Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Mountain News:

Tram to be removed at Jackson Hole

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. — Imagine Yellowstone without Old Faithful or San Francisco without the Golden Gate Bridge. Next image Jackson Hole without the tram that rises 4,139 feet from the valley floor into the Teton Range.

The image isn’t coming easily in Jackson Hole. The tram, say die-hard skiers, has been the source of their "happiness and sanity" for several decades, providing easy access to Corbett’s Couloir and other big-mountain runs that are household names among skiers in North America.

But ski area officials say the tram must come down, and a new one cannot be erected unless others defray the $20 million replacement cost.

"Spending $20 million on a tram that is not the most efficient carrier of skiers – its’ a no-brainer that we cannot do this alone," said Bob Graham, a stockholder in the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort.

The tram was built in the mid-1960s at a cost of $2.5 million, almost half of it from a federal program designed to help depressed communities that relied on seasonal economies. But it was the ski area’s Achilles heel, noted the ski area developer Paul McCollister. For all the comfort of the tram, it provides little uphill capacity – 260 people an hour. Many other ski area lifts and gondolas can carry several thousand people per hour.

The Jackson Hole News & Guide reported that some in Jackson Hole see this as further proof of the ski company’s shift from skiing to real estate.

A slightly tempered view comes from David Gonzales, author of a book about the history of the resort. He speculates that the announcement was one way to gauge the community’s affection for the famous lift. "Them threatening to take away the tram is akin to taking away a child’s toy just to see how loudly the child screams," said Gonzales. The tram, he added, is too valuable to the ski area because of the publicity and image it generates.

Still, the majority owners, the Kemmerers, have sunk only $55 million into the resort during the last 13 years, much less than many resorts in the West. Jerry Blann, the ski area president, suggested partnerships with outside sources and possibly assistance from the state government. Indeed, there is ample precedent for such actions – most resorts have partnerships involving the ski areas to secure direct flights.

And if the tram is not replaced? While Jackson Hole has built its reputation as a place for die-hard skiers, the ski area for the last several years has talked about trying to provide a product of greater interest to more mid-range skiers – essentially, destination guests. That more genteel posture would probably be attractive in some quarters of Jackson Hole, where the ski economy remains distinctly second to the summer business.

Leisure a mandate, not an option

GUNNISON, Colo. — Colorado’s system of water law, like that in most states of the West, was drawn up during the Mining Era. The principle was that to own water, you had to put it to use. Nobody during the 19 th century may have conceived that water, left in the creeks and rivers, would be a beneficial use.

That has changed during the last 30 years. First water law was amended to allow filing of water rights for minimum flows, to protect fish and other aquatic life. More recently, ski and other towns have been creating whitewater parks and then filing for rights to water to flow in them.

For ski towns, it’s an economic proposition. Although they may not spend much money themselves, kayakers add color to places like Breckenridge, Vail, and Steamboat that, in turn, make these ski towns more attractive places for summer vacations.

Just how much water is needed to make whitewater parks function properly is currently being disputed in Colorado. But standing back and taking a long view is Patricia Limerick, a historian from the University of Colorado, who says this current debate would befuddle settlers who saw recreation as idle fun, not something that could shape water allocation.

"I think it’s a testament to how leisure consumption has become not just an option but a mandate in these times," she told The Denver Post.

Vail Valley goes big

AVON, Colo. — Big projects are happening left and right in the Vail Valley. The latest project to move forward is a $300 million development in Avon, which is to be connected by high-speed gondola to Beaver Creek.

Proposed by East West Partners, which also has development projects in Breckenridge, Park City and the Tahoe-Truckee areas, the project calls for a 200-room hotel to carry the Westin banner, plus 40,000 square feet of retail shops, timeshare, residential units, and conference spaces. Altogether, the project could add 1,200 residents to Avon.

For Avon, which is located two miles from the main base area of Beaver Creek, this will be much more than just another project. The gondola in effect makes the town "beach front" property. Projected prices of up to $700 per square foot reflect this proximity to the slopes as well as the generally high quality of design and workmanship for which East West projects are known. This compares with $300 per square foot in existing Avon projects.

Also notable about the project is its potential for mass transit. The 19-acre property is sandwiched by the Eagle River and Union Pacific railroad tracks that have been used only rarely since 1997. Avon town officials, working with East West, want to create a transit corridor that contemplates the railroad tracks someday being used for passenger trains.

How realistic is this? After all, Aspen for years chased the dream of using an old railroad grade for mass transit, only to pull the plug just recently. Larry Brooks, Avon’s town manager, says he thinks it’s only a matter of time before mass transit makes sense. Consistently during the last 20 years, he says, he has underestimated the potential for growth. Demographers say Eagle County, where Avon is located, will have between 88,000 and 117,000 people within a quarter century.

