BRECKENRIDGE, Colo. — Breckenridge, as a modern tourist resort, has always taken pride in its past as a gold-mining town dating to 1859. The town continues to work toward leveraging that history in the growing and lucrative market of cultural and heritage tourism.
The town’s history "is the critical differentiation" from other resort towns, said outgoing town council member Larry Crispell. "We should be out shouting it from the roof tops: We are an historic community. We are a real town."
To help stake its claim as a real town, municipal officials have hired two consultants to help create a heritage master plan. For example, the town has already acquired several mining properties, and it intends to restore dredge boats, which even into the 1930s moved mass quantities of glacial till in local rivers in order to recover small quantities of gold.
Not least, the town is trying to preserve the one-time home of Barney Ford. A former slave, he had fled the ante-bellum South, eventually arriving in Breckenridge where, according to local lore, he struck it rich.
(What the local lore sometimes omits is that he was cheated of his presumed ore strike in Breckenridge by his lawyer and other whites, and that the area where his claim was stacked was officially known until 1964 as N____ Hill.)
"Nobody else has that kind of story," said the town councilman, Crispwell.
Main Street in Breckenridge has an assortment of brightly colored stores in the style of Victorian era architecture, and the town has limited the number of national retailers, in an effort to draw visitors searching for that "real town" experience.
One of the consultants, Tom Gallagher, said such tourists have higher incomes and spend more than the average, stay longer, and are better educated. Moreover, he said, heritage tourists travel in larger groups and tend to stay in hotels or motels as opposed to with friends and relatives. Finally, they visit during spring and fall, not just winter and summer – the typical peak seasons for ski resort towns. Nationally, heritage tourism has been up 45 per cent since 1996.
He defined heritage tourists as those who travel to "experience the places and activities that authentically represent the stories and people of the past and present."
In another aspect of the colourful history of Breckenridge, the Blue River was turned the color of orange Kool-Aid last week as the result of some sort of mining runoff. One theory is that this past winter’s prodigious snowfall may have dammed the adit, i.e. horizontal entrance, to a long-abandoned mine. As such, the accumulating water of winter did not trickle out, as it normally does, but became a reservoir that finally broke free. Snow banks along the stream were colored orange to a height of about two feet.
Aspen as a commodity
ASPEN, Colo. — About four-dozen people in Aspen turned out at a recent meeting to condemn what many described as "character-killing" growth and development. Tourists, they said, do not want to see construction cranes.
Among those calling for a break on redevelopment was Phil Sterling, who called on the council to "save the heart and soul that defined this funky mountain town before it became a commodity."
The Aspen Times reports that another speaker, James March, called for a ban on construction work during Saturdays. "If we cut that back to five days, there would be less road rage, because the construction workers would have two days off instead of one." Less construction would be more peace for not only Aspen residents, but also weekend visitors, he added.
"We have lost our way in the calculus of redevelopment," said Mike Ireland, a Pitkin County commissioner. "We ask ourselves how much things will cost, and how much sales tax projects will generate. We prospered in the past by not defining life totally by market strategies."
Utah may move up ski ranks
PARK CITY, Utah — While Colorado’s Summit County was always fond of pointing out that it did more skier visits annually than all of Utah, Utah is catching up. The Associated Press reports that Utah is fast approaching 4 million skier visits annually, which could cause it to surpass Vermont as the No. 3 state in skier days. California is second behind Colorado.
Utah thinks it is drawing some skiers that would otherwise go to Colorado – and they may be right. That’s been a worry in Colorado for years. Just the same, Colorado remains on track to surpass 12 million skier visits, the record that has eluded it for almost a decade.
Backcountry lite opposed
SNOWMASS, Colo. — The Aspen Skiing Co. has received permission from the U.S. Forest Service to proceed with a "backcountry lite" ski area expansion. The company plans to thin trees on 500 acres of Burnt Mountain and add roughly 200 acres of skiable terrain in order to provide a semi-backcountry experience.
