Year forty-one in Park City

We just quietly celebrated our 41st year living full time in Park City. 

Our experience has been great and continues to be to this day, even if we clearly are not as young anymore, we have witnessed an exponential growth all around us, even the planet population has almost doubled from 4.87 billion in 1985 to about 8.31 billion today!

But our little neighborhood has remained as calm and peaceful as it used to be, the access to town and skiing super easy, the weather continues to be terrific even if it now feels a little bit warmer (we have absolutely no doubt that climate change is real and is here, not just to stay, but will get much worse). 

We used to say: “We don’t need air-conditioning in Park City!” Today, this has become a debatable subject. On the plus side, we now have many more tall trees (our town has turned into an urban forest) with more wildlife keeping us company whether we’re enjoying it or not and, finally, the deepening feeling that we made the absolutely right choice the day we decided to move here.

A smoother path to eternity…

As the regular readers of this blog know, the Park City cemetery is an important section that we cross everyday during our morning walk. 

For years, the asphalted pathway have been showing its age, being summarily but poorly repaired, and it’s only last week that a new, thick and smooth coat of asphalt was finally laid down to rest, yes, to make our crossing much more enjoyable. 

Not only has the walking sensation greatly enhanced as it’s become like walking on carpet, but it’s also far less noisy for the residents that can now enjoy a hushed silence when someone (human or wildlife) ambles around. 

In many ways it now look like a pathway to eternity and offers a much more encouraging perspective to anyone whether planning a very long stay or just stroll...

Herding deer in Park City

Like with cats, it’s not easy to herd deer, especially after a long Park City winter. They love to loiter in subdivisions, feast on fancy trees or shrubs and leave the homeowner with the left-overs. 

It takes a special set of skills to send them running in the right direction and my wife has that gift and can direct these four-legged creatures wherever she wants. 

She should probably get a job with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources and get involved with managing the Cervidae family in an effort to get them out of our neighborhood and back into nature, where they belong. 

I should probably talk to her before and see if she’d be interested, but she’s a natural for that job! 

Park City ducks and macro socio economics

In recent years, our wildlife population has exploded in Park City. Too many deer, elks, or ducks that are starving during our harsh winter months. 

Since humans don’t really care, what is Mother Nature to do about it? Drastically reduce their numbers through starvation, predators or infectious diseases. She knows the drill and is very effective at getting the job done. 

Quite unlike the human species that has invented shelter, food storage, shamans, doctors and pharmaceuticals to keep everyone alive, even if that number is far in excess of our planet’s ability to sustain this human overflow. 

Well, in case you haven’t paid attention, this unnatural, overpopulation is what is making our earth buckle under pollution, natural resources depletion and global warming. Why in the world is humanity unable to see that all these ills are caused by unbridled human expansion? 

It would be nice, for a change, to address the cause and not the symptoms…

The impact of man-made snow

As our local resorts are now taking advantage of very cold weather to make snow, it’s a good time to ponder the ecological impact of snow-making on our environment. Since snow guns work best at night, folks living near the slopes must put up with relentless noise that also negatively affects wildlife! 

Then, there’s the question of water availability, particularly in winter, when mountain streams are low, making it often necessary to transport the water or have it stored on site through man-made ponds. While adjuvants (ice nucleation-active proteins from bacteria) are no longer added in Europe they still are in America. These serve as nuclei to induce the formation of ice crystals at relatively high temperatures. 

Once produced, artificial snow is 50 times harder and 4 times denser than its natural version; it also tends to waterproof the soil it covers and contributes to gullying and erosion. Slower to disappear, it tends to extend the seasonality of melting. Snow guns generally require between 3,000 and 4,000 cubic meters of water per hectare of slope covered, which suggests a thickness of one foot or 30 cm. 

