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Activists believe Vail arson sets back cause

VAIL, Colo. — More than seven years after arson-caused fires caused $12 million damage to a cafeteria and other buildings atop Vail Mountain, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has named two suspects.

VAIL, Colo. — More than seven years after arson-caused fires caused $12 million damage to a cafeteria and other buildings atop Vail Mountain, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has named two suspects.

Whether the FBI has a good case remains to be seen, but mainline environmental activists who had opposed the ski area expansion say the fire, at best, was a mixed blessing.

The fires helped raise awareness nationally of the concerns of environmental activists, said Sloan Shoemaker, of the Aspen-based Wilderness Workshop. "That event certainly brought the issue of ski-area expansion and wildlife habitat to a national audience," he said. But it also stymied local opposition in Vail and the Eagle Valley. People on both sides of the issue felt attacked by an outside threat, he said.

Rocky Smith, the first environmental activist to work against the expansion, told the Vail Daily that the arson backfired. "A lot of people had sympathy for big, bad Vail Resorts after that."

Critters going up in Yosemite

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. — Maybe the little critters of Yosemite National Park have been reading Mountain Gazette.

Motto of the Colorado-based magazine is, "When in doubt, go higher." And that’s exactly what the rodents and other creatures have been doing, scientists tell the Seattle Times. They suspect the upward flight is a response to global warming.

Among the most provocative discoveries is that of pikas. Once found as low as 7,800 feet, the pika now cannot be found below 9,500 in Yosemite.

James Patton, curator at the University of California, Berkeley, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, told the newspaper that a team of scientists from the museum were retracing the research of Joseph Grinnell, a biologist who 90 years ago catalogued the mammals, birds, and reptiles of the park. In retracing his steps during the last three summers, they found an environment that has seen a remarkable shift.

The Yosemite Valley, they said, has had a 50 per cent turnover in types of birds it harbors. And several species of rodents have shifted their range by as much as 3,000 feet. For example, the rare Inyo shrew, once found no higher than 8,000 feet, now ranges as high as 10,000.

While some species have merely expanded their range uphill, others have moved uphill. Such is the case with pikas.

Adapt to warming now

BANFF, Alberta — Nobody in Banff seems to doubt that climate change is occurring. And the prevailing attitude seems to be that the emissions of greenhouse gases that are at least partly responsible for the change must be curbed.

But the broader message now being heard in the Banff tourism community is the need to adapt to global warming.

"Climate change represents both risk and opportunity," Daniel Scott, a professor of geography at the University of Waterloo, recently told community leaders. "There will be winners and there will be losers."

He thinks Banff can gain. While ski seasons will be shorter, Banff will have fewer competitors. The three ski areas inside Banff National Park are all at about 5,000 feet in elevation (1,600 metres).

Although he sees negligible impacts until midway through the 21 st century, he urges investment in snowmaking equipment and other adaptations. He also sees higher temperatures forcing ski areas and golf courses to import more water.

National park administrators strictly restrict how much water can be withdrawn from creeks for use in snowmaking. However, federal environmental officials are looking at development criteria for potentially greater withdrawals. Ian Syme, chief of resources conservation for Parks Canada, which administers Banff, said he foresees 20 years in which good science must be developed for determining how much water can be withdrawn without damaging riparian areas.

However, the Rocky Mountain Outlook reports that warming is well underway. Winters are warmer and total annual snowfalls recorded in the last 35 years have dropped 40 per cent in Banff.

It’s the good cold days again

FRASER, Colo. — A good number of people in Fraser are wondering where all this talk about global warming came from.

The town, once called the "Icebox of the Nation," has seen 44 below, according to unofficial but widespread readings, and it was still below zero on a recent December morning.

To long-time resident Kirk Klancke, it’s just like the "good, old days" of 30 to 40 years ago. "We’re having a really good winter," he told Mountain Town News. "We have tons of snow and lots of cold to preserve it. We went a couple of weeks without seeing the stripes on the highway."

The Winter Park ski area reported 142 inches of snow midway through December, the most snowfall since a phenomenal streak of 41 straight days of snow that was recorded in 1983.

A dubious superlative

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. — Crested Butte recorded a dubious superlative on Dec. 8. The temperature that night dropped to 39 below, officially the lowest reading in the nation.

"We haven’t had that much serious cold for about 20 years," said Larry Adams, the town utilities manager.

And it’s fair to speculate that plumbers haven’t worked on as many frozen pipes in 20 years. "Do you want to be a plumber?" asked Ron Chlipala, owner of Timberline Mechanical Contracting.

