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Sales slow but prices climb

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. — After two phenomenal years in nearly every resort valley of the West, the real estate market this year has slowed in some places. But almost everywhere, prices continue to rise. Among the slow-downs is at Crested Butte.

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. — After two phenomenal years in nearly every resort valley of the West, the real estate market this year has slowed in some places. But almost everywhere, prices continue to rise.

Among the slow-downs is at Crested Butte. That town’s real estate transfer tax is projected to yield $1.3 million this year, compared to $2 million last year.

"A year to a year and a half ago, sellers were getting full price," says Justin Feder, president-elect of the Gunnison Country Association of Realtors. "Now, if a buyer comes in, (he or she) can negotiate."

One trend reported by the Crested Butte News is for locals to cash out from Crested Butte, then move 29 miles down valley to Gunnison, where prices are lower.

In Aspen, the volume of sales has also fallen, but prices continue to rise crazily. Two years ago prices rose 5 to 15 per cent and last year they rose 15 to 25 per cent. But this year, agent Robert Ritchie says, prices have inflated 25 per cent in Aspen. In Snowmass Village, he tells Mountain Town News, they have gone up 33 to 40 per cent.

In Vail and the Eagle Valley, higher interest rates have caused sales in the lower end of the market to falter, but the high-end market remained vigorous through early summer. As of June, total sales were 2 per cent above last year’s record clip, when $2.8 billion in sales were recorded in Eagle County (which includes several Aspen suburbs).

But prices continue to rise, and with the higher end more active, the average sales price this year through June has been up by 26 per cent. Last year, average sales prices were $722,000. This year they’ve been $911,000.

"It’s not as frenetic as last year, but I’m still plenty busy," one agent tells Mountain Town News. However, the number of properties for sale is now swelling once again.

But no particular worries are evident in any of the reports. The long-term story is of continued immigration into mountain valleys of the West, particularly by people from cities in the East. That emigration is being pushed by the imminent retirement of Baby Boomers, who are spending both their considerable fortunes as well as the inheritances from their parents.

Iraq is wrong war

SILVERTON, Colo. — Silverton is increasingly a cauldron of creativity and interesting people. Among the 900 residents is Robert Baer, an ex-CIA agent who wrote the book from which the movie Syriana was adapted.

The movie, a complicated thriller, is about how U.S. policy in the Middle East is being steered by U.S. oil companies, and ultimately U.S. dependence on foreign oil. The author is no fan of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Baer tells the Silverton Standard that he grew up in Aspen in the 1960s, and that he aspired to be a ski patroller. Instead, he went to the University of California at Berkeley, then joined the CIA. He spent much of his time from 1976 to 1997 in Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Iraq.

In addition to his native tongue, he speaks French and German plus Arabic and Farsi. The latter is the language of Iran, and he seems to have spoken it so well that he spoke Arabic with an Iranian accent.

And he seems to think that the Bush administration blundered terribly in its choice of targets after 9/11. "Basically, we went to war with the wrong country after 9/11," he said. "Not that I advocate going to war."

The story does not say who the "right" country might have been, but his other books suggest at least two other countries. One book is called "Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold our Soul for Saudi Crude." His newest book is "Blow the House Down," which is about the connection between Iran and the Sept. 11 attacks.

CB joins wind power parade

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. — The operator of the Crested Butte ski area is the latest to join the wind-energy bandwagon.

Triple Peaks LLC, which is owned by Tim and Diane Mueller, also operates Okemo Mountain Resort in Vermont and Mount Sunapee Resort in New Hampshire.

The have agreed to purchase credits for 27,000 megawatts of wind-generated power this year. Aspen Skiing Co. in March purchased credits for 22,000 megawatts, while Vail Resorts earlier this month announced purchase of 152,000 megawatts.

Crested Butte explained the purchase with language similar to that used by Vail. Statements by Tim Mueller stressed "energy independence for America" and "clean" energy, without directly mentioning climate change.

Crested Butte also said it would reinvest a percentage of its clean-energy purchase to develop Colorado-based renewable energy resources. That is similar to Aspen, which earmarked 5 per cent of its investment to Colorado-based power. Vail’s power, in contrast, will all come from Kansas, North Dakota and Minnesota.

Renewable energy getting traction

ASPEN, Colo. — The third annual Aspen Renewable Energy Day will be held this Saturday, Aug. 26, and organizers believe their cause is getting new support from businesses and the public.