Accordingly, it takes approximately 106 gallons (400 litres) of water to produce one cubic meter of snow, a significant amount of this water is lost due to evaporation, and thus is not returned to the water table. Furthermore, since it takes approximately 3.5 to 4.3 kWh of energy to produce one cubic meter of snow it would represent around 17,500 kWh of electricity. Power costs vary wildly and are half in the US of they are in Europe. 

In France, producing one cubic meter of snow costs $2,5 which includes water, power, investment amortization and labor costs but not grooming expenses. As a country, France also uses around fifteen million cubic meters of water per season to make snow, and this activity cost the largest ski areas in America and Europe around 1 to 2 million dollars per season depending on their infrastructure, not counting labor, infrastructure cost and grooming expenses. 

Obviously, the high cost of man-made snow is passed on to the end-user under the form of more expensive lift tickets. Without making snow, US ski resorts would lose over $1 billion annually and skiing would quickly lose its attraction, especially in view of an accelerating climate change!

What happened to our rabbits?

After a long and severe winter, most animals wintering among us came back in about the same numbers as we were used to see before. 

Deer, moose, magpies, ducks or squirrels resumed their daily spring and summer activities around our Park City home as they used to, or close to it. I’m not talking about migratory birds that transit through town or come just for the summer. Those have returned as expected. 

There was however, on notable absent species and it was the cottontail rabbit that, over recent years, had seen its population skyrocket in our mountain town. This year, I have yet to see a single one. I saw a few tracks on the snow when I was skiing, but it seems to me that the occurrences faded away as the season went on.

That led me to theorize that because of the deep, heavy snow, rabbits, just like many deer had been starving to death, even suffering temporary extinction. I haven’t been able to verify my stark conclusion. 

The only information getting close to that came from the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, in an article dated June 23, that said that rabbit population was hit by some hemorrhagic disease, the virus serotype 2 (RHDV-2), a foreign animal disease in the US. 

This is not related to COVID-19. Both domestic and wild rabbits, as well as pikas, are susceptible to the disease, and infection results in 80 to 100% mortality. Rabbits may become sick one to five days after exposure and have symptoms of fever, lethargy, lack of appetite, difficulty breathing and frothy blood coming from their nose just prior to death. 

The virus causes liver inflammation that prevents blood from clotting and eventually the rabbit dies from internal hemorrhage. Sadly, there’s no treatment for it. The disease first identified with domestic rabbits in Europe, has been detected in multiple southwestern states and northern Mexico in early 2020. 

On June 22, 2020, the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food confirmed that a private farm with domestic rabbits in southern Utah had rabbits that tested positive for the disease. Infected wild rabbits may be lethargic and not flee when approached. 

Knowing this, I will have to admit that my initial theory was a product of my overflowing imagination!

Who’s trampling our veggie garden?

We’ve kept a veggie garden since my retirement in 2006. For that many years, we’ve grown herbs, lettuces and strawberries with pretty good success. 

This actually was until the trees around our house kept on growing, inviting much more wildlife than ever before (birds, squirrels, rabbits, deer, elk and moose, among other critters). 

Three to four summers ago, our strawberries were the first to be targeted. We tried everything available to chase magpies and American robins away, but with little success. The deer also like the strawberry, preferring the leaves and pulled some of our lettuce to munch on them. 

We could have used a machine gun, but we relented. This year we finally put an end to the culture of strawberry. To almost paraphrase the Beatles, our “strawberry fields aren’t forever”. Yet, in spite of this kind of adversity, we’ve prepared the ground and sowed lettuces that have just begun showing up.

Except that two days ago, I discovers the big footprints left by a wandering moose, and I took it as a dire warning that were candidate for having moose, elk or deer using our yard as a self-service food-stop. 

We’ll keep you informed how this potential war might develop and which, between the human and the animal specie, is likely to win it!

Wildlife scourge

Progressively, a lot of deer have found refuge and settled inside our block that enjoy calm, little vehicular traffic and silence. 