Such backcountry lite expansions have been the dominant theme of the ski industry during the last decade. Vail, Keystone, and Breckenridge have also had expansions that suggest a slightly more wild and remote skiing experience. While of a more extreme nature, the new Silverton Mountain Ski Area also in somewhat the same category of backcountry lite, or at least backcountry without the uphill grunt.
But a coalition of backcountry skiers and an environmental group is challenging the Forest Service decision, reports The Aspen Times. Coalition members, including Wyoming-based Ark Initiative, argue the expansion will ruin the character of a roadless area and have a detrimental effect on endangered and threatened species such as the lynx.
Meanwhile, at Telluride, skiers at the end of this season were permitted to explore Prospect Ridge chutes without guides. Avalanche shovels and beacons were recommended, but not required. The ski area is looking at incorporating the area into more regular use in coming years, reported The Telluride Watch.
Micro-hydro considered
BANFF, Alberta — Parks Canada hopes to install micro-hydro generating plants at its campgrounds in the Canadian Rockies, reducing the need for diesel-powered generators to provide electricity for lights and hot showers.
The Rocky Mountain Outlook says that two 10-kilowatt water turbines are proposed for the Glacier and Kootenay parks, partly to remove the noisy and dirty diesel generators, but also to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Solar collectors are also being examined.
Green points system adopted
EAGLE COUNTY, Colo. — Eagle County is continuing to green up, and it’s not just the warmer weather of spring. The county commissioners have adopted new building and development regulations, called Eco-Build, that are intended to reduce energy and water use and also landfill waste.
The regulations offer both carrots and sticks. Houses are assigned points. They can get 2 points for water-efficient washing machines, up to 15 points for more roof insulation, and 5 points for insulated concrete forms for basements. Also, 2 points for thermostats in each room and 10 points for use of structural insulated panels or straw bales in exterior walls.
The smaller the house, the fewer the points that are needed. For example, a house of 2,000 square feet or less would need only 40 points. A house of 8,000 square feet of more would need 100 points.
And if they don’t accumulate the necessary minimums? Then those homes would be assessed a cash-in-lieu fee. That 2,000-square-foot house that only had 35 points, instead of the minimum 40, is to be assessed a $2,500 cash-in-lieu fee.
Fees will endow a Renewable and Efficiency Fund. The money is to be used as incentives for energy efficiency and renewable power installations in Eagle County. The program is modeled, in part, on Pitkin County’s Renewable Energy Mitigation Program, also called the Robin Hood program.
And what about those who far exceed the minimums? Then there are carrots of up to 25 per cent rebate on building permit fees, not to exceed $5,000.
The regulations apply only to single-family homes and duplexes, and not to townhomes and condos, explains the Vail Daily. No reason was given for the discrepancy. "In general, this is a concept that’s been well received," said Jim Turnispeed, president of the Eagle Valley Home Builders Association.
Offices in retail sector revisited
CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. — Offices and now homes have been replacing retail shops in Crested Butte’s business district, called Elk Avenue. All of this is producing some fear that eventually all the shopping that helps produce a vibrant downtown will move to the base of the ski area, two miles away.
Other ski towns have also been carefully monitoring the vibrancy of their old downtowns. The point is usually wagged at real estate offices, and Park City, Steamboat Springs, and others have considered banning new ground-level offices. So did Crested Butte two years ago, but decided against it.
But at least one town councilman, Bill Coburn, thinks the time has arrived for intervention. "I think we could be on a cusp of a time where we could lose Elk Avenue," he said. "If we don’t have a good shopping experience, it will happen on the mountain, and we will not have the restaurants and stores anymore."
At least among ski towns, Vail pioneered this particular form of marketplace meddling. In 1973, the town banned real estate and other offices from ground-floor locations in Vail Village and Lionshead, although by then a number of offices already existed. Aspen adopted similar regulations in 2004, but again allowed existing uses.
The largest part of the concern in Crested Butte is that with retail and restaurant sales declining, town revenues will shrink. In Colorado, most towns use sales tax proceeds to pay for bus shuttles, parks, and snowplowing.
Crested Butte’s finance director, Liz Rozman, said the town’s fiscal numbers confirm the loss of retail stores on Elk Avenue. As well, there’s a different "feeling," she said. "We’ve lost a lot of businesses to service-type businesses," she explained. "It has hurt the vibrancy of downtown."
