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CARBONDALE - The Aspen Skiing Co. has installed solar collectors atop an employee housing complex in Carbondale, located 30 miles downstream from Aspen.
The ski company has also retrofitted the units, which will house up to 45 employees, with Energy Star-rated appliances and efficient lighting fixtures. The solar collectors are expected to provide a third of the electricity used in the apartments.
Auden Schendler, executive director of community and environmental responsibility for Aspen Skiing, said it is the largest solar photovoltaic array in the ski industry, some four times larger than the array Aspen assembled several years ago on a ski patrol headquarters.
Given current energy prices, the cost of the collector will be paid for in 25 years.
"We did it because it cuts carbon emissions, makes a statement, is a model for others, and it's beautiful," said Schendler. "We have more in the pipeline Š actually, lots more."
Writing in Carbondale's Valley Journal, energy activist Randy Udall disclosed that one of those projects will be at a local private school, Colorado Rocky Mountain School. That 150-kilowatt collector is expected to be in operation by Thanksgiving. Several other buildings in Carbondale also have solar collectors, he noted. "Solar has never been more cost effective," he added.
Telluride impeachment
resolution controversial
TELLURIDE - A backlash quickly emerged after the Telluride Town Council adopted a resolution last week calling for the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
"It's huge, unbelievable," said Telluride Mayor John Pryor. "Ski groups are canceling for the winter. Hundreds of people are bailing. The (town) website is flooded with people saying they're canceling their vacations here."
Pryor called it a "silly initiative." The council, he told The Telluride Watch, is too busy to weigh in on national global politics.
If this was a silly initiative, why did he vote for it? The answer would seem to lie in the fact that the council routinely adopts resolutions, on matters both big and small, with nary a further word. Further, such a resolution would be hardly controversial in Telluride, where only 17 percent of voters in the 2004 election cast ballots for Bush.
No overall decline in skier safety in decades
DENVER - Jim Chalat is Colorado's best-known lawyer in ski-related cases. He told The Denver Post recently that the ski slopes are not necessarily safer than they used to be.
Helmets have been proven to improve safety, and he'd have ski areas make sure that skiing employees used them, to serve as role models.
Still, no substantial statistical decrease in injuries has occurred since the advent of the modern alpine release binding. He believes an increasing percentage of collisions is due to increasing skier density. "You've got high-speed lifts pouring skiers on trails that were cut ... for a different era." The Forest Service, he suggests, needs to administer its property better.
He also sees consequences of fewer people learning to ski from professional ski instructors. "Statistically, we see a higher incidence of more serious injuries, particularly with children, and largely as a result of collisions."
Bigfoot believers listen hard in Uintah Range
SUMMIT COUNTY, Utah - Believers in sasquatch, otherwise known as bigfoot, were tramping among the forests of the Uintah Range between Park City and Evanston, Wyo.
Among the believers was Matthew Moneymaker, 41, who is president of the southern California-based Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization. "You're about 100 times more likely to hear them than to see them," Moneymaker told The Park Record.
The believers in sasquatch (sasquatchuans?) tell the newspaper that they are sure that bigfoot bangs on sticks, clanks rocks together and howls while in the forest primeval. "You're a little bit scared, but you're excited," said John Andrews, who has been studying bigfoot for about 50 years.
Winter Park and Fraser
consider merging towns
FRASER VALLEY - Sitting side by side, the towns of Winter Park and Fraser have thought about consolidation for a good many years. Fraser is the older of the two, but Winter Park nowadays has the better-known name, owing to the ski area within its boundaries.
A recent study finds that if Winter Park annexes Fraser, they'll gain $786,000 in additional tax revenues, owing to Winter Park's greater ability to levy sales and real estate taxes.
The greater question, reports the Winter Park Manifest, is what the combined town would be called. No names have been formally proposed, although the newspaper flippantly suggests Fraser Park. Joyce Burford, a trustee in Fraser, says that her constituents are most interested in the name, suggesting that the consolidation could sink or swim on that basis.
