ski resort that figures it must get bigger, or at least busier. That has been the essential message coming from Crested Butte, which has been limping along at less than 400,000 skier days annually and wants to pump up to 600,000 by adding significantly more intermediate terrain, improving airline connections, and bulking up the base-area lodging.

Something similar is now being said at Telluride, where the Horning family, which bought the ski area least year, is reporting things just aren’t as good as they should be. Again, the story is that there is a minimum threshold for ski area operations.

"Telluride is about the size of Steamboat, in terms of what it takes to operate," said Ken Stone, the new executive vice president for marketing for the Telluride Ski & Golf Company. He explained that Telluride needs about as many employees to operate as Steamboat, but Steamboat has regularly had more than 1 million skier days, and Telluride has had 360,000.

Among the other ski areas in what might be called the "million club," nearly all are operated by Vail Resorts, Intrawest, or the American Skiing Co.

Ski area administration, however, seems to be in disarray. Ray Jacobi, the ski area chief executive, has been booted after only 10 months on the job. No replacement has been named, although Stone will be part of a interim working group supervising operations.

Durango to vote on open space

DURANGO, Colo. — Voters in Durango at their April election will be asked to raise the sales tax by a half-cent on the dollar for open space preservation and other purposes. If approved, the tax increase will generate $104 million during the next 20 years. Some of the money would be diverted to cover construction and maintenance of parks.

Land deals can make odd couples

MINTURN, Colo. — If you just stick around one place long enough, the ironies will knock your socks off. A case in point is a land tract near the Vail ski area that was a pivot for the controversy that culminated in the $12 million arson fire of 1998.

The one-time mining lands in the triangle of land defined by Vail Mountain and the old towns of Red Cliff and Minturn altogether total 6,000 acres and include a zinc mine that closed in the late 1970s. In the late 1980s, several lawyers began assembling old mining claims for back taxes, getting the ski area operator, then called Vail Associates, to underwrite them. In the meantime, Vail was plodding away at its own project, a ski area expansion that in one fell swoop provided more new territory than all of Aspen.

The news about Vail’s involvement in the land and the potential development broke in 1995, and three years later, as the plans headed for final approval, environmental activists pretended that they had just uncovered the plans – and that it proved that Vail’s plans were really all about real estate, not skiing.

The plans were approved nonetheless, the fire occurred (no firm proof of who started it has ever been uncovered), and the new ski expansion was opened under the name of Blue Sky Basin. Meanwhile, Vail Resorts chief Adam Aron pledged that his company would not pursue real estate development there – provoking a lawsuit by Vail’s erstwhile partners.

But real estate development is occurring. A Florida-based developer, Bobby Ginn, has purchased the land, now pared to 5,300 acres, from Vail’s former partner. He has many plans: a small ski area, a golf course, and lots of homes in gated communities in an elevation band likely to span from about 8,000 feet to the top of the property at nearly 11,000 feet.

In years past, there had been April Fool’s stories about a golf course being built on the Superfund tailings piles – a preposterous notion. But guess what is being talked about here?

An even greater irony is who is getting in bed with who. Minturn leaders had angrily opposed the ski area expansion, but now are ready to hop into bed with this new developer, annexing the land, in hopes they can get a cut of the plunder.

Whether Ginn will have to pay for the mining cleanup, whose tab is now estimated at more than $70 million, remains to be seen. He has estimated the project could be worth $1 billion.

‘Green’ school to be built

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. — School officials in Jackson are talking about using building practices in construction of a new elementary school that would allow it to be classified as a "green" building.

Such buildings, as recognized by the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, called LEED for short, emphasize strategies that make the buildings more water and energy efficient, with improved indoor environmental quality, and with greater permanency.

Energy-efficient building practices cost more money in the short run, but save more money in the long run. "It seems like these days that it is the responsible thing to do," said Bob Campbell, the school district’s director of facilities. The Jackson Hole News & Guide reports that Wyoming currently has no LEED-certified buildings, although five have been nominated.

St. Regis to employ funicular

PARK CITY, Calif. — A St. Regis hotel will be built in the Deer Crest part of Deer Valley. St. Regis also has a hotel in Aspen. For those tracking fine distinctions, Utah has other five-star hotels, but this will be the first internationally branded one, reports The Park Record.

