Dick Cheney speaks, and protestors rally
JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. -- It was a shimmering day of irony in Jackson Hole. U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney gave a speech to dedicate an $18 million building in Grand Teton National Park -- a park enabled, in part, by the philanthropy of the original oil baron, John D. Rockefeller.
Meanwhile, on the bicycle path leading to Cheney's declared primary home, located in a rural subdivision called Teton Pines, a group of about 250 people walked, carrying anti-war signs, accusing Cheney of being the mastermind of a war on behalf of oil.
At the gate to the subdivision, reports the Jackson Hole News&Guide, the crowd gathered at the feet of a giant statue of Cheney holding a fishing rod in one hand and a spurting oil derrick in the other. Where a heart should have been was a black hole. The giant effigy towered over a tiny George W. Bush head wearing red devil horns and a blindfold over its eyes.
"Operation Iraqi Liberation," sang an entertainer. "Tell me, what does that spell?"
"O-I-L," responded the crowd, composed in age from elementary school to great-grandparents. It also included a Democratic state legislator from Jackson Hole.
Mid-winter torching parties recommended
TELLURIDE, Colo. -- Phil Miller understands why people of Summit County, Vail, and Grand County are anxious about the dead trees killed by mountain bark beetles. As a young man after World War II, he was on U.S. Forest Service crews dispatched from Eagle and Kremmling that doused large areas of trees with insecticide.
He spent a career in the Forest Service, but chose to live in retirement in Telluride, where he is active in town affairs. Writing in The Telluride Watch, he says there are easier and cheaper ways to deal with the fire hazard than logging the trees.
Torch them in mid-winter, he advises, when there is plenty of snow on the ground. "Torching the red-tops will burn off all of the needles and small branches. What is left, the main stem and large branches, will not carry a crown fire."
"I can tell you it is fun," he adds. "The people could have torching parties in the winter."
Bear in Crested Butte makes itself at home
CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. -- Stories of bears invading houses continue. The Crested Butte News tells of a 230-pound bear that pushed or opened a door (it had a lever-type handle) and walked up the stairs, strolled unnoticed past somebody who was reading, and then behind a woman who was standing at a counter.
The woman left, closed the door, and called for police. The bear was shot, even though it had never been caught before because, in the words of wildlife officer J Wenum, the bear clearly had lost any fear of humans.
Many mountain towns have had reports this summer of large numbers of bears upsetting garbage cans and invading houses and other buildings. However, there have yet to be any injuries caused by bears, although wildlife officers for years have said it's only a matter of time.
Cavers search for rare and strange snottites
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. -- Care to venture a guess as to what a snottite is?
Before forming your answer, it may be useful to know that it's the sort of thing that cavers may seek. In this case, the cavers assembled in Steamboat Springs, and after a highly toxic gas called hydrogen sulfide was pumped from Sulfur Cave, entered it in search of these snottites.
And the cave does have the snottites. They are, reports The Steamboat Pilot & Today, similar to stalactites, which hang tightly from cave ceilings. But the texture of a snottite is very different from a rigid stalactite. A snottite has -- here it comes -- the consistency of snot, or mucus. They are composed of single-celled bacteria.
"As I blew on them, they'd start to sway back and forth," Mike Frazier, a caver, told the paper. Cavers said that a cave in Mexico also has the snottites.
Whistler-Blackcomb questions new resort
WHISTLER, B.C. -- The ski area operator at Whistler-Blackcomb has echoed the public doubts of Whistler, the municipality, about a proposed new ski resort located down-valley at Squamish.
While admitting that his comments look self-serving, Doug Forseth, the senior vice president of operations at the ski area, said Garibaldi at Squamish has a challenging location.
While Whistler has a base elevation of 2,000 feet, Squamish is near sea level and gets snow that is even wetter than that in Whistler. Developers of Garibaldi propose to host 15,000 skiers, or half the total of Whistler, on about one-fourth the acreage.
Construction costs nearly triple in year
WHISTLER, B.C. -- The word "skyrocket" has become hackneyed, but it may apply to construction costs in Whistler. A municipal hall expansion approved less than a year ago by Whistler councilors for $5.7 million, with about a quarter of that in a contingency, has ballooned to a cost of nearly $16 million. Pique editor Bob Barnett reports a "financial apprehension that hasn't quite developed into full-blow Olympic fiscal paranoia." But Olympian opportunists may be the softer-hitting news. The greater fear, he says, is labor and materials costs being impacted by regional, national and global factors beyond local control and at a more rapid rate than can be locally comprehended.
When do drivers become numb to sign messages
VAIL, Colo. -- Highway officials may add signs in advance of construction work after a truck carrying soda pop slammed into cars stopped by the project on Interstate 70.
The crash killed a man who was an occupant of one of the stopped cars. Traffic engineer Peter Kozinski told the Vail Daily that there were already two signs warning drivers of the work ahead, but he intended to install two more signs. Still, he wondered whether it will get the job done.
"We have to examine where people get numb to signs, when they kind of blank them out, and when they are useful information," he said.
