Mountain Town News
By Allen Best
Get out of the gene pool
DURANGO, Colo. –Letter-writer Phil D’Angelo says he’s noticed “young women who are too drunk or drugged to communicate without slurring, being approached for a ‘pick-up’ by young males.”
His letter in the Durango Telegraph urges people noticing this to call the police. “Durango is full of young men who have no compunctions against exploiting a woman’s helplessness at a bar. A word to them: If you need to drug a woman or need her to be incoherent to get sex, you probably shouldn’t be in the gene pool.”
4.1 million of vertical
WHISTLER, B.C. – Stephanie Jagger has now claimed the Guinness World Record for vertical skiing, having chalked up – and down – 4.1 million vertical feet in the past 10 months. After the final day of record-chasing, achieved at Blackcomb, she told Pique Newsmagazine her next plan is “soak up sunshine in California.”
(Small) home market rebound?
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo.—Conventional wisdom has been that the new market for real estate will embrace smaller homes. That’s what a developer has in mind in Steamboat Springs. Charlie Sher has pulled building permits for two 2,400-square-foot spec homes in the community’s older section.
“My program is to build homes that would work for families of any age: a retired couple or a couple with kids. They’re two stories, have two-car garages, and the option of having an office or a fourth bedroom,” he told the Steamboat Pilot & Today. He’s planning to deliver the product by summer of 2012, and with a price point of around $900,000 to $1 million.
Small too beautiful for some
CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. – As it now stands in Gunnison County, the minimum size for a house is 600 square feet. That goes against the grain of a new movement, which sees value in smaller houses, some as small as 65 square feet. Should Gunnison County loosen the restrictions and allow houses of, say, 400 square feet?
The Crested Butte News reports much discussion at a recent planning commission meeting, but little compelling reason to change. Just one property owner has sought a waiver from the house-size minimum.
March good for real estate
VAIL, Colo. – March was a good month for real estate sales in Eagle County, the fourth busiest in the last 27 months since the hyperventilating real-estate market went into a coma.
Land Title Guarantee Co. reports vigorous activity in the very high and low ends. Some high-end residential in Vail had a selling price of $2,526. But nearly a fifth of all transactions were sales by banks, and those units averaged $172 per square foot.
Assessments reflect drops
EAGLE, Colo. – Eagle County Assessor Mark Chapin usually hears from homeowners protesting that the county valued their property too high, thus increasing their taxes. But with the new assessments, reflecting values of the last two years, some property owners are complaining that he is now assessing too low.
In Gypsum, 37 miles west of Vail, home prices have dropped around 45 percent in the last two years. In Avon, at the foot of Beaver Creek, they’re down 34 percent. And in Vail, 24 percent, reports the Vail Daily.
In Roaring Fork Valley, similar trends were noted in Aspen and its down-valley suburbs. In Aspen itself, values were down 20 to 30 percent. But down-valley at Basalt, prices in some locations had dropped by up to 60 percent, reports The Aspen Times.
Get in the tub!
CANMORE, Alberta – After the first winter of operation, the Earth Tub Composter at Canmore Collegiate High School seems to be getting passing grades.
Students contribute their waste food to the composter, along with wood chips and sawdust from the school shop. The compost produced will be used at the school greenhouse and on landscaping projects while also saving landfill costs, estimated at $106 per week, reports the Rocky Mountain Outlook.
Park City says run for covers
PARK CITY, Utah – Park City has enacted a law that requires owners of larger land parcels to plug openings in the ground, most commonly old mine tunnels.
A city official tells The Park Record that several dozen openings will likely be addressed as a result of the new law. Twice in recent years old mine openings have resulted in mishaps. In one case, a skier at Deer Valley had to make his way out of a depression after the snow gave way above a long-abandoned mine tunnel. In another case, a dog had to be rescued from a tunnel opening.
No jackpot for B.C. couple
MOUNTAIN CITY, Nev. — A 911 dispatcher, who was notified that a woman had spent seven weeks in the Nevada wilderness alone in a van, expressed shock and disbelief that the woman survived.
The 911 tape provides a glimpse into Chretien’s rescue and the inhospitable conditions where she was stranded for 48 days. A clearly incredulous Elko County law enforcement dispatcher asked, “She’s been in it for a month?” when hunters called after finding Rita Chretien, 56, last Friday afternoon.
Efforts to find the woman’s husband, Albert Chretien, 59, were suspended Tuesday by rain, low clouds and flood warnings in a remote corner of Elko County, Nev., where Chretien and his wife became stranded along a muddy road on a trip to Las Vegas. Rita Chretien continues to recover after being rescued Friday by a group of hunters.
The couple from Penticton, British Columbia, is believed to have turned off a highway and onto a northeastern Nevada mountain road looking for a shortcut to Jackpot, Nev., a stop on their way to a Vegas trade show. When their van became stuck in the mud, on March 22 Albert Chretien left the van and set out on his own with a GPS, hoping to walk more than 20 miles to the town of Mountain City. He never returned, and hasn’t been seen since.
The hunters had just ridden ATVs nine miles over snow and mud to a ranch house to find a phone. They weren’t optimistic about the survival of Chretien’s husband.
She’s now back in Canada, recovering in a hospital. Searchers resumed the hunt for her husband on Wednesday. –Associated Press/AJC.com
