Environmental icon dies at age 90

by Amy Maestas

 

Environmental giant dies

Stewart Udall, one of the West's most iconic defenders of wild spaces, died Saturday in New Mexico. Udall served as secretary of the Interior during the 1960s. As The Salt Lake Tribune and other newspapers pointed out in their coverage, Udall was the last surviving member of the Cabinet that served under President John F. Kennedy.

Throughout his tenure, he added 4 million acres of land the public ownership. His family also was and still is influential in the West. His brother Morris served 15 terms in Congress. His nephew Mark is a Colorado senator. His son Tom, who served five terms in Congress, took over the GOP Senate seat in 2008 for New Mexico.

Though the press far and wide has had interesting stories, perhaps the Tribune's editorial is the best in summing up Udall's impact on public lands in the West. Read it here: http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_14733952.

 

Obama feels Telluridian's pain

Baked in Telluride, the well-loved bakery in downtown Telluride, burned to the ground in early February. It was a loss that has extended far beyond the mountain hamlet that is home to an admixture of celebrities and scrappy ski bums.

The fire put 25 people out of work and ate up the hard work of its owner, Jerry Greene. But Greene got a bit of consolation last month when he traveled to Denver and was able to meet President Barack Obama. Their meeting wasn't intended just to have the president hear Greene's tragedy. But it turned out that way.

For the complete story, read it here in the Telluride Daily Planet: http://www.telluridenews.com/articles/2010/03/20/news/doc4b848de733eaf425222807.txt.

 

Natural sounds

The National Park Service several years ago started an effort to save natural sounds in parks throughout the United States. The agency said it recognizes that sounds are important to the experience of visitors and character. The effort is to protect natural sound like it does other natural resources.

Recently, Zion National Park officials said it would begin studying how to preserve the sounds there. The plan is called "soundscape management" and targets ways to make sure human noise doesn't drown out natural sounds.

 

 

Whose grabbing whose land?

by Amy Maestas

Whose grabbing whose land?

Last week in the Utah legislature, lawmakers passed a bill that gives the state ability to seize national forests and other federal land to develop. The idea is to get more oil and gas drilling, which will provide revenue for the state's ailing budget.

The move has environmental groups up in arms, even though some say they doubt the bill will move past the Utah Senate.

Nonetheless, the issue is gaining national attention. The Los Angeles Times picked up the story. Read it here: http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-utah-domain3-2010mar03,0,841750.story

The interesting thing is, Utah has been nearly apoplectic about a leaked memo from the Department of the Interior that allegedly lays out some plans for establishing new national monuments in the West. Utah lawmakers have pointedly said they see any action as a "federal land grab."

A good perspective about this can be read at High Country News here: http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/whos-grabbing-now.

 

Lat and long for the skinny tires

Residents of the Four Corners who use Google maps for driving now have a good reason to hop on their bikes to get someplace rather than the car. Google recently unveiled its feature that maps bike routes. This includes road directions and trail data. Although reviews about the functionality is mixed, Google knows it and is likely to beef up the feature. For the rural residents of the Four Corners, they don't have to worry as much as urbanites, whose routes could take them through odd or dangerous places.

Check it out for yourself: http://maps.google.com/

 

Sunny side of life

The National Park Service has announced it is using money from the federal stimulus package to install solar photovoltaic panels at several parks throughout the country. "Funding for the solar installations, as well as for many other park repairs and upgrades, will come from $129 million in savings from large construction projects approved under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that cost less than expected, officials said."

Several projects already have approved funding, including Mesa Verde National Park, where the agency will install eight systems on historic headquarters buildings. In Utah, the agency will replace a photovoltaic inverter at Natural Bridges National Monument to maintain the park's 100 percent dependence on solar electricity. Also in Utah, panels will be put on various buildings at Zion National Park.

 

On the move

Remember that massive mound of uranium tailings that sits conspicuously on the edge of Moab? The one that has sat there for decades, leaching who knows that into the Colorado River? The one that has been ignored and put off for cleanup for far too long? Well, there has been more progress. Cleanup began last year, but just last week the first train carrying 1 millionth ton of tailings pulled out of town. It was a milestone for this project.

