ASPEN, Colo. — In April, The New York Times carried an account of what was described as a typical evening at the home of Hunter Thompson, the writer, who lived for several decades at Woody Creek, a hamlet near Aspen.
It was, said the essayist, Rich Cohn, about 5 p.m. one day last autumn, and Thompson had just gotten out of bed.
"‘Clear a path,’ he shouted. He stumbled across the kitchen and fell into the chair at the counter. He nodded to the man across the room, his friend, the local sheriff, who had shown me the way to the house. He reached out his right hand and the drink was there, just there, ice clinking. Thompson opened the drawer to his left. It was filled with narcotics. As he looked inside, the sheriff said, ‘I’ll go into the other room while you do your drugs, Hunter.’
"He sank a straw into a plastic container and took some cocaine onto his tongue. He returned to the drawer constantly in the course of the night, getting cocaine, pills, marijuana, which he smoked in a pipe – the smoke was soft and tangy and blue – chased by Chivas, white wine, Chartreus, tequila and Glenfiddich. The effect was gradual but soon his features softened and the scowl melted and his movements became fluid and graceful. By midnight, the man who had emerged a bleary-eyed ruin hours before was on his feet and swearing and waving a shotgun and another show had opened in the long run of Hunter S. Thompson."
Thompson killed himself in February, and in June, the Aspen Valley Medical Foundation announced a conference about what it considers to be the gravest threat to the Aspen-area community: alcoholism and substance abuse. The conference planning began well before Thompson’s suicide, which was among several linked – if perhaps obliquely in the case of Thompson – to drugs and alcohol.
The Aspen Times reports that, for all its wealth, Aspen has no "sober house," where people trying to get clean of substance abuse can connect with those who can guide them.
Costco gets thumbs up
EAGLE, Colo. — Is Costco any kind of business you would want in your neighbourhood? That’s the essential question on the table in Eagle, the town made famous for a sexual tryst involving a local girl and basketball star Kobe Bryant.
A developer has plans for 80 acres, probably including a Costco, and town officials are generally supportive. The town’s population has grown at 15 per cent annually for the last several years, mostly because of people commuting up-valley to jobs in the Vail Valley complex of resorts. The roads, bike paths and all the other wants and needs that come with population growth are now staring town officials in the face. In most Colorado towns, the property taxes do not come even close to paying the expenses of town governments. The money is in sales taxes.
That has led to towns competing desperately with one another in trying to land big grocery stores and other major tax-generating businesses. But to land the businesses, towns often give away the farm – giving developers most anything they want. Often, they are competing against other towns.
In an effort to reign in that impulse, the towns of Gypsum and Eagle, two side-by-side towns located about 35 miles from Vail, have now agreed to a 60-40 split. The town that gets the big box gets 60 per cent of the revenues, and the other town 40 per cent. The more likely site is at Eagle, but only if town residents go along with it. That public referendum is scheduled for August.
Gang-type activity mars festivities
GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colo. — Often, smaller-town police chiefs are quick to warn about the invasion of gangs from big cities. In Glenwood Springs, the local police chief, Terry Wilson, was saying something very different.
"We have had, over the years, small groups that are conducting themselves in ways that are consistent with the way gangs would act," he told the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent.
He made the remarks after Glenwood’s annual Strawberry Days festival. The newspaper reports that two groups of teenagers stood on opposite sides of an intersection on the first fight, flashing gang signs. A police officer the next day told a man to take off his gang colors and emblems or he couldn’t go inside the carnival. The man refused, and swung. Finally, a fight broke out, with most of the participants being Latinos from different towns up and down the Roaring Fork Valley, where Aspen and Glenwood Springs are located.
Wilson said the gang-like trouble has been isolated to the festival during the last several days for reasons he does not fully understand.
Ideas Festival a brainy affair
ASPEN, Colo. — It’s talk season in Aspen, with an endless array of intellectual posturing and jousting on tap during coming weeks.
New to the schedule is the Aspen Ideas Festival, which will feature six days of talk with an impressive lineup of well-known noggins July 5-10. Among the 120 people of high-IQ talkers will be U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, television interviewer Charlie Rose, and Harvard prez Lawrence Summers. Also on tap will be Amazon founder Jeffrey Bezos, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Jordan’s Queen Noor.
The three- and six-day passes to the festival sold out well in advance, although a website for The Aspen Institute, the sponsoring organization, says there is a waiting list. The website, however, does not specify a price. Maybe brainfests in Aspen are like real estate. If you must ask the price, you probably can’t afford it.