It also have a lot of things to eat that not only have attracted these animals, but sustained them, especially during this very snowy winter. Days in, day out we count no less that 10 of them loitering in that protected space and showing absolutely no desire to move out of that area.

This wildlife is eating all the tree they can reach and are likely to stick around the rest of the year, feeding themselves on nice bushes, grass and whatever looks edible to them. 

I’ve called the Division of Wildlife Resources but it expressed no intention to relocated the animals. 

I have also discussed my concern with the City and asked them to take action about it, but as always, they have no idea and can’t see that it’s a problem for their constituents...

Our wildlife's existential quandary

This winter our local wildlife has a very tough time with feeding itself, as snow keeps on accumulating. On Monday, my wife counted 12 deer in our neighbor's yard, over the 3 foot wooden fence, and these guys seem to have established their winter quarters between our two homes munching on pine tree branches, the only “edible” stuff left for them. 

It’s not that as a community, Park City disregards the welfare of our four-legged friends. In late 2018, a $5 million overpass was completed, crossing over the Interstate 80 at Parleys summit, about 10 miles from our home, to let wildlife through the busy highway and limit vehicle collisions. 

Its camera went viral in 2020 when footage from the bridge was viewed over 3 million times. The clip below highlights just some of the animals that crossed in front of the cameras including moose, pumas, bobcats, bears, porcupines, mule deer, and coyotes. 

This of course is more variety than we see from our window that’s limited to moose, deer, squirrels, rabbit and the occasional grouse, but who know really which critter roams there? 

A new neighbor…

Our garden is home to all kinds of wildlife, big and small, from the occasional moose, the frequent deer and cottontail rabbit, to our permanent residents the squirrels, magpies, robins, birds of all kinds and more rarely, gopher snakes. 

Last Friday, however, we welcomed a new one, a Uinta ground squirrel (Urocitellus armatus), a members of the squirrel family of rodents, related to the marmot, that lives in the ground. Locally, we call them “pot-guts” after their rounded belly.

Cute and full of personality, they’re primarily herbivorous, and mostly eat grass, seeds, and leaves, along with a small amount of earthworms and discarded human food. These guys don’t work too hard, as they’re only active for a few months each year. 

These diurnal animals wake from hibernation around March-April and return to their burrows to hibernate as early as late July and mid August. When they come out of hibernation, they mate underground, each male mating with several females. Gestation lasts 23 to 26 days, and results in an average litter of five young early May. 

They can live for up to seven years in the wild and could also be your neighbors if you lived in Park City!

Finally, a solution for Little Cottonwood Canyon?

In recent years, accessing Snowbird and Alta, in Little Cottonwood Canyon, near Salt Lake City has become a huge traffic nightmare, with a narrow road without any avalanche protection, like what is common in the Alps, and with limited parking at the ski areas. 

The avalanche protection should have been put in place in the early 70s when Snowbird opened, but the State of Utah was too cheap to bite the bullet, and too ignorant to understand anything about avalanche mitigation. 

Today, two solutions are considered. An expanded bus service with road widening, or a 3S-type, 32 passenger gondola.

The bus option would be the fastest, getting people up the mountain in about 37 minutes, including parking and walking to the bus stop. Buses would pick riders up every five minutes, but could be slowed by variable winter weather conditions. 

The option also requires widening the road the entire way up the canyon, building snow sheds to help control avalanches and requiring cars to pay a toll during busy time. 

On the other hand, the gondola provides the most consistent travel times — just under an hour from parking to reaching the top — and would leave the base station every two minutes. 

While it would have a greater visual impact on the mountains, it would be less invasive to the nearby watershed, wildlife, and climbing. 

Both options would cost roughly the same over a 30-year period, that is over $500 million. They would also come with additional measures like building two park-and-ride lots close by, to handle visitors coming by car. 

My preference would go to the gondola in spite of its visibility defacing the Canyon’s natural beauty.