"We’ve been very busy, but this is overload," he told the Crested Butte News.

Swiss import will save energy

VAIL, Colo. — Lots of consumer goods in the United States are imported, but not many houses. Now, a Vail man is importing a house from Switzerland, where he grew up.

The reason, explained Balz Arrigoni, is that he wanted an energy-efficient home. "America is not so energy efficient yet," he said.

Adam Harris, an architect in nearby Avon, told the Vail Daily that the design of the imported home has a ventilation system built into the walls, making the 4,200-square-foot structure more functional. Arrigoni estimates the house can be heated as cheaply as a conventional two-bedroom condo. And while a pre-fab house, reports the Vail Daily, it fits right in with the other McMansions on the slopes of Vail.

Jackson Hole goes Hollywood

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. — The matinee premier of Brokeback Mountain in Jackson Hole, which coincided with releases in New York City and Los Angeles, had seats begging. But the evening show was another matter.

"Flamboyant Jackson partygoers dressed to the hilt in fake fur, animal prints and high heels, while others appeared in traditional Western garb," reported the Jackson Hole News & Guide. "A group of men sporting kerchiefs and cowboy hats swigged beer in the frigid evening air before doors opened for the screening."

Once the curtain fell, the movie about two cowboys who fall in love with one another – but cannot admit it entirely to themselves, much less the outside world – was received by fervent clapping and cowboy whoops. Audience members were then treated to a question-and-answer session with Ang Lee, the director.

Lee said he was drawn to the film not to make a statement about gay rights, but because of the story’s central focus on love. "What is love? There’s no answer for it. You can only grope for it, and you can only try to communicate that to an audience.

He noted the expression "falling in love" has connotations of danger. "It can destroy you, and are you willing to take that chance?" he said.

The newspaper believes Jackson’s hosting of the premiere raised the town’s standing as a culture venue. A previous film by Lee, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon , won an Academy Award in 2001, and Brokeback Mountain is widely regarded as an Oscar contender in 2006.

For some Jackson residents, however, the film was very personal. Jackson native Brad Frey, 23, told the newspaper that the way Jackson "clings" to the cowboy culture hinders gay people from coming out. Although the movie was set in 1963, he called it a "very accurate portrayal of Wyoming in general: the culture, the social climate."

A fourth-generation resident of Jackson Hole, Ben Clark, said that coming out for him has been a lifelong process. One of the greater problems he’s had reconciling, he said, was his sexuality and the teachings of his religion, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It took a long time, he said, to learn to listen to the voice of God rather than the voices of church leaders.

Meanwhile, The New York Times wondered how the film was received in Wyoming’s geographic and commercial center, the city of Casper. There, in the middle of cowboyland, the 27-year-old mayor, Guy Padgett, is openly gay. Some see his sexual orientation as Casper’s dark side.

Padgett told the newspaper that Wyoming’s libertarian streak can be read two ways. Although people are less likely to judge, sometimes that also means they are turning away.

"It's live and let live," he said. "Sometimes that equates to acceptance, and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes live and let live just means distance."

Sculptor’s peaks recognized

CANMORE, Alberta — What a Canmore sculptor is selling is definitely a step up from rubber tomahawks, or even the models of moose and elk that are so commonly purchased as vacation mementoes.

Instead, Jason Hoerle has sculpted models of several of the most notable peaks found in the Bow River Valley, where Canmore and Banff are located. "They’re unique," he tells the Rocky Mountain Outlook. "It’s not a generic product you see in airports all over North America."

Producers of Brokeback Mountain seem to agree. An assistant purchased 15 of Hoerle’s Cascade Mountain sculpture, to be relabeled as Brokeback Mountain, and given to the movie’s stars, director and other key players.

More movies shooting in Alberta

CANMORE, Alberta — Alberta is starting to make good money from hosting movie-makers. The Rocky Mountain Outlook reports that the province generated an estimated $200 million this year, and hopes to double that within three years.

Among the headline productions this year was The Assassination of Jesse James, starring Brad Pitt. The history-based film is set in Colorado, but Alberta pocketed $30 million.

Last year the province hosted the filming of Brokeback Mountain in a valley south of Canmore and Banff. Director Ang Lee recently confided to an audience in Jackson Hole that he would have preferred to film the movie in Northern Wyoming, where writer Annie Proulx had set it, but was constrained by his $13 million budget. He jokingly called Alberta, where the film was shot, a "cheap imitation Wyoming."

Traffic jams a healthy sign

MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif. — With first Intrawest and now Starwood developing real estate, Mammoth Lakes is aiming to become one of the major destination resorts of the West.