Chicago-Vail flights start slowly
EAGLE VALLEY, Colo. — New summer flights between Chicago and Eagle County, which serves primarily the Vail market, have started slowly – so slowly that government money will probably be spent to cover basic operating costs of United Airlines.
Airplanes need to be 60 to 70 per cent full to cover costs. The Chicago flights are starting the summer at about 40 per cent full. Kent Meyers, an air program consultant, said fares had started out too high as compared with flights from Chicago to Denver.
This is, notes the Vail Daily, in sharp contrast with direct flights from Dallas begun three summers ago. Almost no subsidies were needed to cover costs of those flights.
Park City hopes to be All-American
PARK CITY, Colo. — A van full of representatives from Park City went to Atlanta in pursuit of a designation as an All-American city. Park City representatives talked up the socioeconomic and cultural diversity of their town, as well as the town’s conversion from mining economy to a host of the 2002 Winter Olympics.
Why spend good money ($1,500 for each Park City representative on the trip) chasing an honor like this? "It’s one of those things that validates where you are," said Myles Rademan, the city’s director of public affairs, told The Park Record.
In the end, the 10 communities named to the All-American squad did not include Park City.
Mid-range jet popular
JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. — A type of mid-range jet now being used for daily flights between Salt Lake City and Jackson Hole is expected to see more frequent use at resort-valley airports in the West.
Among the jets is Bombardier’s CRJ-700. It can handle the thinner air of mountain valleys and has a mid-range capacity of 70 passengers, compared to the 30 passengers of small commercial planes and the 100-plus of most commercial jets. As well, newer technology employed in the mid-range jets allows them to be quieter and also more fuel efficient. The jets have ranges of 500 to 800 miles.
Knees are first to go
VAIL, Colo. — If you can’t believe the White House when it says that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, can you believe it when it says Vice President Dick Cheney wasn’t having heart problems when he was in Vail?
That seems to be the crucial question after California-based political commentator Arianna Huffington, who happened to be in Vail to speak at a conference, reported that Cheney was getting checked out for chest pains at the local hospital. Cheney had been in town to speak at another conference, former president Gerald Ford’s annual think tank session on world affairs.
A Cheney spokesman dismissed the story, and told The Denver Post that Cheney had actually stopped by to see famed orthopedic surgeon Dr. Richard Steadman about an old high school football injury. Snooping on its own, the Vail Daily was unable to find any evidence that Cheney was lying.
Story of ski survival filmed
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. — In April, massage therapist Charles Horton of Steamboat Springs went out for an afternoon cross-country ski trip. Breaking his leg three miles from his car, he then spent eight days alone before rescuers finally found him.
As they took him to the hospital, rescue personnel found his core temperature had dropped to 88 degrees. "I should have been comatose, but I was talking to the rescuers," he tells The Steamboat Pilot. "Hopefully, this will inspire (scientists) to do new research on hypothermia."
Aiding that question may be a segment being shot in late June near Steamboat Springs for "National Geographic Explorer." A small crew was scheduled to visit Steamboat to re-enact Horton’s ordeal and rescue, although using a higher location near Buffalo Pass, where snow lingers. Producers say they will also speak to medical experts to explore how he was able to survive.
For his part, Horton will be interviewed and consulted, but will get paid only several hundred dollars for consultation, reports The Pilot. He still has major medical bills.
Bison could be reintroduced
BANFF, Alberta — Habitat is being studied in Banff and other of Canada’s national parks in the Rocky Mountains with the idea of reintroducing bison. Bison were commonplace in the 19 th century, accounting for half of all ungulates seen by explorers, but disappeared as the century continued.
However, much "heavy thinking remains to be done before the giants are brought in," reports the Rocky Mountain Outlook. Park and wildlife officials want to consultant with ranchers on lands outside the parks, as well as hunters, guides, and backpackers. They are also studying how bison have worked out in Yellowstone National Park.
Watermelon snow part of food web
MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif. — Mountain hikers during spring and summer often encounter what some call watermelon snow. It is red and, to many noses, smells like watermelon (although this particular writer more often smells cantaloupe).
Why is it red? It’s actually kind of a sun block. Bill Thomas, a retired scientist with the Scripts Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, explained that the spores release green cells. Because of the great intensities of light found in snow fields, he told the Mammoth Lakes Times, the algae turns the green cells red, to protect themselves from the light and ultraviolet rays.
Is it OK to eat? Most hikers have been told that it causes diarrhea. Thomas can’t confirm that consequence scientifically, but he does know the algae contain a lot of bacteria and dirt. However, he added, "there are children of guides in the Grand Tetons who eat it and like it, because it does taste like watermelon, and it doesn’t seem to bother them."