The ski company has also retrofitted the units, which will house up to 45 employees, with Energy Star-rated appliances and efficient lighting fixtures. The solar collectors are expected to provide a third of the electricity used in the apartments.
Auden Schendler, executive director of community and environmental responsibility for Aspen Skiing, said it is the largest solar photovoltaic array in the ski industry, some four times larger than the array Aspen assembled several years ago on a ski patrol headquarters.
Given current energy prices, the cost of the collector will be paid for in 25 years.
"We did it because it cuts carbon emissions, makes a statement, is a model for others, and it's beautiful," said Schendler. "We have more in the pipeline Š actually, lots more."
Writing in Carbondale's Valley Journal, energy activist Randy Udall disclosed that one of those projects will be at a local private school, Colorado Rocky Mountain School. That 150-kilowatt collector is expected to be in operation by Thanksgiving. Several other buildings in Carbondale also have solar collectors, he noted. "Solar has never been more cost effective," he added.
Telluride impeachment
resolution controversial
TELLURIDE - A backlash quickly emerged after the Telluride Town Council adopted a resolution last week calling for the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
"It's huge, unbelievable," said Telluride Mayor John Pryor. "Ski groups are canceling for the winter. Hundreds of people are bailing. The (town) website is flooded with people saying they're canceling their vacations here."
Pryor called it a "silly initiative." The council, he told The Telluride Watch, is too busy to weigh in on national global politics.
If this was a silly initiative, why did he vote for it? The answer would seem to lie in the fact that the council routinely adopts resolutions, on matters both big and small, with nary a further word. Further, such a resolution would be hardly controversial in Telluride, where only 17 percent of voters in the 2004 election cast ballots for Bush.
No overall decline in skier safety in decades
DENVER - Jim Chalat is Colorado's best-known lawyer in ski-related cases. He told The Denver Post recently that the ski slopes are not necessarily safer than they used to be.
Helmets have been proven to improve safety, and he'd have ski areas make sure that skiing employees used them, to serve as role models.
Still, no substantial statistical decrease in injuries has occurred since the advent of the modern alpine release binding. He believes an increasing percentage of collisions is due to increasing skier density. "You've got high-speed lifts pouring skiers on trails that were cut ... for a different era." The Forest Service, he suggests, needs to administer its property better.
He also sees consequences of fewer people learning to ski from professional ski instructors. "Statistically, we see a higher incidence of more serious injuries, particularly with children, and largely as a result of collisions."
Bigfoot believers listen hard in Uintah Range
SUMMIT COUNTY, Utah - Believers in sasquatch, otherwise known as bigfoot, were tramping among the forests of the Uintah Range between Park City and Evanston, Wyo.
Among the believers was Matthew Moneymaker, 41, who is president of the southern California-based Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization. "You're about 100 times more likely to hear them than to see them," Moneymaker told The Park Record.
The believers in sasquatch (sasquatchuans?) tell the newspaper that they are sure that bigfoot bangs on sticks, clanks rocks together and howls while in the forest primeval. "You're a little bit scared, but you're excited," said John Andrews, who has been studying bigfoot for about 50 years.
Winter Park and Fraser
consider merging towns
FRASER VALLEY - Sitting side by side, the towns of Winter Park and Fraser have thought about consolidation for a good many years. Fraser is the older of the two, but Winter Park nowadays has the better-known name, owing to the ski area within its boundaries.
A recent study finds that if Winter Park annexes Fraser, they'll gain $786,000 in additional tax revenues, owing to Winter Park's greater ability to levy sales and real estate taxes.
The greater question, reports the Winter Park Manifest, is what the combined town would be called. No names have been formally proposed, although the newspaper flippantly suggests Fraser Park. Joyce Burford, a trustee in Fraser, says that her constituents are most interested in the name, suggesting that the consolidation could sink or swim on that basis.
