Mountain Town News
By Allen Best
Patroller dies at Alpine
TRUCKEE, Calif. – The death of a ski patroller at Alpine Meadows with 28 years experience highlights yet again the randomness of avalanche fury.
Bill Foster, 53, had taken refuge in an area that historically had never been known to slide while a fellow ski patroller tossed an explosive to provoke a slide. The avalanche broke higher and wider on the slope than had been previously observed, representatives of the ski company said.
With ski professionals trained in avalanche rescue all around, Foster’s location in the avalanche debris was identified within one minute, and it took another 8 minutes to dig him out. They immediately began administering cardio-pulmonary resuscitation.
It wasn’t enough. Foster died later on Christmas day at a hospital in Reno.
“Nine minutes is reasonably quick” for recovery of a victim from an avalanche, said Brian Lazar, forecaster with the Colorado Avalanche Information Center. “Your chances of survival drop precipitously after 15 minutes,” Lazard told Mountain Town News.
“That said, it doesn’t imply that everyone who is recovered within 15 minutes will survive. Some people die from trauma during the avalanches. Others pass out in two or three minutes.”
Unlike the shallower and more stratified snow commonly found in the high and cold Rocky Mountains, the maritime climate of California produces deeper, denser snowpacks that are more stable. But avalanches do occur.
Avalanche fatalities have been on the increase in recent decades as more people have headed out into the backcountry. John Snook, also a forecaster with the Colorado Avalanche Information Center, told the Los Angeles Times that the number of fatalities has remained proportionate to the number of people going into harm’s way, or even going down.
Ski patroller killed in slide at Snowmass
SNOWMASS VILLAGE, Colo. – On Sunday, Patricia “Patsy” Hileman, a 26-year veteran of the Snowmass Ski Patrol, was killed in an avalanche while skiing in a permanently closed area.
The Aspen Daily News described it as in an area containing the most extreme terrain at Snowmass. What she was doing in the permanently closed area was not explained and is, perhaps, unknowable. Aspen Skiing Co. representatives said that she was passionate about her job, her co-workers and skiing.
Mixed news for Tahoe Lake clarity
LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – A report this year from the Tahoe Environmental Research Center finds that in 2011, Lake Tahoe’s water clarity improved during winter and worsened during summer.
The improved clarity of winter was likely due to improved stormwater drainage control measures in communities bordering the lake, which has 72 miles of shoreline.
Researchers hypothesize that warmer water temperatures are allowing the exponential growth of an algae cell, particularly in the surface layers of the lake. This may be a result of the warming climate.
A report in the Sierra Sun notes further that the effects of the warming climate have not been uniform. The melting of snow at the lake level, just shy of 6,300 feet, has occurred about two weeks earlier since 1961. But 600 feet higher in elevation, no meaningful change has occurred in the timing of spring snowmelt since measurements began in 1956.
Colorado grapples with pot law
MT. CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. – Stoners are easier to deal with than drunks, says the police chief in Mt. Crested Butte. Just the same, elected officials in this slope-side municipality don’t want to see marijuana easily available.
“The selling of marijuana, whether it’s medical or non-medical, is not very consistent with a resort town,” said Gary Keiser, a councilman. Earlier, some of Vail’s council members took much the same stance.
In the wake of a statewide vote in November to decriminalize marijuana, ski towns and other local jurisdictions are trying to make sense of how to respond. Voters some years ago had similarly decriminalized possession of marijuana for medicinal purposes.
Still, marijuana use, whether to thwart cancer pain or merely to chill, remains a criminal offense under federal law. The federal government has made it clear that prosecution is a low priority. Still, Colorado and other states where voters have voted to partially or completely decriminalize marijuana possession must now sort through this legal no-man’s land.
In Telluride, San Miguel County Sheriff Bill Masters, a long-time opponent of the War on Drugs, admitted to discomfort of addressing what the law allows. “I’m not thrilled,” he told The Telluride Watch.
The Crested Butte News reports that police chief Hank Smith said he wasn’t advocating for retailers of marijuana, but he believed they would pose fewer problems than bars and liquor stores.
“Just about every officer I know would much rather deal with somebody who was stoned than somebody who was drunk, whether it’s driving or domestic disputes or whatever,” he said. “Those people are much less aggressive than someone who is drunk,” he said.
But he also expressed reservations about the impact of marijuana on driving.
Aspen to get sixth sister city?
ASPEN, Colo. – Aspen already has sister city relationships with five cities and towns. It’s now exchanging pleasantries with a sixth, Abetone, a village of 700 people located in Italy’s Apennine Mountains.
The most forward of reasons for this new relationship is that they share history with the 10th Mountain Division. During World War II, soldiers who trained at Camp Hale, near present-day Vail, often journeyed to Aspen. When finally deployed into action in early 1945, near the war’s end, they fought hard to liberate central and northern Italy, with bloody fighting in the region surrounding Abetone.
In the Appenines, people still treat the 10th Mountain soldiers fondly. A Denver Public Library curator of the 10th Mountain Division collection tells the Aspen Daily News that the surviving members of the 10th on a trip in 2009 were treated like liberating heroes.
On a recent trip to Aspen, representatives of Abetone also noted another connection. In 1950, when Aspen hosted the World Alpine Ski Championships, a skier from Abetone took home the gold medal in both the downhill and giant slalom.
Aspen already has sister-city relationship with Queenstown, New Zealand; Bariloche, Argentina; Chamonix, France; Davos, Switzerland; and Shimunkappu, Japan.