Islands in sea of meth use

I-70 CORRIDOR, Colo. — Methamphetamines have been the story in rural towns across the West during the last several years. Still, says The Aspen Times, it’s a distinctly secondary story in the affluent ski towns and resort valleys from Aspen to Vail to Breckenridge.

"The drug of choice with our more affluent community is cocaine – there’s plenty of cocaine and marijuana from those who started doing it back in the ’60s and haven’t gotten over it yet," said Summit County Sheriff John Minor. He calls Summit and adjoining Eagle County an "island in a sea of meth."

Authorities tell the newspaper that wealthier people do cocaine, while poorer people do meth. Police say that meth produces more severe paranoia and violence than other common drugs, making them more wary. Eagle County Sheriff Joe Hoy says that the more social drugs of alcohol, cocaine, and marijuana remain the big drugs, although he has noted an increase in the abuse of prescription drugs.

Meth is being found, however. A drug enforcement task force in the Aspen-influenced region to Glenwood Springs and Rifle has shifted its attention from cocaine to meth in the last two years. Sheriffs have found several meth labs in the forests or other rural places through the years. In one case, chemical detectors at a sewage treatment plant in Silverthorne warned of abnormalities that led to the discovery of a meth lab a mile away.

Can bears ever go straight?

ASPEN, Colo. — Once a black bear goes bad, can it ever go the straight and narrow again? That’s the fundamental question being asked in a new study in Aspen and the Roaring Fork Valley, which one wildlife official describes as "bear central" in Colorado during recent years.

Last year, 49 bears were killed in the Roaring Fork Valley from Aspen to Glenwood Springs or in the nearby Eagle Valley, where Vail and Beaver Creek are located. The plan is to capture 15 bears and fit them with collars so that their researchers can track them by global positioning technology every 15 minutes. As such, researchers can learn whether bears are diving into dumpsters, trying to break into houses, or doing stuff in the woods.

The study aims to find out whether Aspen’s problem with bears is linked to bear-foraging at the local landfill, 10 miles away. And the study also will show if bears that tap human sources ever rummage in their natural environment again. Many researchers think not.

Colorado wildlife authorities currently have a two-strike policy. A bear caught at a house is tagged and released away from settled areas. If it is caught again, it is killed.

Nice try

HOT SUILPHUR SPRINGS, Colo. — A man has been attempting to use a novel defense. He copyrighted his name, and then when government officials sent citations for traffic violations and for property taxes, he claimed the government officials infringed upon his copyright.

In response, prosecutors accused him of an obscure law that makes it illegal to attempt "by threat of violence of economic reprisal against a person or property with intent to alter or affect a public official’s decisions, votes, opinions or actions," reports the Sky-Hi News of Granby.

A jury found him guilty, and he was sentenced to two years in jail.

Noisy old jets a problem

ASPEN, Colo.–Voluntary restrictions may be promoted to reduce the noise at Sardy Field, the airport near Aspen. The problem of noise is tried mostly to private jets, and not all of them. Airport officials say 95 per cent of the 100 to 150 private jets that fly in or out of the airport daily are newer models, which make less noise. Their primary efforts are aimed at the 5 per cent of older models.

Affordable housing – not

GYPSUM, Colo. — For the last 10 years, the story in the Eagle Valley has been a recurring one. Projects sold as "affordable housing" ceased to become that unless deeds are restricted.

A case in point is an apartment complex in Gypsum called Mountain Glen Village. The Vail Daily reports that the privately developed project used government banking to get low-interest financing. But the rents did not pay the capital costs, and so the project was sold to an investor who in turn has sold it elsewhere. A new buyer, a Florida-based firm, is now converting the apartments into condominiums, and about a third are investors or second-home purchasers.

Recruiters up against parents

GRANBY, Colo. — Normally two students from Middle Park High School each year go into the military. This year it was just one. As elsewhere, says the Winter Park Manifest, military recruiters are finding it a tough sell when so many soldiers are being killed and maimed in Iraq.

It’s not the kids saying no, but instead the parents, says Becky Barnes, a school counselor. "They don’t want their kids in a war. Some kids will talk to a recruiter, get all excited about it, then go home and talk to their parents. And that’s where it ends. Parents are freaked out about sending their children to war."

A Department of Defense survey last December showed that 25 per cent of parents would recommend military service to their children, down from 42 per cent in August 2003.

The lone recruit this year from Middle Park High School comes from a family with a long history of military service. But elsewhere, a girl in Eagle County who recently immigrated from Mexico enlisted after learning that military service would later allow her to go to college. The G.I. bill allows up to $70,000 in benefits.