There are 200 different kinds of snow algae. The algae actually contributes to the food web of snow, as some inspects eat the algae, and some birds eat the insects (and some things eat birds). The algae also excrete a lot of organic matter while in red patches, which supports an abundance of bacteria, Thomas told the newspaper.
Hay fields not same as viewsheds
CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. — Pretend you’re driving down the road in a sparsely settled mountain valley, and on the left and on the right are hay fields, some with cattle grazing in them. What do you see?
Most people in ski towns see "open space," but ranchers see a factory of sorts. After all, that’s the point of growing hay and grazing cattle – to get a "beef" readied for market. And, more to the point, they don’t want their prerogatives with this factory space tampered with by government regulations.
That’s the gist of a small controversy in Gunnison County, where the road between Gunnison and Crested Butte remains largely the province of ranchers. But the Spann family, ranchers well-known in the West for their alliance with environmental groups, want it clear that hay meadows and open space are two different things.
"The hay meadows are part of our business," said Lee Spann. "They’re not there for viewsheds."
Spann says that ranchers need the flexibility to sell small parcels and conduct other small businesses. The issue, reports the Crested Butte News, arises in conjunction with a new county land-use plan being drafted.
Mixed use zoning considered
KETCHUM, Idaho — Add Ketchum to the list of ski towns now embracing mixed-use zoning. The town is looking at revising the uses permitted in the light-industrial district to include housing.
If housing is created in this zone, a third of it must be "affordable," reports the Idaho Mountain Express. The intent is to ensure housing for such firms as Scott USA, the manufacturers of ski goggles and other sporting goods, which has an office there.
Compared to several of the larger ski towns, Ketchum is light on deed-restricted affordable housing. Some 40 have been built or are under construction, but 40 more are on the horizon.
Sierra Nevada expected to fill rapidly
TRUCKEE, Calif. — The Sierra Nevada is currently home to about 600,000 people, most in California but some in several Nevada counties near Lake Tahoe. But that population could conceivably quadruple in the next 35 years, warns the Sierra Nevada Alliance, a consortium of environmental groups.
Mirroring a pattern similar to what is projected for Colorado, most of the population growth is projected to occur in the foothills on large-lots in semi-rural areas in a style sometimes called exurban. While the pattern of development is different than cities, the effects such as pollution and traffic gridlock are much the same. Much of the development is expected for the area on the western side of the mountain range, relatively close to Sacramento, Bakersfield, and Fresno.
"Population in and of itself really isn’t a problem," said Joan Clayburgh, the alliance’s executive director. "It’s how well we plan for it."
The alliance suggests that more counties need to have master plans, while existing master plans should be updated. Moreover, only a third of the 23 counties that govern the Sierra Nevada have plotted areas of private land that deserve protection from development.
But Tim Leslie, a California state legislator from the Lake Tahoe area, told the Associated Press that he fears overburdening private property owners with restrictions on developing or altering their land.
Historical review hotly debated
SILVERTON, Colo. — A proposal from the history-conscious Silverton Standard to add a layer of government review before the old Victorian-era buildings of Silverton get razed has drawn a mixed reaction.
Predictably, the debate pivots on the issue of private property rights. In calling for an even broader imposition of architectural standards, letter-writer Dean Bosworth warns of the arrival of people with money. In building new and bigger houses, they will remake Silverton, he says. Current residents should control what will happen, he argues. And he says that architectural controls do not necessarily limit design creativity.
But another letter-writer, Earle Horton, takes sharp exception. He calls the proposed government review of architecture a "cavalier disregard for private property rights… many people move to Southwestern Colorado because there is more freedom here, compared with much of the rest of the country. If you don’t like the freedom that exists in Silverton or even Durango, then I suggest that you move to Denver or Boulder, where you will find no lack of ordinances to restrict what you can do with your property."
Covered pasture land rising in value
TELLURIDE, Colo. — Like everywhere else, the prices of land and other real estate in Telluride have been rising rapidly. A case in point is the value of 572 acres of bucolic land immediately to the east of the town.
The town wants it kept as open space, but the owners want the right to develop. This struggle of wills has been the cause of numerous faints and volleys during the last five years in what The Telluride Watch calls "the war for the floor."
A town-ordered appraisal shows the parcel is worth nearly $26 million, or $7 million more than it was worth two years ago. An appraisal done on behalf of the owners looked at other resort areas of Colorado and even Wyoming’s Jackson Hole to find comparisons. Those comparisons yielded an appraised value of $51 million. The Watch reports that most observers assume, based on little more than instinct or common sense, the ultimate cost of the property will wind up somewhere between the two. The town threatens condemnation but has been ordered to mediation.