Wind power now provides 2 per cent of all electricity used in the United States. "We are now starting to hit some critical mass," event organizer Chip Comins tells Mountain Town News.

Wind and other forms of alternative energy are "now being noticed by Wall Street, and it will just get bigger," adds Comins. "I think the next big trend in the stock market, comparable to the dot.com of the 1990s, will be the renewable energy sector."

A magazine, Bloomberg Markets, confirms that alternative energy has become a darling of investors. Venture capital funds, it says, "haven’t buzzed like this since the Internet captured investors’ imaginations in the ’90s."

At the event in Aspen, browsers can learn about both energy conservation and alternative energy. They can study a Hummer retrofitted to be powered by hydrogen, and also calculate the "carbon footprint" of themselves or their families. That footprint is explained in everything from the foods that a family eats, to the size of its house, to the vehicles its members drive.

Among the speakers will be Michael Bowman, who farms in Eastern Colorado. Bowman is a director of a new Colorado-based group called the 25-by-25 Initiative. The group aims to have 25 per cent of all U.S. energy produced from non-fossil fuel sources by the year 2025.

That goal is realistic, Bowman insisted in an interview with The Aspen Times. President John F. Kennedy in 1961 called for the United States to put a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s, and it got done, in 1969.

This idea of decreased energy dependence has gained traction in just the last year, if national consumption of gasoline has also increased 1.2 per cent. Like others involved in such efforts, Bowman believes that the impetus must come from the grassroots, both local and statewide, with people such as himself leading the way.

For more information about the event, see www.areday.net .

Tour of green homes returns

EAGLE VALLEY, Colo. — Fund-raising tours of very nice and often massive homes have been conducted for decades in the Vail-Beaver Creek area. This summer, for the second time, an alternative tour is planned, one of so-called "healthy homes."

This new home tour will showcase energy-efficient and environmentally friendly homes and schools. The buildings will showcase innovative types of insulation, heating, framing and windows, plus landscaping and solar energy.

Organizers from the Eagle Valley Alliance for Sustainability also hope those on the tour decide that so-called "green" building can be pleasant, as well as environmentally benign. Some people, says Matt Sherr, the executive director for the alliance, think of "green building" as an "off-the-grid, hippy-commune, buried-in-a-hillside kind of thing."

Green building is generally more expensive, he says, not always. New framing techniques, for example, use less material and take less time, but ultimately reduce heating and other operational costs.

But even when green building is more expensive, it saves money in the long run. Just as people are thinking beyond the initial sticker price of SUVs and other vehicles, Sherr believes that home-buyers in the future will think about the long-term energy and other operational costs of homes.

Although a similar event was held several years ago, Sherr believes that new social views will make this year’s tour more successful. Rising energy prices are part of that new consciousness, but he also detects a "general sense of disenchantment with our auto- and TV-dominated" lives.

Housing concept explored

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. — In an effort to ensure enough lower- and middle-end housing, the Steamboat Springs City Council continues to study the potential of levying a linkage requirement on new development.

The linkage concept employs a formula to determine the likely number of employees generated by a new business or commercial development, and then mandate a portion of their housing needs be provided. Usually, developers are allowed to pay a fee-in-lieu of the housing.

The Steamboat Pilot & Today reports that council members want to move forward, but wonder how it will work in various situations. They already have adopted inclusionary zoning.

Assisting Steamboat is Boulder-based RRC, a consulting firm involved in many resort towns in Colorado. Chris Carres, a principal in the firm, says his firm’s recommendation draws upon programs and efforts in Crested Butte/Gunnison, Telluride, Breckenridge, Summit County, Keystone, Basalt, Telluride, Aspen, and Snowmass, among others.

"There are lots of different programs and each community has customized its efforts to a large extent," he says.

Aspen troubled by name change

ASPEN, Colo. — Woe be to those who want to trifle with community institutions. Such is the story in Aspen, whose post-World War II rebirth as an international resort can be attributed with near singularity to Walter and Elizabeth Paepcke.

While the argument can be advanced that Aspen, the resort town, would have happened had nobody named Paepcke ever passed through it, the fact remains that the Paepckes – he was an industrialist from Chicago, and she was the one who had "discovered" Aspen before World War II – had the vision and executed it. He founded the Aspen Skiing Co. and also fostered Aspen’s summer tradition of music festivals, intellectual think-tanks, and brisk, physical exercise.