It's the first train to haul that stuff out of there, but remember that the entire removal project is estimated to take 10 years to get rid of 16 million tons.

Stairway to heaven?

by Amy Maestas

 

Stairway to heaven?

Some might call it that. Last week, Telluride Ski Resort put in place a stairway on Gold Hill to connect Chutes 8 and 9 on the left side of Palmyra Peak.

A la Chamonix, France, the stairs and bridge, which are more than 1,000 feet long and the bridge 24 feet long, give skiers a route to the chutes and the powder fields of Palmyra Basin. Telluride executives say, "The French Alps resort of Chamonix, and the Aiguille du Midi - Mont Blanc in particular, provided inspiration for this project."

It was a pretty incredible engineering feat. Check out the series of installation photos on Telluride Ski Resort's blog: http://blog.tellurideskiresort.com/blogs/davesblog/archive/2010/02/24/gold-hill-9-bridge-amp-stairs-installed-this-morning.aspx.

 

A first time for everything

Last fall, the Colorado Tourism Office launched a unique, if not contrived, campaign to draw media attention to the state. The campaign is called Snow at First Sight. The office put out a call for people to enter a contest ? all based on snow. Its intent was to find three people who have never seen or experienced snow and then bring them to Colorado for adventures. Those winners would travel the state and blog, take photos and videos and essentially, rave about how great Colorado's snow is.

The winners ended up being from Melbourne, Australia, Atlanta, Ga., and Kailua, Oahu in Hawaii.

They started their three-month adventure in early January. Since then, they've been sharing their thoughts and fun on blogs. If you want to know what they have to say about Colorado and snow, follow them here: www.coloradosnowatfirstsight.com and also on Facebook, where you will have the chance to recommend what they do if they end up in your town: www.facebook.com/snowatfirstsight#!/snowatfirstsight.

 

GOP candidate buys Alta Lakes

In a surprising turn of events, former eBay chief executive officer and now California Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman recently bought Alta Lakes, just outside Telluride. Whitman owns Skyline Ranch, which is nearby.

 

Whitman bought the properties from Silver Mountain Industries, which reportedly planned to build a neighborhood there. That raised the hackles of conservationists and environmentalists, who wanted to see the area remain in a pristine state. Does that mean Whitman is killing those plans?

 

Hard to say. Whitman's spokespeople have not said what she intends to do with Alta Lakes, though the popular thinking is that she'll conserve the land. San Miguel County Planning Director Mike Rozycki told the Telluride Daily Planet (www.telluridenews.com/) that he's under the impression the billionaire bought the land for conservation purposes. As the newspaper article stated, in the past Whitman has donated money toward other Telluride conservation efforts, most notably the effort to save the Valley Floor, the expansive open space at the town's entrance.

 

 

 

Ed's not here, man

by Amy Maestas

Ed's not here, man

There are a lot of you Ed Abbey fanatics out there, so here's your chance to really take it over the top. A home Abbey owned in Moab, Utah, is for sale. Abbey bought the house at 2240 Spanish Valley Drive in 1974. He lived there off and on until 1978, when he moved to Tucson, Ariz. It isn't the one-room trailer Abbey lived in when he first moved to Moab during the area's uranium boom and when he worked as a ranger for the park service. Rather, this house is where he wrote the mucho-famous The Monkey Wrench Gang.

The house is 2,800 square feet, has four bedrooms and two bathrooms, and it sits on 1.41 acres. It's yours for $290,000. I think that's a screaming deal for a house that size in an ever-growing tourist trap of a town once owned by an all-but-canonized author and environmentalist.

Reportedly, Abbey bought the house for $26,000 and sold it for $40,000. Wonder how many wrenches Abbey bought with the profit?

 

Yup, you're out of your league

It will be hard not to make fun of the target audience of this new gadget on the market. But the tongue-in-cheek name of the gadget is setting itself up. Don't read on if you are a young, upwardly mobile professional.

