Avalanche claims one in Colorado
CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. – The sad work of finding the body of avalanche victim Mike Bowen was completed three days after he died on Mt.Emmons. He had been reared in Iowa, but sloshed coffee at a local beanery and was described as a person with a great sense of humor and an avid fan of the backcountry. He was 36. His body, reports the Crested Butte News, was buried under 4 feet of snow. He had used a bicycle to get to the base of the mountain, which is a short distance from Crested Butte. At least six medium-sized avalanches had run in the immediate area around the avalanche that killed him.
In-bounds slide kills one in Wyoming
JACKSON, Wyo. – For the second time this season, an in-bounds skier has been killed at a ski area. The first, in mid-December, occurred at Utah’s Snowbird ski area. Then, two days after Christmas, a 31-year-old skier died after being buried under 8 feet of snow at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort.
Avalanches on ski trails within ski areas are relatively rare, and fatalities resulting from them are even more rare.
At Jackson Hole, the slope where the avalanche occurred had just been opened a few hours prior. However, it had been skied quite a bit, resort spokeswoman Anna Olson told the Jackson Hole News & Guide, and other “normal precautions” had been taken. Those precautions normally include the use of explosives to trigger avalanches.
The skier had been wearing a transceiver, and so ski patrollers were able to pinpoint the location of his body within six minutes, and then recover the body four minutes later. Patrollers administered cardio-pulmonary resuscitation and used a defibrillation device, but without success.
The slab avalanche broke a crown 6 to 8 feet deep, patrollers said. Up to 30 inches of snow had fallen on the mountain, with a total depth of snow of 138 inches at mid mountain.
On the same day, at about the same time, two snowmobilers were killed by an avalanche in the Rabbit Ears Range west of Grand Lake, Colo. One snowmobiler who was with them was partially buried and was able to dig himself out. When rescue personnel arrived, cardio-pulmonary resuscitation was being performed on one of the victims.
It took rescuers an hour and 45 minutes to find and dig out the second snowmobiler. Both victims, one aged 38 and the other 19, were declared dead at the scene.
“We hate it when this kind of thing happens,” search leader Mark Foley told the Sky-Hi Daily News, “but they were in a bad place at a bad time, and they had no beacons (transceivers) on. If they had beacons on, it’s possible they could have been saved.”
Deer tango, then tangle
EAGLE, Colo. – You’ve heard the cliché about “locked horns.” Cindy Cohagen had a rare opportunity to observe the phenomenon while walking her dog recently in the countryside near Eagle. Two deer bucks were smashing their antlered heads together across a fence. Then the smashing stopped—they had locked horns.
“It was absolutely one of the most incredible spectacles of my entire life,” Cohagen told the Eagle Valley Enterprise.
Tranquilizers are sometimes used, but it was too cold. Instead, state wildlife officer Bill Andree lassooed one side of the entangled antlers, and with the aid of assistants, wrestled the deer to the ground. He then sawed off one of the antlers. That did the trick. The bucks, freed of one another, bounded off into the hills.
Andree said he has never had to physically untangle deer, even if bucks often lock antlers.
“Usually they get apart before officers can get there,” he said. “Once in a while, they die.”
The antler-bashing routine is part of what bucks do during mating season.
“They’re doing it because they’re guys,” he said.
After the end of breeding season, in about a month, the antlers will start dropping off.
Whispers about Madoff in Aspen
ASPEN, Colo. — There is hushed talk in Aspen about local victims of Bernard Madoff’s alleged Ponzi scheme. At least two residents are said to be selling their homes because of losses suffered in the scam.
“I did not invest in him, but I know at least 10 people (in Aspen) who did,” said Aspen businessman Leonard “Boogie” Weinglass. “But I’m not giving their names.”
A disproportionate number of Madoff’s victims were said to be Jewish, and Aspen has a large Jewish community, with three congregations.
“I can tell you dozens and dozens of people,” said one resident, well connected to Aspen’s Jewish community, who spoke anonymously with The Aspen Times. “I would not be surprised if the impact is half a billion dollars.”
Victims of the Ponzi scheme were also rumored to be in Vail.
But if there were victims, there were also beneficiaries. The New York Times reports that most of the vanished money was probably paid out earlier to beneficiaries, as that’s how a Ponzi scheme works. Madoff lured investors by magically appearing to produce 10 percent returns even in down markets.