A frequent gathering place for these cultured affairs is what is informally called Paepcke Auditorium. But that auditorium needs a repair, and a local couple, Stewart and Lynda Resnick, have agreed to donate $4 million for restoration. In exchange, the Aspen Institute intends to rename the auditorium after the Resnicks, while retaining the name Paepcke on the building.

Any number of people have written to The Aspen Times to protest this move since the newspaper broke the news several weeks ago. Some have also noted that the Resnicks didn’t exactly make themselves favorite of the locals several years ago when they sued in an attempt to block construction of affordable housing near their home.

The Times smirked that the Aspen Institute itself, for all its protests about the lack of an official name, even now calls it the Paepcke Auditorium in press releases.

Such was the case last week in an announcement of a public conversation between Walter Isaacson, the author and former magazine editor who is now president of the institute, and Lynn Cheney, another author and wife of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Priuses join parade

BASALT, Colo. — A complement of Toyota Prius cars this summer joined the annual summer parade in Basalt, a town located 18 miles downvalley from Aspen. The organizers, a new grassroots group called Go Green, say they want to give more attention to the Prius, which gets 59 miles per gallon.

The group was formed by Karen Signell and her partner, Ann MacLeod, after they saw two movies about global warming, one narrated by former Vice President Al Gore and the other by former television anchorman Tom Brokaw.

"I like working for something rather than against something," Signell told The Aspen Times.

Steamboat asked to conserve

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. — If churches are sometimes built to accommodate the crowds of Easter Sunday, water treatment plants are built to handle hot summer days. That’s true even in the cooler climates of ski towns.

In Steamboat Springs, for example, water use triples in summer as compared to winter. The community is now bumping up against limits, and so residents are being urged to conserve, and hoteliers are being asked to reuse towels and linens.

In a few years, reports The Steamboat Pilot & Today, local water officials expect to build more treatment capacity. There does not seem to be plans afoot to provide raw, unpotable water for irrigation of golf courses and lawns such as is being planned in several other resort valleys.

Water thievery rampant

KETCHUM, Idaho — Many well-to-do residents of the Wood River Valley are stealing in broad daylight, says an official with the Idaho state government, and he probably won’t do anything about it.

"Welcome to Sun Valley. This is typical America, the land of greed, where people just take, take, take," says David W. Murphy, who is a deputy water master.

It is Murphy’s job to ensure that people are taking only as much water as they are legally entitled to from the four main ditches that serve the valley. But the reality is that more than 100 smaller canals snake onto private property and spill into manmade ponds. And in many cases, people are filling ponds or irrigating huge lawns with water they don’t own.

He took a reporter for the Idaho Mountain Express on his rounds, pointing out examples where people are flouting the law. "Eighty per cent of people with ponds are violating their decrees," he said.

The victims of the thievery, he said, are farmers located farther down valley, who have older and hence more senior rights.

Bed tax considered

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. — City and county officials in Jackson Hole are talking about going to voters for a proposed 2 per cent bed tax. The lodging tax would raise about $6.2 million annually.

Some 90 per cent would be used for tourism promotion and for tourism infrastructure, with the final 10 per cent used for general government use.

The Jackson Hole News & Guide notes that this tax was levied until 1994, but voters rejected renewal of it three times after that. Jackson Mayor Mark Barron said the tax was rejected by voters because they thought it encouraged growth, escalated property taxes, and caused traffic jams. He doubts that it will be approved.

In the absence of the government-levied bed tax, some lodge operations have added the tax rentals, calling it a resort fee, and used the money for their individual marketing.

Warm and wet wonderful for ‘shrooms

TELLURIDE, Colo. — This summer has been both warm and wet in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado, which means a bumper crop of mushrooms. Meanwhile, as it has for several decades, Telluride hosted a mushroom festival. Among the speakers at this year’s festival was ethnobotanist Katherine Harrison, who extolled "The Healing Magic of Mushrooms." Also speaking was a representative of mushroom exponent Paul Stamets, who lives in British Columbia. Stamets’s most recent book is called "Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World."

Acid fatal to metalworker

OLD SNOWMASS, Colo. — A metalworker died after accidentally ingesting a highly toxic liquid he thought was an energy drink.