While there are naysayers to this trend, Warren B. Harrell is not among them. Those carping about increased traffic from all these new people are missing the larger point, he maintains in a letter published in The Sheet. "Remember, traffic is a good thing, because it means a successful and thriving economy," he says. "Isn’t that what we all want, success?"

Besides, he says, most visitors to Mammoth will not be discouraged by the traffic. Most have it much worse where they come from.

Heavenly Valley now 50

LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — It’s birthday time at Lake Tahoe. Heavenly Valley, one of North America’s largest ski areas, with 4,800 acres, is now 50 years old.

While 8,000 skiers once was a big, big crowd, now even 16,000 visitors doesn’t seem like much of a deal, said Malcom Tibbets, the long-time mountain manager at Heavenly, told the Tahoe Daily Tribune.

South Lake Tahoe, the city at the base of the ski area, is celebrating its 40 th birthday.

Cats purring all night

DURANGO, Colo. — Like most other resorts, the Durango and Telluride ski areas are spending more money this year to groom slopes.

Durango spent $850,000 to upgrade its ability to groom most of the beginner and intermediate terrain every night, while Telluride has invested $1 million in four snow groomers.

Although larger destination ski areas have been conspicuously improving their grooming steadily during the last 15 years, the pace has picked up in the last three years. The goal is to retain the lucrative baby boomers, who are now aged 41 to 60, a time frame when skiers have typically left the sport.

At Telluride, where destination guests are the bread and butter, a ski company spokesman tells the Durango Telegraph that the average age of customers is now 43.9. Improved grooming – along with superlative snow and a booming economy – is credited with pushing Telluride’s skier days last winter to a record.

Telluride filmmaker dies

TELLURIDE, Colo. — Part-time Telluride resident Robert F. Newmyer, who produced the movie Sex, Lies and Videotape, has died of the age of 49. His death was caused by a heart attack provoked by asthma. His other movies included Training Day and The Santa Clause.

Newmyer was a student at Pennsylvania’s Swarthmore College when he vacationed at Telluride. He vowed a quick return, and immediately upon graduation in 1978 did so.

The Telluride Watch reports that he had recently mortgaged his homes in both Telluride and Los Angeles in order to finance the independent film Phat Girlz, a romantic comedy about an overweight woman. It is to be released next year.

Newmyer was also working on a feature film about young Sudanese refugees of genocide called The Lost Boys of the Sudan. The cause, said friends, had become very nearly an obsession with him. He had personally been involved in bringing many of the Sudanese refugees to the U.S. and re-uniting them, in some cases using his own home.

One long-time friend described him as "maybe the most passionate and generous person I’ve ever known." Added the friend, college classmate Neal Marlens, "He was a guy you wanted on your side, and once he was there, he was there forever."

Airport security streamlined

KETCHUM, Idaho — As Sun Valley and Ketchum prepared for the usual holiday crowds, they were comforted this week by a promise that screening at the local airport for departing passengers will take only three to five minutes.

Doug Melvin, the Transportation Security Administration's security director for Idaho, told the Idaho Mountain Express that the reduced list of carry-on no-no’s will streamline the process.

"We're focusing on something that will cause a catastrophic issue aboard an aircraft," Melvin said, "not finding a pair of cuticle scissors." Passengers no longer have to remove shoes, except those singled out by the metal detector for further examination. Small scissors and screwdrivers are now permitted.

Ritz-Carlton just too big

PARK CITY, Utah — Neighbors of what could be a Ritz-Carlton Resort Residences are complaining that the project is just too much for their community of single-family homes. The site is in the Deer Valley resort.

Developers have received four extensions for the project since public review began in 2001. Their latest extension gives them until early March to come up with some definitive plans. The Park Record says the developers want 566,000 square feet for the building, an increase of 22 per cent over prior plans.

Minimum wage rises in Santa Fe

SANTA FE, N.M. — The minimum wage in Santa Fe will rise to $9.50 an hour in January, and is tentatively scheduled to rise to $10.50 in 2008.

The Associated press notes that the city’s previous law, which went into effect 18 months ago, required most companies with 25 or more workers to pay $8.50 an hour. Among those testifying in favor of the increase was a developer, Dennis Branch, who said people need to make at least $15.50 an hour to afford the least expensive houses in town.

Cougar prowls no more

INVERMERE, B.C. — The cougar that had been making people of Invermere nervous since early April has been killed. The cougar, although normally shy around people, had brazenly appeared many times in Invermere, notes the Invermere Valley Echo. For now, "community members can rest a little easier," conservation officer Lawrence Umsonst told the newspaper.