San Juan takes steps on behalf of Silverton Mt.
SILVERTON, Colo. — San Juan County commissioners have initiated condemnation of the land of Jim Jackson, a one-time would-be ski area developer who owns property among the public lands used by the Silverton Mountain Ski Area.
To allow safer skiing, Silverton Mountain needs to do avalanche control work, which means that Jackson’s property is affected. He claims trespass, both by the snow and by skiers. Jackson, who had long nursed the idea of creating his own ski area in the same valley, has refused to sell the land or an easement.
The county is taking the position that it is not directly working for Silverton Mountain, but instead is taking the action to allow avalanche control work that benefits people using the county road. Most of those people, but not all, are people who are going to the new ski area. Pushing the action – and offering to pay the legal bills and the value of the land – is Aaron Brill, the developer of the Silverton Mountain ski area. Brill, however, would not take possession of the land.
The Silverton Standard cites comments by local resident Michael Constantine as representing a common view. "He (Jackson) has been kicking and screaming because he’s not the guy that’s in ski magazines being regaled as the guy who came up with the intention of bringing skiing to Silverton," he said.
There were only a few dissenters at the condemnation meeting, among them Dean Bosworth. "I think that condemnation of any private property for really what I see is the function of promoting another private individual enterprise is wrong," he said.
Intrigue continues about proposed new city
WOLF CREEK PASS, Colo. — The ongoing story about the big project next to the Wolf Creek ski area continues to simmer, always on the verge of a full boil.
The story has two intoxicating angles. First there’s the idea of a small city located at a place that gets 40 feet of snow per year. Wolf Creek, with a base area of 10,300 feet, is probably Colorado’s snowiest ski area.
More intriguing yet are the suggestions of political behind-the-scenes hanky-panky by rich guys. Making it even juicier from the perspective of Colorado is the fact that the rich guys come from Texas. Coloradans have always felt about Texans the way that Wyomingites have felt about Coloradans, and the way the entire West has felt about Californians – on the verge of being overrun.
The story goes back to the 1980s, when the late Kingsbury Pitcher, the owner of the ski area, struck a deal of some sort with former car salesman Billy Joe "Red" McCombs and a partner. That partner is gone, replaced by another Texan, Bob Honts. McCombs seems to have the deeper pockets of the two. He has variously owned the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs and Denver Nuggets and still owns the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings. As co-founder of radio giant Clear Channel Communications, he is securely a billionaire.
The development that Pilcher and McCombs agreed to 20 years ago seems to be in dispute. Whatever that agreement was, the deal is definitely off now. McCombs and his new partner are suing Kingsbury Pitcher’s descendents, who continue to operate the ski area and are trying to block the development. Meanwhile, environmental and citizen groups are also trying to block the project – while other long-suffering locals see it as a way to get some economic swagger in their economy.
At $1 billion, the plans are huge and would occur at a ski area that currently has no business that stays open during evenings. It’s a day-use area only. This project would change that in a hurry. The plan – which was already approved by county commissioners in Mineral County – envisions 2,100 residential units and 222,100 square feet of commercial space.
The key to the deal was a land exchange that McCombs engineered in the 1980s. It gives him 288 acres of formerly Forest Service property next to the ski area. However, he still needs access across a small portion of Forest Service land. While the Forest Service is obligated to provide access, it would not necessarily be the all-seasons road the developers want.
Davey Pitcher, Kingsbury’s son, told a reporter from the Associated Press that he thinks "politics" explains why the Forest Service allowed the land exchange in the 1980s. In addition, a congressman from Texas last year was reported to be planning to attach a bill – something called a rider – to a larger measure moving through Congress. That provision, which disappeared when attention was focused on it, would have mandated road access, in effect going over the Forest Service process.
A state representative has echoed the charge of meddling from undisclosed higher authorities in the case. State Rep. Mark Larson, whose district includes Wolf Creek Pass, told the Durango Herald that pressure is being applied. "I’ve seen this Forest Service do things that I’ve never seen Forest Service people I’ve worked with do before."
Larson, a Republican, was particularly cranky because he had sent a personal representative, a former state senator from Durango, Jim Dyer, who happens to be a Democrat, to a meeting of various local, state, and federal officials. The official explanation for Dyer being turned back was because somebody had earlier impersonated a staffer for another elected official. Curious is why anybody from the public wouldn’t be admitted to such a meeting. With everybody from state highway and wildlife officials to local county planners and county commissioners, it seemed to be a meeting that Colorado requires be open to the public.