Where real-estate offices and service-related businesses should be located will be taken up by the Crested Butte council in mid-May.
Telluride hosts Talking Gourds fest
TELLURIDE, Colo. — The ski lifts are closed for the season in Telluride, but that doesn’t mean the town is shutting down. Instead, one of the year’s more unusual events, The Talking Gourds Spoken Word Festival, is being held this weekend, April 21-23. It is, says Rosemerry Trommer, one of the performing poets, a time of "high-energy performances and wild mind workshops."
Various performance poets from Denver to San Francisco will perform, as well as others of more local origins. The merriment begins on Friday, April 21, at the Sheridan Opera House, and continues to Sunday noon. Cost for the full weekend is $105, although tickets for individual events can be purchased. For more, see the website: www.coyotekiva.org/
Mammoth urged to get modern
MAMOTH LAKES, Calif. — Have you ever come across a stoplight while driving in snowy country and imagined a cattle guard?
To Mammoth’s Tim Willoughby, stoplights in ski country are like cattle guards on bike trails: artificial barriers begging for accidents. Writing in The Sheet, Willoughby called for Mammoth to follow the example of what he calls "modern ski towns" in Colorado and adopt roundabouts.
But Mammoth is already plenty modern in one key respect. A project with deed-restricted affordable housing is generating some heartburn among would-be neighbors, who fear the worst. Letter-writer Gordon Alper advises Tums, and believes far worse would be an absence of affordable housing.
"We have all looked at the evolution of other mountain resorts," he explains. "We know that locals can’t compete with big-city money. Big-city money means higher property values and the local workforce moving out and then commuting back to work. This creates a town with no soul."
He concludes: "Take a long, hard look at your concerns, and I think you will be embarrassed by your opposition to this program."
Heat on Intrawest
WINTER PARK, Colo. — Intrawest is at odds with the local planning commission in Winter Park about heated pavers in the core of the base village now being planned by Intrawest. Intrawest doesn’t want one, but the locals do.
Intrawest cites the cost. Ice-melt systems are expensive to maintain, and of course energy prices are rising rapidly. But in the minds of locals, it’s a bit much to force visitors through a path of snow in their ski boots. Moreover, Winter Park has the first and arguably still the largest and best program for disabled skiers, many of whom are in wheel chairs. And, not least, don’t both Aspen and Vail, the benchmarks for destination ski resorts in the West, have snowmelt systems.
The Winter Park Manifest urges a compromise. It points to Squaw Valley and Snowmass Village, where Intrawest also has real estate operations, as places of compromise that might be models for Winter Park.
Jackson Hole suburbs growing fast
JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. — Jackson Hole’s fastest-growing neighborhood is actually in another state, Idaho.
Wyoming’s Teton County, i.e. Jackson Hole, has grown 4.3 per cent annually during this decade. But to the west of the Tetons, Idaho’s Teton County – including the towns of Driggs and Victor – grew 24.5 per cent. And to the southwest, Alpine and other communities in Lincoln County grew at a rate of 9.8 per cent.
Many new residents from Driggs, Victor and Alpine commute to Jackson, and some also take their children to schools in Jackson.
But while most of these commuters relocated to these outlying, exurban areas to get more real estate for their dollar, the real estate market is catching up with them. There is now talk in the Driggs-Victor area of the need for affordable housing.
Still, many are happy to have the problems of growth. "When I moved to this valley 25 years ago, there was one dentist that was starving to death," Mark Trupp, a commissioner in Idaho’s Teton County told the Jackson Hole News & Guide "I now know of three dental clinics. It’s an exciting challenge to be dealing with growth. The opportunities now are endless."
New era at Silverton
SILVERTON, Colo. — Silverton Mountain, one of the nation’s newest ski areas, in early April got permission from the Bureau of Land Management, whose vertically rich property it uses, to offer unguided skiing for up to 500 skiers. For several years, only skiers accompanied by guides were permitted, because of the great potential for avalanches.