 

Dear Deer

In Ridgeview, the first neighborhood we moved to when we arrived in Park City, more than 35 years ago, there’s a house that recently errected a chain-link fence around its yard. 

We noticed it when we walked there, earlier this week, and I told my wife that such fencing was illegal within our City limits. 

Then our attention went to a two-page notice that explained why such a “diversion” had been built. I leave you with the story as it was told on the signs… 

Dear Deer, 

The buffet line is closed. Your bedroom and bathroom privileges are revoked. Enough is enough! For over 30 years we have shared this space. It was great to have one or two of you stop by every few weeks for a surprise visit. But times have changed. It is no longer a surprise. 

Now you are a herd, often numbering over a dozen, and in the winter you are here everyday. The annual cost of repairing your damage to the yard now exceeds our summer water bills. In the winter our driveway is covered in your excrement. In the spring , hundred of pounds of your waste must be racked from the yard before we can use it. 

You have eaten our Mugos to nubs, damaged more of the juniper and broken the lower branches of the spruce. It took 30 year to grow these plants. You destroyed decades of growth in days last winter. We suspect your numbers swelled when a few neighbors put out food to encourage you to visit their yards. 

They may have started modestly, but one neighbor tells me his efforts grow until he was putting out a hundred ponds of food a day for you. As the food supply grew, so did your numbers. As the food through appeared bottomless you stopped roaming and took up permanent residence. 

If the neighbors who feed you want a herd of deer in their yards, and accept the accompanying damage, that is their choice. We no longer accept the costs their actions have imposed upon us. This diversion is to help you break your habits and protect our vegetation. 

When you need to sleep, defecate, wrestle, or just want to taste a real plant again instead of food from a bag, go down the street and indulge yourself in someone else’s yard. 

P.S. We had a similar challenge with ducks a few years ago and put up a diversion from them. The ducks learned very quickly. Within a few weeks, they stopped coming through our yard. You deer have much bigger brains than ducks. You figure this out. Show us how fast you can learn! 

P.P.S. We would rather not have this diversion, but it has become necessary to protect the vegetation from ravenous, artiodactyl ungulates. The low junipers were eaten to nubs two years ago. Extensive watering brought some of them back, but is expensive and laborious. The Mugo pine you see was stripped to a height of over seven feet. It is never going to recover. Another Mugo ten feet to the east was completely denuded and had to be cut down. We replaced the Mugos with Arborvitae this spring as supposedly deer do not like to eat Arborvitae. Well they did not eat them, but the deer destroyed several of them two weeks ago rubbing the velvet of their antlers. We have had enough. We are protecting the vegetation. 

P.P.P.S. We have spoken to our neighbors about their compulsion to feed wildlife. Several people tell us they have called the DWR. After a few weeks or months, the neighbors seem to start putting out food again. This diversion seemed both more polite and more expeditious that filing another report with the DWR.

Why aren’t we burying power lines?

On September 8, the Salt Lake Valley was hit with 100 mph hurricane-force winds that toppled trees and shut down power to more than 170,000 households. My son wasn’t spared by the mayhem, lost two huge trees and, worst of all, had no electrical power for one full week.

So the first question he had for me as we talked after the mess, was : “Why in the world don’t we bury power lines?” Good and logical question for sure. The response I keep hearing is that there would be a huge cost and some potential problems, should we decide to bury underground power cables in older residence like his. 

Yet, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that underground distribution would be less subject to damage from severe weather and other accidents both natural and man-made. There are also other benefits like getting rid of unsightly wires, or freeing more land under power lines, and a decreased risk of danger to wildlife, or flying objects. 

Obviously, the high cost of burying power lines is estimated at roughly $750 per foot, compared with $70 per foot in aerial installations. The problem is that no one seems capable of estimating the economic cost of these outings and that of its repair. 

Of course, we are talking about short-term expenses vs. long-term investment, the later sounding woefully un-American these days. 