Banff eyes action on graffiti

BANFF, Colo. — Graffiti has become such a problem in Banff, the gateway town to Banff and Jasper National Parks, that the community council wants a law that directly addresses graffiti and vandalism. Supporters of the measure also want to force property owners to remove graffiti from public view, reports the Rocky Mountain Outlook.

A moooving experience

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. — It sounds like a remake of the movie "City Slickers" repackaged into a format suitable for reality TV. This time, 10 novice wranglers were taken to Steamboat Springs and, as part of the film, the novices were assigned to assist the real cowboys to herd 100 head of cattle down Lincoln Avenue, the town’s main street, during a Sunday morning in June. Cattle are no strangers to Steamboat Springs, notes the town’s paper, The Pilot. At one time, it was known as the "Cowiest Town in the USA." It must have been fun being a street sweeper back then.

Soaring housing prices in west

THE WEST — "Prices: Up, up and away," said the headline. "Locals are being priced out of the housing market," read the subhead. Sounds like most every ski town you know, right?

Wrong. The headline ran in the Daily Times in Farmington, N.M., which is more than an hour from any ski area or national park or monument. Instead of tourism or even second-home development, the town is fueled by energy exploration. The newspaper traced the troubles to low interest rates that make everybody want to buy a house or two or three, plus purchasers who have migrated southward from the even pricier digs in Durango, located an hour’s drive to the north.

Big boxes conceding

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. — About 15 years ago Wal-Mart wanted to move into Steamboat Springs, and city residents balked. Wal-Mart finally won, but was forced to compromise with its architecture.

Now comes an Associated Press story from New Jersey that tells similar stories across the nation. Only now, local communities have become much more aggressive. For example, Freehold, N.J., insisted that big boxes would have to embrace traditional architectural styles: Colonial, Federal, Georgian, or Victorian. While Wal-Mart balked, it ultimately deferred.

Elsewhere, a Wal-Mart in metropolitan Denver has a timber façade, while one in Long Beach embraces art deco. Other international franchises also are responding. McDonald’s has an adobe-style outlet in Arizona, while The Home Depot has a seaside-theme store in British Columbia.

Still, big boxes remain terrifically unpopular in mountain communities. Opponents across the country have become more successful in nixing the boxes. Efforts to block the stores have grown at a 21 per cent annual rate during the last two years, reports one analysts.

Eateries now 92% smokeless

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. — Some 92 per cent of the restaurants in Jackson Hole now ban smoking. The bans have been pushed along by a group called the Teton County Tobacco Prevention, which now hopes to persuade bar-owners to similarly send the butts outside. Even segregated areas do not truly segregate the smoke, notes Dr. Frank Rivers, a specialist in asthma and allergies.

Assisted care back on agenda

EAGLE, Colo. — With the graying of the population in the Eagle Valley well underway, the county commissioners there are taking new steps toward building an assisted-living facility in Eagle. The town is equally distant from Vail and Glenwood Springs, and hospitals there have both talked about building an assisted-living center in conjunction with a new hospital in Eagle. The county commissioners say they don’t want to wait. Financing for the project hasn’t been squared away. The estimated cost is $2.4 million, the Vail Daily reports.

Building booming in Silverton

SILVERTON, Colo. — Everything is relative, including building booms. In the Eagle Valley, Jackson Hole, or Canmore, construction of 11 homes would hardly be noticed. In Silverton, just now coming off its post-mining era slump, the 11 homes planned for construction this summer constitute a near boom. More building yet might have occurred if not for discovery of arsenic and lead in the soil of an old smelter site targeted for an affordable housing project.

Dozer Days back on the table

GRANBY, Colo. — The 70-ton armed and armored Komatsu bulldozer that Marvin Heemeyer used to crush through 13 buildings in Granby last year is now dead, having been recently dismembered. So is Heemeyer, who killed himself at the conclusion of his tantrum.

But an idea that sprang up almost immediately after the dozer ended its rampage mired in the basement of a Gamble’s store remains alive. That idea, called Dozer Days, is now getting a fresh hearing in the pages of the Sky-Hi News. The rough idea is to build a weekend festival around the event.

Patrick Brower, publisher of the Sky-Hi News, has consistently discouraged the idea. He had the unfortunate experience of working in his office when the bulldozer began churning into the front of the building. Running out the backdoor, the frightened Brower then ran to the home of his wife and child, to check on their safety.

But now, Brower has relented. "It’s an idea that just won’t go away," he writes. "The time has come to give the idea a full airing."

Among those supporting a Granby Dozer Days Festival is Hanes Dawson Jr., a former publisher of the newspaper. He points out that Nederland, a small community between Granby and Boulder, has been making hay with a festival called Frozen Dead Guy Days. The festival was sparked by an experiment in cyrogenics, in which a Norwegian immigrant is freezing the body of his dead grandfather in hopes that he can later be brought back to life.

