Mountain Town News
Halloween without candy
ASPEN, Colo. – The conundrum of Colorado’s cannabis-based tourism economy is on front and center display in Aspen, where a major conference geared toward marijuana-imbibers is to be held in November.
The Cannabis Grand Cru booked all 90-rooms in a hotel, in theory making it a private event. Organizers also figured that they could then get an outdoor space within the Sky Hotel complex designated for consumption.
But Aspen city officials have said no – that is not allowed. The city allows sale of marijuana and consumption in private places. Not so in public places. Smoking is banned in hotel rooms.
A frustrated Anthony Dittman, co-owner of Blue Sugar Productions, told the Aspen Daily News that the city code seemed to say “the city doesn’t allow brick-and-mortar, 365-day-a-year pot clubs,” he said. “It doesn’t address one-off events.”
Without a place to legally imbibe marijuana, the marijuana festival will be like “going to a Halloween party without any candy.”
Cutthroat comeback
TAOS, N.M. – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service earlier this month removed the Rio Grande cutthroat trout as a candidate species for protection under the Endangered Species Act.
The fish, said the agency, is no longer in danger of extinction, nor will it be in the foreseeable future.
The Taos News points to projects in many parts of the Rio Grande Basin, including Comanche Creek, that have recovered degraded habitat.
“It’s a great example of recovering a watershed that had been worked over by mining, logging, grazing, and probably overfishing,” Toner Mitchell, New Mexico public land coordinator for Trout Unlimited, told the News.
Other projects include Ted Turner’s Vermejo Park ranch, where non-native species were removed and cutthroat restored. The Fish and Wildlife Service expects that restoration to eventually expand the trout’s habitat by 20 percent.
The Center of Biological Diversity is not happy to see the federal agency walk away from heightened protections.
“The trout is gone from 89 percent of its historic range and expected to decline further, yet still it somehow doesn’t deserve to be protected as endangered – that shows how wrongheaded this policy really is,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director.
Aspen comeback at Yellowstone
GARDINER, Mont. – Aspen stands have declined across much of the West for a variety of reasons. In Yellowstone National Park, they’re on the rise – literally.
An Oregon State University researcher recently was at Mammoth Springs, located near the park’s north entrance, to explain that with the decline in elk – presumably the result of wolves – the number of aspen saplings has increased.
He said browsing decreased and height increased over the last 14 to 15 years, and now some saplings are taller than two meters.
“When they start to get about that tall, their likelihood of escaping browsing and surviving to maturity is much higher,” he said. “In 2012, about 30 percent of the plots had saplings greater than two meters.”
Rental housing tightens
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. – Rental prices in ski towns have been rising briskly. Steamboat Springs is no exception.
The Steamboat Pilot & Today notes that last year at this time the newspaper’s classifieds had 40 rentals listed, and the going rate for a two-bedroom apartment was about $1,150 per month. This year, just six properties were listed, and the asking price on the two-bedrooms ranged from $1,400 to $1,600.
This anecdotal observation coincides with a new report of rental markets conducted by the Colorado Division of Housing. The agency finds that the median prices for one-bedroom and two-bedroom condos are the highest recorded in the decade-old survey.
Analysis: In boom years, local employers were desperate to find employees, precisely because of the limited rental housing.
In the aftermath of the recession, plans for building new affordable housing were shelved and the city suspended its inclusionary zoning ordinance, which required residential developers to allocate 15 percent of new developments as affordable housing.
Fractions are back!
VAIL, Colo. – If still a far cry from the story in 2007, Colorado’s ski towns are becoming more alive with the sound of construction. The Denver Post reports that mountain resorts have been part of a general surge in hotel constructions. Compared to before the recession, the hotels are a little less opulent and more rooms are sold as fractionalized time-shares.
One of those projects is in Vail, where a project called Strata is replacing the razed Lionshead Inn. It is to have a mix of wholly owned and timeshare units.
Other hotels are being constructed at Basalt, where a 113-room Westin Element hotel will seek to have strong environmental credentials, and a Hampton Inn in Silverthorne. At Breckenridge, the slope-side Grand Colorado on Peak 8 is to be the first timeshare lodge in the Breckenridge Grand Vacations, a national leader in the timeshare industry.
Telluride’s Nobel scientists
TELLURIDE, Colo. – The Telluride Science Research Center has more bragging rights. Two researchers affiliated with Telluride’s summer-time program were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the second year in a row that scientists who have spent time at the program’s conferences have won Nobels.
Eric Betzig and William Moerner were part of a trio of scientists who are pioneers of nanoscopy, the visualization of individual molecules inside living cells.
Telluride’s engagement with scientists will increase. The Telluride Daily Planet notes that the research center in September signed an agreement for construction of a new facility, laying the groundwork for an eventual 32,000 square-foot, state-of-the-art complex that will operate year round.
Praise the supernal nocturnal
JASPER, Alberta – It’s still two months from the longest night of the year, but Jasper is in the midst of celebrating its third Dark Sky Festival. The national park is the world’s second darkest sky preserve.
It’s not precisely the darkness, however, that is being celebrated. Rather, it’s the ability to see the tiny bits of light that we call the stars and planets, galaxies and constellations.
In most of urban North America, it’s almost impossible to see the Milky Way Galaxy with the naked eye.