"Huge smiles, everywhere," reported the Silverton Standard of the opening weekend for the new, unguided, ski area. "There was also a sort of conspiratorial glee zinging through the air. Everybody was in on the thrilling secret that together, they were making history, as the scrappy ‘little’ ski area jettisoned itself, and quite likely the town for which it is named, into a whole new era."
As in everything, noted the paper, there are winners and losers. Clear winners are the ski area developers, Jen and Aron Brill, as well as their names and the "lovable wild thangs" like runs named "Pants Pooper," "Nightmare" and "Hell’s Gate."
The most clear loser is a nearby property owner, Jim Jackson, who 25 years ago staged speed-skiing events in the area and always talked about someday creating a ski area of his own. San Juan County is now condemning his property, located within the new ski area, and the Standard notes that this rural county, the highest and among the least populated in Colorado, is now seen by many even in liberal enclaves as a "bastion of government-backed thievery," to use words from The Aspen Times. Jackson lives in Aspen.
Planning moratorium lifted
EAGLE COUNTY, Colo. — Eagle County has lifted its moratorium on applications for new subdivisions in unincorporated areas, reports the Vail Daily. The moratorium was enacted last October with the stated goal of giving county officials a breather while getting on top of development issues.
One county commissioner, Peter Runyon, said that new rules and regulations now in place give builders and developers better direction. For example, applicants must now prove their projects provide affordable housing, recreation, and access to mass transportation.
A dissenting voice is that of Commissioner Tom Stone, who said the commissioners already had that authority. The moratorium, he said, was a "needless, meaningless, worthless effort."
Crested Butte recovering
CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. — Crested Butte gained in skier days this winter as the resort continues to get back on its feet after some painfully difficult years.
In the mid-1990s, Crested Butte recorded up to 560,000 skier days, although many came from the resort’s ski-for-free program in December. Drought, a shrunken direct-flight program, and national woes combined to pull the numbers down to around 300,000 in recent years.
This year, they’re up to 412,000, moving in the right direction of the 600,000 target that ski area operators believe is necessarily to achieve an environmentally sustainable skiing operation. Part of that gain has been attributed to a 20 per cent increase in direct-flight seats into the nearby Crested Butte-Gunnison Airport. As well, numbers of Front Range skiers has increased, owing to sales of the X-Pass, which offered four days of skiing for $119. Sales of season passes also increased, reported the Crested Butte News.
Some glaciers stay their course
ESTES PARK, Colo. — While glaciers across much of the world have been shrinking, four small glaciers in Rocky Mountain National Park have been holding their own since the 1930s, according to then-and-now photo comparisons.
Researcher Jack Achuff theorized that the small glaciers – each about 20 acres in size – are not following the trend because they get little direct sunlight.
Farther south along the Continental Divide, in the Indian Peaks Wilderness Area, two glaciers have been losing their ice rapidly. Studies by the University of Colorado suggest both the Arikaree and Arapahoe glaciers have lost more than 60 feet of ice thickness since 1960, reports the Associated Press.
Beetle-killed forests to be thinned
FRISCO, Colo. — Communities along the Interstate 70 corridor in Colorado continue to respond to the epidemic of pine beetles. Frisco town officials, for example, plan to cut down 9,000 to 12,000 beetle and mistletoe infested trees during the next 10 years in an area used for the town’s cross-country skiing centre.
"It breaks my hear to cut down old trees, said Gene Dayton, the concessionaire.
Mike Penney, the town manager, said there was little choice. "Do we wait for the trees to turn red and blow down, or a forest fire?" he said.
The Summit Daily News reports that the thinning operations are expected to cost the town $80,000 a year for the next three years. The trees will be hauled about 270 miles to Montrose, where one of the few remaining sawmills in Colorado is located.
Rotarians ship books
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. — Do you suppose residents of the Gulf Coast like to read Louis L’Amour Westerns? Rotary Club members in Steamboat Springs and nearby Craig have collected 35,000 books from their towns and surrounding ranchlands. The books are being shipped to libraries in Louisiana that were ravaged by Hurricane Rita last fall. The Rotarians also chipped in $15,000 to ship the books by truck, reports The Steamboat Pilot.
