BANFF, Alberta — The Rolling Stones played Calgary, and rumor had it that they were going to play in Banff.
Mick, Keith and Charlie didn’t show, but Ron Wood, at age 58 the youngest member of the band, did. The Rocky Mountain Outlook reports that he stayed at nearby Lake Louise and came into town several times to party.
Dressed in red leather pants and a bright blue T-shirt, he was surrounded by star-struck young women and a tight web of security. Smoking cigarette after cigarette in the no-smoking bar, he had a few drinks and danced in the corner, giving the performing band a standing ovation.
One of the star-struck fans, Hana Sacharuk, who partied with Wood until his departure around 1:15 a.m., was blown away by her once-in-a-lifetime chance to spend time with the legendary guitarist. "He’s the most amazing man I’ve ever met," she gushed. "He’s generous, hot, sweet, loving. He only cares about people," she added.
Ketchum picks site for new airport
WOOD RIVER VALLEY, Idaho — After well more than a year of debate, a selection committee has picked a new site for an airport serving the Ketchum/Sun Valley area. The current airport is at Hailey, about 15 miles from the resort, but it cannot expand unless homes are removed, and federal aviation officials have made it clear that its use will be limited unless it expands.
The new site is located farther south, outside of the foothills and on the high, rolling prairie, about 31 miles from the Ketchum/Sun Valley complex. Problems lie ahead, however. The Shoshone-Bannock tribe is expected to object, as are environmentalists. As well, the proposed airport would be on Bureau of Land Management property, with no assurances the agency will allow it. However, the site was chosen partly because of that very fact; other sites were on private land. Not least, an airport there is expected to cause major earth moving, which is very expensive.
On the plus side, it is in Blaine County, where the resort communities are located, and not in adjoining Camas County, the site of another potential site. Opposition to that alternative site was swelling, notes the Idaho Mountain Express.
Scooter knows how to turn ’em
VAIL, Colo. — It turns out that the whole Judith Miller-Valerie Plame-Scooter Libby story has a ski town connection. Libby, the recently indicted former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, spent a portion of one summer in the early 1980s in Breckenridge, where he began his novel, The Apprentice, a thriller published in 2002.
But Libby is also a skier, and a good one, says his friend Jackson Hogen, a college roommate at Yale and former ski columnist. "He’s not Bode Miller, but he’s not the guy in blue jeans saying ‘I heard y’all rent skis here,’" Hogen told the Vail Daily. "He’s an expert skier, not at all risk-averse."
Hogen said Libby had skied Vail and Beaver Creek several times and, of course, at Jackson Hole, where Cheney has a home.
Even time-share units empty
ASPEN, Colo. — Aside from the scurrying of contractors to get new homes finished by Thanksgiving, or at least Christmas, it’s the lowest ebb of the year in most ski towns. It’s so slow that even time-share projects are sitting empty, even if people have purchased those weeks.
Use of fractional shares at the St. Regis Aspen range from 30 to 40 per cent in October and November, reports The Aspen Times. The newspaper found that at Snowmass, overall occupancy drops to 7 to 9 per cent in October, with projections for November little different.
However, it’s not all quiet on the Aspen Front. The Little Nell, a luxury hotel that only rents bedrooms, and doesn’t sell them, has 40 per cent occupancy during the first couple of weeks of November, although weekends are full — thanks to customers from Denver and other Front Range communities.
Sundance commits to Park City
PARK CITY, Utah — The Sundance Film Festival has agreed to stay in Park City through 2018, and potentially for a decade beyond that. In addition, the film festival is moving its headquarters from Salt Lake City, located 30 miles away, to Park City.
Park City’s government and chamber will collectively give the film festival $380,000 each year. Even so, Sundance is likely to lose money on the deal, as it currently gets $500,000 from Salt Lake City.
The business community estimates the film festival, which is held in January, generates $36.5 million in economic activity in Park City. The film festival has 30 year-round employees that grows to 100 when the festival is held in January.
Trash company trashing recyclables
PARK CITY, Utah — For years, critics of trash disposal company BFI (recently renamed Allied Waste Service) have suspected that the company secretly dumped materials designated for recycling in the county landfill, instead of hauling it to Salt Lake City to be recycled.
A photograph of a BFI truck dumping recyclable cardboard at a landfill near Park City confirms their worst fears.
BFI confirmed dumping the cardboard in the landfill, but manager Rick Schultz called it an isolated instance, provoked by an unexpected volume of cardboard from one particular business. The truck that was used to collect the cardboard apparently can’t make it across the pass that separates Park City from Salt Lake City, where the recycling centre is located.
Summit County pays the company $94,000 per month for recycling and trash pickup. At least some county officials think it’s time the county got into the trash-hauling business itself.
Price of hereafter going up
CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. — Land prices have been skyrocketing at Crested Butte. Now, the town council wants to jack up prices of the hereafter.
It’s a grave matter, this business of slicing-and-dicing the wildflower-strewn cemetery. And at current rate of sales, the cemetery will be out of space in 16 years.
Faced with that pickle, the town is considering that old development trick of subdivide, subdivide, subdivide. Currently, the town sells only family-sized plots, 22 feet by 11 feet. They only cost $250. A new plan being considered by the council would jack up the cost for that big plot, large enough for six caskets, to $1,250, while creating a new single-casket site for $250.
While the mathematics of all this seem to make sense, several council members report that the town’s old-timers are crosswise with the idea, as they figured the cemetery would be the one thing that they could count on to never change.