The newspaper explains that there will be two components to the project at different elevations in Deer Valley, and they will be connected by a type of dual tram called a funicular. Funiculars are common in the Alps although rare in North America. One had been considered for use at Beaver Creek, but rejected as too expensive.

Altogether, the project will have 67 condominiums, 26 single-family homes, and 200 hotel rooms available for nightly bookings.

Hip-hop and spring skiing

VAIL, Colo. — From Aspen to Whistler, lots of ski areas have been trying to drum up spring while also slowly easing their addiction to baby boom consumers. To that effect, they have been hosting events specifically oriented to the gen X and the echo boomers, i.e. those below 40.

Among those taking this hedged bet is Vail, which in mid-April will put on a show by Snoop Dogg. The two-week schedule also features Mix Master Mike of the Beastie Boys, Toots & the Maytals, and Maceo Parker.

Hybrids, biodiesel get fresh looks

SUMMIT COUNTY, Colo. — The first hybrid vehicle – powered by both gasoline and electricity – to be owned by Summit County government is now at work. The Ford Escape is being used by Summit Stage, the countywide bus operator, which eventually wants to operate hybrid buses. The agency had looked at biodiesel operated buses, but has not gone that route. Breckenridge did begin using biodiesel, but has had some problems.

Meanwhile, Park City is also investigating biodiesel for use in its Old Town trolley. Doing research, city staffers learned that Crested Butte has had problems with biodiesel gelling during winter, but Telluride has had no problems. Jackson also uses biodiesel in some municipal gear.

Burlingame moves ahead

ASPEN, Colo. — The Aspen City Council has voted to move forward with the first phase of an employee housing project that is expected to ultimately house 1,100 people.

The project, the Burlingame Ranch, has been a source of contention for seven years, and the debate may not be dead. Opponents promptly filed a petition that could lead to another election. Opponents describe the project as "massive sprawl" and also allege widespread abuse of the city’s affordable housing. The agreement with the Zoline family (of Telluride, who lived in Aspen previous to starting the ski area in Telluride) is that they can build 12 homes of up to 18,000 square feet as part of the deal.

Ute financial chief quits

DURANGO, Colo. — The biggest news in Durango during Presidents Weekend was not the busyness of the ski area or fresh snow, but instead a shakeup in the powerful Southern Ute Indian tribe.

Located south of Durango, the tribe spent most of the last 120 years in poverty after being banished to more marginal lands of sagebrush and mesquite. However, thanks partly to casinos but more importantly to the presence of now valuable deposits of natural gas, the tribe has enough wealth to give $30,000 per year to tribal members ($60,000 a year to older members). And this is without impairing the next egg.

However, the tribal member who has directed the $1.7 billion Southern Ute Growth Fund since it was formed in 2000 resigned last week. He did not explain why in an interview with The Durango Herald, although in an interview several weeks ago he had expressed considerable frustration about his working relationships with the Tribal Council. "Those of us at the Growth Fund get pretty tired of constantly being criticized," he said.

The Growth Fund has delivered 30 per cent annually since its creation. Part of the tribal work is a massive land development project on the southern outskirts of Durango.

Ban on lingering trash cans considered

PARK CITY, Utah — Know the difference between the East and the West. A former Connecticut resident says governments in the East do not allow people to leave trash cans out on the streets. In Park City, where she now lives, they do.

That could be changed if the city council adopts a law she is pushing. Cans would have to be removed from the street and driveways soon after being emptied. "Where do you go and see the barrels sticking out all over the place?" asked the woman, Rosemary Sweeney. "You don’t."

Enforcing this matter of aesthetics will cost $1,500 to $4,000 a month, city officials tell The Park Record.

Pilot and backcountry skier die

SNOW BOWL, Calif. — Two deaths have occurred during recent weeks near the Snow Bowl ski area, located between Truckee and Lake Tahoe.

First, a pilot flying solo from Reno to Oakland clipped the summit of Mt. Lincoln, where Snow Bowl is located. A snow groomer found a parachute and parts of the equipment and then alerted authorities, who found the downed plane and the body of the pilot.

More recently, a woman was killed in an avalanche while skiing in the backcountry between Snow Bowl and Squaw Valley. Two other skiers were also buried, but were extricated.