ACR Electronics recently released put on the market a personal locator beacon that sends out long-range and satellite-assisted signal to search teams when the user is lost or distressed in the wilderness. That sounds like a great tool to have on hand. But rescue teams throughout the country are distressed themselves: people who shouldn't be or aren't fully prepared to be in the wilderness.

GPS technology has given a certain segment of people the false sense of security ? and, frankly, a set of guts they didn't previously have. That's because they can go on an adventure and know that their GPS gadgets will get them out of trouble if they encounter it. These devices they use have earned them the not-so-friendly moniker of Yuppie 911.

"Now you can go into the back country and take a risk you might not normally have taken," says Matt Scharper, who coordinates a rescue every day in a state with wilderness so rugged even crashed planes can take decades to find, told the Associated Press recently. "With the Yuppie 911, you send a message to a satellite and the government pulls your butt out of something you shouldn't have been in in the first place."

 

Ticked off in Taos

Just because you are a successful business man does not mean you're the brightest. The saga continues in Taos, N.M., after Whitten Inn owner Larry Whitten began telling his employees recently that they could not speak Spanish and they had to Anglicize their Hispanic names. Since Whitten did that, there have been protests at the inn, and also calls to boycott his business.

So far, Whitten has been numb about his short-sighted act to try to whitewash his inn and employees.

?The Flying Tomato' throws it down

by Amy Maestas

?The Flying Tomato' throws it down

Last winter, the tiny town of Silverton was abuzz because professional snowboarder and Olympics gold medal winner Shaun White was in town to film a video at Silverton Mountain Resort. It was part of Red Bull's Project X. After White gets helicoptered to Silverton, he sets down on some virgin snow. He then attacks a halfpipe that was sculpted exclusively for him at one of the West's favorite gnarly mountains. White did what he said are an invention of new tricks that would change the sport of snowboarding forever.

Because Silverton doesn't have a halfpipe in place, the buildup was intense. According to Project X, it took two months and 30 heli-bomb dropped avalanches to get enough snow to build the feature. Add to that: 7,200 foam blocks were used to fill the foam pit; it took 300 hours to build the foam pit; and 25,000 cubic yards of snow were moved to make the half pipe.

White and Red Bull plan to debut the video this season. But for those of you who want to see a teaser, it's now available. Check it out here: http://www.shaunwhite.com/projectx/?fbid=gt2Y-7nSZXn

 

Easy tracing

Earlier this summer, Inside/Outside brought to you a story about Taos, N.M.'s 40th anniversary celebration of counterculture film "Easy Rider." The town has been abuzz the last several months as it put on its Summer of Love. The national and international press gave it plenty of ink. But this week, Slate, an online magazine, has been retracing the path of the filming of "Easy Rider." Writer Keith Phipps took a road trip this summer and has thoughtfully shared his views and history of the making of the film. The tromp through the Southwest has been giving the Four Corners a pretty good representation. Today's entry is about Las Vegas, N.M., but it's best to read Phipps' account from the beginning. You'll find a lot of talk about familiar landscapes and culture.

To start from the top, click here: http://www.slate.com/id/2233176/entry/2233171/

 

Culture in danger

No one likes to hear about dangers to a cultural site. But the L.A. Times recently did a piece about this very thing. Among them is the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico. The pueblo is on of the few remaining 13th and 14th centuries Puebloan settlements. The World Monuments Fund releases a list of endangered sites every two years. The 2010 list has only nine places in the United States; the others are scattered throughout the world. To read about the threats to Taos Pueblo, visit the WMF site here: http://www.wmf.org/project/taos-pueblo?more=1

And there's more bad news from the climate side. The Natural Resources Defense Council and the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization recently put out a report that says climate change is threatening 25 national parks. Among them is Mesa Verde National Park, outside Cortez, Colo. "National Parks in Peril: The Threats of Climate Disruption" says "the changes in landscapes and ecosystems are harming plants, trees and wildlife, but also threaten human activity in the parks and manmade structures. The factors include a loss of ice and snow, including melting glaciers; a loss of water, especially in the West; and higher seas and stronger coastal storms, which leads to flooding in coastal areas."