Still, buried power lines are protected from wind, ice, and tree damage that are common causes of outages, and suffer fewer weather or vegetation-related outages, but some naysayer claim that buried lines are more vulnerable to flooding and earthquake, while still able to fail due to equipment issues or lightning… 

So when there is little will, there won’t be a way, and expect to see more and very expensive outages caused by wind and fallen trees as global warming heats up and natural disasters multiply!

Why is wildlife invading Park City?

Gradually and over the past ten years we’ve seen a notable increase of wildlife around our Park City home. When we first came in 1985, the entire place was both barren and treeless and there was no way for us to observe much wildlife, except for ground-squirrels in the spring, magpies year-round and robins in the summer.

In the meantime, the small trees began their growth and in the last decade, they’ve created a true urban forest, producing its own life-sustaining environment and encouraging the settlement of pigeons, regular squirrels and occasionally, inviting a visit from the local coyote.

At the same time, in addition to aspen and fir trees, more decorative trees were planted, bushes of all kinds began to populate most gardens and with automatic irrigation, our town turned into an irresistible oasis of fresh, edible vegetation for deer, moose and elk.

And this abundance of fresh food and forest-like environment worked like a magnet on attracting all this wildlife, huge and small. The lack of natural predators (except for motorized vehicles) played also a huge role in this wildlife population explosion. But the idea that the poor creatures have been forced out of their habitat by our sprawling town just doesn’t wash.

Call it an urban legend if you will...

Where are the animals?

Yesterday morning, on my way to ski Snowbird, I drove under the $5 million wildlife bridge that was open to wildlife traffic last December.

I almost go through the area two or three times a month and have yet to see some activity involving any deer or elk crossing. I was told there were cameras installed to observe the animal traffic that seems to be few and far between.

Well, by my book it’s quite simple: The first large animal that crossed that path (if it ever did) would have cost $5 million to us, the taxpayers and our cost would decrease as traffic volume picks up. One thousand beasts crossing it would bring the cost per critter down to $5,000 a passage, which still seems quite expensive to me.

John Gleason, a spokesman with the Utah Department of Transportation, said that it took a few years for animals to begin using a similar crossing in Southern Utah, but, he asserts that now it’s second nature to them. “It will probably take some relearning,” he said. “There is a good chance we won’t know how effective this crossing is for a while. It will really be about determining if it’s cutting down on those collisions between vehicle and animal.”

I still think that the decor leaves to be desired when compared to the huge realistic-looking, wildlife overpasses near Banff, Canada, and if it were more wooded and vegetated, it would attract more animals, but who am I to judge. I’m not a moose !

Let's protect our wildlife!

If you've traveled on the Trans-Canada Highway in Banff National Park, you've seen these huge wooded wildlife overpasses that are said to have decreased collisions with animals by some 80 percent.

The Interstate 80 that connects New York to San Francisco, runs by Park City and, according to what I've recently read, has seen some 106 fatal accidents in the area, over a two-year period, that included 98 deer, 3 moose, 2 elk, 2 raccoon, and 1 cougar, all struck and killed by cars and trucks.

This continued slaughter has caused a public call for improvements — and the Utah Department of Transportation responded by building its first-ever bridge just for wildlife at the top of Parley Summit, (elevation 7,129 feet).

Now, since wildlife can't read road signs, how will they use that bridge? Apparently, the animals won’t have much choice, as 8-foot-tall wildlife fences have been placed on both sides of the bridge and the freeway on a stretch of about 3.5 miles, on both sides of the freeway.

This fencing will funnel the animals to the other side of the road over the bridge, keeping up with their specific migration patterns.

The new $5 million bridge is 330 feet long and 48 feet wide. This might seem expensive, but based on the above numbers, it should pay for itself in less than 12 years in terms of vehicle damage; I know what I'm talking about as I have hit 3 deer over a 20 year period.

The job will be completed before winter, so expect to see far less roadkill littering the interstate starting in 2019!