The Aspen Times reports that Frank Gabossi III, 53, was working on a metal staircase at a home when he went back to the truck and took a drink from a Gatorade bottle. He swallowed half a mouthful before spitting out the other half. He knew immediately what had happened, and had his co-worker drive him 30 miles to the hospital in Glenwood Springs, from which he was airlifted to a hospital in Grand Junction.

The bottle still had the drink label on it, but the bright-blue liquid was Antique Black, which contains selenous acid, not a variant shading of Gatorade. There is no antidote for the high corrosive acid. Gabossi died two days later.

The substance was normally stored in five-gallon drums but had been transferred to the Gatorade bottle for convenience.

Seatbelts save lives

LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — In what appeared to be a suicide attempt, a woman drove off a highway in Christmas Valley and then sailed and tumbled about 600 feet down a steep mountain slope. Witnesses said the woman stopped, turned around, and then drove off the road in a gap where there were no barriers except for sandbags. Although her car was demolished, and she was badly injured, she survived. Authorities said she was wearing a seat belt.

Ike statue planned in Fraser Valley

FRASER, Colo. — Of recent U.S. presidents, Bill Clinton has had the strongest ties to ski towns. He vacationed first in Vail, then Aspen, and then several times in Jackson Hole. When he was president, Gerald Ford vacationed in Vail winter and summer.

But 50 years ago, when Dwight Eisenhower was president, the Western White House was in Denver, and "Ike," as he was commonly called, several times fished the Fraser River and its tributaries, Vasquez and St. Louis creeks.

Playing off that history, locals in the Fraser Valley have sponsored creation of an eight-foot bronze monument to be located along the banks of the Fraser River, showing Ike angling a trout.

The Winter Park Manifest also reports that something called the Fly-Fishing with Ike Festival is now being held annually. The event is sponsored by Trout Unlimited, which is using the event to showcase improvements in the river.

That river is among Colorado’s most exploited. Denver Water began drawing from the Fraser and its tributaries in the late 1920s. The diversions provided for Denver’s growth until the 1960s, when Dillon Reservoir went on line.

But diversions have come at a cost. The Fraser is less of a trout stream, because the flows were smaller, and hence the water shallower and then warmer. In response, a $750,000 project was undertaken three years ago. The stream channel has been narrowed, so water is deeper and hence stays colder.

"The riffles and holes are going to make the fishery much better," explained Scott Lin, president of the local chapter of Trout Unlimited.

Kayaker knocked unconscious

KREMMLING, Colo. — Among the most challenging, treacherous waters of the West is Colorado’s Gore Canyon, where the Colorado River has its most substantial drop in its journey between Rocky Mountain National Park and the Gulf of California.

Years ago its rapids were described as Class VI, or unraftable. Now, with the arrival of improved kayaks and rafts, they’ve been down-graded to Class V, doable if still very difficult. Given that difficulty, no deaths have occurred and injuries have been few. But a 28-year-old kayaker from Denver this summer flipped, and either hit his head on a rock or was unable to right his kayak for a couple of minutes.

Friends pulled him to the shoreline, and although unconscious, he did begin breathing, reports the Sky-Hi News. He was hospitalized, but the extent of his injuries was not reported.

Alcohol law will be enforced

PARK CITY, Utah — Is alcohol-impaired skiing a problem on the slopes in Utah? It depends upon to whom you talk. One person complained to a state legislator that another person had gone up a lift with him/her while drinking. That report yielded talk of stiffening laws governing alcohol.

The ski industry in Utah certainly didn’t want it. Industry representatives maintain that Utah already has more stringent laws regarding drinking and skiing than does Colorado. and they don’t like getting in the public glare because of their existing alcohol laws, which are usually described as quirky.

And, for that matter, paramedics tell The Park Record that injuries resulting from drinking and skiing are not frequent.

The legislator says that he has been assured by ski industry operates that they intend to strictly enforce laws banning alcoholic containers of any kind on ski lifts. "I'm satisfied that they've got the tools, now they just need to train their personnel," said the legislator, Mike Morley.

Not all stakeholders show up

MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif. — Mammoth’s The Sheet newspaper tells a story typical to ski towns. A vision of the future was pulled together by a group described as community stakeholders. Stakeholders were there, but many were absent: Hispanics, renters and, for that matter, the rank-and-file workforce. That absence duly noted, organizers say their door is open.