The three-day celebration in Nederland has parades of hearses and coffin races and other such frivolity centered on the theme of death. "With some clever thinking and planning, Dozer Days could do the same for Granby," writes Dawson.

The background for all this is a cartoon titled "Reinventing Granby" that appeared in Westword, a weekly newspaper in Denver. The cartoon by Kenny Bee, done the week after the rampage, noted that Heemeyer’s rampage "may just be the best thing that ever happened to Granby. In 90 minutes, he turned Colorado’s least interesting mountain town into what could be its #1 attraction."

Among Bee’s ideas: a Rampage Museum, a Dozer Diner, Bumper Bulldozers, and a Disgruntled Loner Hall of Fame.

But other letter-writers published in the Granby newspaper steely reject Dozer Days. One writer, Bob Freeman, charges that Dozer Days would trivalize a horrible event. Another writer, Bonnie Rozean, said, the "only way out of our troubles is through them, face-to-face, without medicating ourselves or distracting ourselves with frivolous, inappropriate events."

The mayor, Ted Wang, disputes the observation that "we’ve moved on." He says Granby still has deep psychic wounds. "We have business owners who have not yet and may never fully recover from their losses. Repaired buildings and reopened doors mask deeper hurts. Make an amusing festival of June 4 th ? Compassion should suggest not."

Jackson Hole joins biodiesel brigade

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. — Jackson Hole Mountain Resort is now among the growing number of ski areas, towns, and school districts that are burning biodiesel. The ski area is using biodiesel just during summer months in its fleet of 11 off-road, heavy-equipment vehicles.

Tom Spangler, the resort general manager, said that the company does not want to use biodiesel in winter until more tests are done. "Snowcats have to run in extreme cold for long periods of time, and this is where biodiesel has not performed well to date," he said. "However, we intend to participate in testing blends to try and resolve this problem along with our industry partners."

The usual argument for using the standard blend of 20 per cent vegetable-based diesel at ski resorts is to produce fewer pollutants. However, biodiesel counts as a bonus toward an overall environmental title that several ski areas are working toward. Aspen is the only ski resort that is currently certified.

Biodiesel joins the parade

PARK CITY, Colo. — The trend toward biodiesel has also hit Park City. Beginning with the Fourth of July parade, the town’s Main Street trolley began using the B20 blend of diesel that uses 20 per cent vegetation-based fuel.

The trolley is being used as a trial run for what Park City Mayor Dana Williams hopes will be a broader conversion to biodiesel fuel. While some problems with biodiesel have been noted in winter at various resorts, Andre Shumatoff of the Utah Biodiesel Cooperative says technological advances have improved the reliability of the biodiesel blends to prevent gelling at cold temperatures.

Humane Society receives $500,000

TRUCKEE, Calif. — Cat and dog lovers in the Truckee-Lake Tahoe area are in the gravy! The Humane Society there was given $500,000 from the estate of Ruth Frischman, who recently died of cancer. The money will be used to help create a regional no-kill shelter.

Enviros disagree with EPA

CORTEZ, Colo. — Few places on the planet have as much spectacular scenery in such concentrated fashion as the Four Corners. From Zion National Park to Mesa Verde, Canyonlands, and even the Great Sand Dunes, this region is known around the world, probably even better than the ski resorts.

But the air quality that made these parks so memorable has deteriorated in recent decades. Haze has become more frequent, and other elements, including nitrogen and mercury, are being detected in the San Juan Mountains.

New rules issued by the Environmental Protection Agency do less than what environmentalists had hoped to restore the air quality. The new rules mandate improved emissions standards, but the EPA said that top-of-the-line technology is not warranted in the West, said Vickie Patton, an attorney with Environmental Defense. She told the Durango Telegraph that a last-minute change weakened the stick that will be applied to two coal-fired power plants in the Four Corners region. Together, the two plants discharge 77,000 tons of nitrogen each year, or comparable to what’s discharged by 80 million cars.

Some $200 million in pollution-control equipment is being installed on a third power plant in the region as the result of a lawsuit pursued by the Grand Canyon Trust and the Sierra Club.

By studying rain and snowstorms, scientists have been able to link the power plants with the elevated levels of nitrogen in the San Juan Mountains.

Elevated nitrogen levels have also been recorded in the Front Range mountains of Colorado, although there the blame is attributed more to exhaust from vehicles, feedlots for cattle, and nitrogen-based fertilizers spread on farms and residential lawns on the plains to the east. Mark Williams, a geographer at the University of Colorado-Boulder, says the Front Range has some of the highest nitrogen levels in the nation.