Squirrel story

Our little property witnesses an incessant wildlife traffic, from “big guys” like moose, elks and deer to smaller creatures like birds of all kinds, including humming birds, but also cottontail hares and squirrels.

If you didn't know it, our small Park City tree squirrels live, you've guessed it, in trees. This is where they build their nest, called drey, that's usually built of twigs, dry leaves, and grass, and squeezed inside the forks of a tree about 30 to 45 feet (9.1 to 13.7 m) above the ground.

Squirrels may also nest in attics or exterior walls of buildings, where a drey could be considered a fire hazard, as these critters love to chew on electrical cables. In our mountains, smarter or luckier squirrels sometime inhabit a permanent tree den in the hollow of a trunk.

The squirrel you see on that video is one of many we observe everyday, that carries pine-cones to its drey, and this time, we saw one being systematic about harvesting them from our next neighbor's tree by first pulling out as many pine-cones as possible, before collecting them later on the ground and bringing them home for storage...

When wildlife eats out...

Too much snow doesn't make wildlife survival easier and this winter, Park City has seen a lot of wild animals venturing in town in search of food.

Yesterday, as we were walking we spotted that calf moose kneeling and eating some chipped bark in a front of a house.

The animal saw us, kept on feeding and one house further down the street, the huge mom ambled towards us, paid scan attention to the two nervous pedestrians and rejoined her offspring.

 Okay, that's another day in Park City!

Ski Industry thoughts about Trump

Ski Area Management (SAM) is a magazine targeting the mid and top management at American ski resorts. Unless it has been living under a rock, its entire audience should be very extremely sensitive to the issue of global warming.

In a tongue-and-check survey it asked its readership to express their opinion about a Trump presidency. I voted along with 472 other readers, and I posted the results next to this blog.

For those of my readers who have not quite followed or understood some of the key points in Trump's program, just remember that he doesn't believe in climate change, that he will go full tilt to extract more fossil fuels every where he can, that he will renege on the recent Paris Accords, abolish the EPA and that Sarah Palin is likely to be his Interior Secretary (Nation Public Lands and wildlife)!

Enough to make a legitimate member of the ski industry commit suicide, but apparently not in the instance of our ski lift owners, operators and managers. More than 40% are okay with his program while the rest (less than 60% of smart folks) is praying hard that none of it comes to pass, so go figure...

The champion, the hunter and his fans

Luc Alphand is a former World Cup alpine ski racer from France; he specialized in speed events like Downhill and Super G and later became a very successful race car driver. He has a great following in France and because of his wonderful talents and widespread popularity, he's been able to attract sponsors and made a great life for himself.

As we all know, reaching celebrity status has an impact on one's private life and freedom of movement; it also creates certain obligations. Among others, there's is a certain degree of “political correctness” expected from public figures that will restrict taking radical positions or actions that might displease a certain portion of the individual's supporters.

Sure, there are high-level actions such as charitable drives, environmental positions that are considered noble and worthwhile, but anything like supporting tyrants (Killy supporting Putin), favoring controversial causes or being pro highly “radio-active” issues should be altogether avoided. At the very least, such actions, if they are taken, should remain totally private.

Now, let me bring today's subject in full light. Mr. Alphand goes hunting in the Kamtchatka region of Russia with a guided outfit (Ovini Expeditions) to kill bears, mountain sheep and other wildlife. In the process, he finds nothing better than posting photos parading his trophies on Facebook.

I'm not a hunter, I'm not against hunting and I eat mean every now and then, but I have little respect for someone who needs to go away from his natural stomping grounds, spend a lot of money for it, in order to shoot wildlife in a place where rules are few and far between. This sounds a bit degenerate to me.

Of course, this kind of reckless personal promotion should not come as a surprise in this age of selfies and narcissist indulgence, but Luc Alphand should have been smarter in staying away from the limelight under these circumstances. He's now pissed off half of his fans, must feel pretty bad and can't put the toothpaste back inside the tube.