First it's elk, then come lions & mountain lions
BANFF, Alberta -- The elk population around Banff is growing once again, with 220 counted this year compared with 93 only three years ago. The worry is that the elk will, in turn, draw wolves and lions.
This is not new. In the 1990s, so many elk were in Banff itself that they leisurely congregated in streets and occasionally attacked people -- an average eight times a year, notes the Rocky Mountain Outlook.
Such problems led to the relocation of elk about five years ago. The working theory now is that the elk are returning to the town's perimeter in hopes of seeking safety from mountain lions and wolves. If so, it doesn't always work. Earlier this year, a cougar killed an elk near a playground.
Wildlife officials are doing their best to keep elk in the hinterlands. A six-foot-tall fence is being erected along the Trans-Canada Highway in an effort to keep the elk north of the town, where they are more likely to be killed by the predators. Jesse Whittington, a wildlife specialist with Banff National Park, says opinions are divided whether six feet is tall enough to contain the elk.
Whistler underwhelmed by turnout to job fairs
WHISTLER, B.C. — The death knell of the big employee recruiting fairs has been rung in Whistler. Last year, 1,700 showed up for a job fair sponsored by Intrawest, the operator of the Whistler and Blackcomb ski areas. Significantly fewer, 1,200 people, showed up this year. Another job fair reported attendance nearly half of last year.
"No longer are there enough young folks out there on the planet willing to take the risk to come to Whistler to find a job and then hope to get housing," said Kirby Brown, director of human resources at the ski area.
"We knew that this demographic issue was going to hit us at some point ..." he added in an interview with Pique.
In the Vail and Beaver Creek area, a similar tightening of the labor pool market was reported by the Vail Daily, although the ski area operator, Vail Resorts, seems to have secured its necessary employees.
Shoppers start at midnight at Silverthorne outlet stores
SUMMIT COUNTY, Colo. -- Can there be any doubt that Summit County is becoming ever more like a city? Although it has had factory outlet stories since the 1980s, last year those stores in Silverthorne began participating in the Black Friday phenomenon, when shopping begins well before sunrise.
The first opening was at 5 a.m. last year. This year sales began at midnight, and soon nearly all parking spaces in the vast shopping mall were occupied, reports the Summit Daily News.
The biggest draw for midnight shoppers/skiers was the giveaway of 100 ski passes to nearby Loveland Ski Area.
There's a silver lining in the (absent) clouds
VAIL, Colo. -- You need go back to only 1998 to find a winter that began more slowly than this in Colorado. Thanksgiving that year offered prime conditions for climbing 14,000-foot peaks. Snow remained scarce until well into December.
Still, this is a year to remember. The Aspen Skiing Co. provided porkchop dinners for new-hires who hadn't yet got a paycheck under their belts -- and won't have at least for another week, due to the dearth of snow. Such dinners, the company's Jeff Hanle said, were not available for the part-time ski instructors who sold real estate.
For people who sell real estate, the lack of snow was a silver lining. In Vail, for example, one real estate agent said he was "the busiest I've ever been." People, explained the agent, who wanted to remain anonymous because he feared it would sound like bragging, who can't go skiing then have time to shop for real estate.
Vail had ribbons of snow, thanks to snowmaking. After every previous drought year, the resort invested heavily in additional snowmaking.
There have been plenty of snowless Novembers in the past. Vail had soup lines for unemployed workers until almost Christmas during the great drought of 1976-77.
The winter of 1980-81 was not only snowless, but also warm. The Denver Post had photos of lift operators at Steamboat in lawn chairs and Hawaiian shirts. The Breckenridge Journal jokingly ran a photo of somebody skiing on talus with no hint of snow. It wasn't far from the truth.
But unlike in the past, there may be a new element of jitteriness this year. In drought winters past in the Rockies, global warming was not necessarily embraced. Now, there's a tendency to ascribe every anomaly to global warming, despite the warning of scientists against ascribing one weather event to the effects of increased greenhouse gases.
Another year, another record for Routt County real estate
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. -- The real estate news from Steamboat Springs-dominated Routt County echoes that from other resort areas of the West. The town has established a new one-year record for real-estate volume, despite slowing sales during October.
Through October, the county had recorded $1.39 billion in real estate sales. The county had not elevated above $1 billion until last year.
The Steamboat Pilot & Today notes that this was accomplished despite fewer sales. But there is sharp appreciation, with much of the sales action now in the range between $1 million and $1.5 million. Overall, there is sharp appreciation across the range of properties.
With prices rising rapidly in Steamboat, real estate agents in the town of Craig, 42 miles west, are now starting to shop their lower-priced listings in Steamboat.
