Another personal record shattered!

I love to ski Ninety-Nine 90! It’s a high speed quad that serves the highest point in the Canyons and a steep cirque that offers a great variety of terrain and endless options. 

The lift offers a 1,536 ft vertical drop and gets skiers to the top in less than 7 minutes. The run I take is pretty much under the lift line, is very steep, quite athletic and leaves no room for error or lack of concentration. 

In previous years, I had set two equal, personal records for the number of laps skied non stop on that lift, a first one for 25 laps on February 27, 2010 with a total vertical skied for that day 42,450 ft skied for that day, then another one for an equal 25 laps on February 15, 2020, with a total vertical skied of 43,105 ft that I had measured at an average time of 9 min 49 sec per lap. 

This year, as I’m inexorably growing older, I wanted to see if I could at least repeat or do better than that, so I picked Sunday and managed to I skied 27 times non-stop, shattering my former records, for a total vertical of 46,026 at 10 min 27 sec per lap. 

This slower average performance per lap could suggest a certain decline showing my older age (75) and a steady slow-down of my ski functions, but as an excuse for the dip, snow conditions were much more difficult today (hard, re-frozen snow) and I simply didn’t want to fall, get hurt or even die in that quest for performance. 

Besides, I wasn’t that tired after my 27 laps and could have pushed to 30, as I had plenty more reserve to go, but again didn’t want to push my luck either. That will be kept in reserve for a future attempt!

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...

A solution to lessen Epic & Ikon’s impacts

Ask anyone living in a ski town where the lifts are owned or associated to Alterra and Vail Resorts and you hear how the local population has been negatively affected by the invasion of pass-holders usually skiing at their own mountain. 

The multi-resorts Epic and Ikon passes looked like good ideas at first, but have developed scores of unintended consequences by bringing huge numbers of skiers and traffic into ski towns like Park City, altering negatively the lives of its residents, regular visitors, skiers and snowboarder without bringing commensurate benefits to the community, as many of these people make very limited use of services offered by Park City (lodging and restaurant among others) while impacting both heavily and negatively the quality of the experience and life of the rest of us. 

 

This goes for any resort owned or participating in the ski-passes created by Vail Resorts and Alterra. First, there’s the carbon footprint story, on the one hand, Vail Resorts promises to achieve zero net emissions by 2030 by doubling down on energy efficiency, purchasing 100 percent renewable energy and investing in programs such as tree planting. Alterra isn’t as bold with its commitment and only has generalities to share: “We recognize and own the responsibility to develop and nurture initiatives that protect and expand access to the mountains. Our industry’s longevity and expansion depend on these efforts, and I have full confidence in this talented team leading the charge.” 

 

Yet, on the other hand, in spite of their nice environmental talk both companies’ multi-pass program promotes more car usage through North America, not too mention mention gridlock in ski towns defeating their respective environmental pledges. In fact, the “band-aid solution” would be to add more parking space, when in fact we should limit the number of vehicles that don’t contribute to the ski town’s economy. 

 

That problem might seem unsolvable, but yet could be addressed very simply by having both Vail Resorts and Alterra offer full and restricted passes (blacked-out in some versions if they choose) for one specific resort at a price slightly below their current passes and then offer multi-resorts passes a significantly higher prices to weed-out casual visitors on strict budget that typically don’t contribute much to compensating the community they invade in their discovery process. 

 

There might be ways also both both Epic and Ikon passes to contribute through these higher priced passes to in an effort to compensate destination towns that are impacted by the extra traffic. 

 

At any rate, ALL impacted communities, like Park City, need to organize together, and must find ways to convince the two operators to limit the multi-resorts passes they sell and by so doing, put the brakes on trivial travel that contributes to huge lift line, air pollution, gridlock, pot-holes and parking shortages and remediation, but fails to pay for the damages they create.

Is more snow better?

A good snow cover is important for us in Utah as is means a rich and long-lasting snow-pack that may lessen a bit the super drought we’re currently in. There are also two good things going with too much snow: We no longer need “rock skis” and we won’t damage these brand new boards! 

Yet, beyond that, record-breaking snow like this year, brings a series of obvious downsides. The most obvious one is what to do with all the snow, plowing the roads on time and making room for new snow that are a constant nightmare for our municipality. 

Driving conditions get also much trickier and walking along roads and pathways becomes more dangerous as well as the risk of slip and fall increases dramatically. Then there’s lot of wear and tear on roadways and parking lots that need to be addressed in the spring.

Around houses and buildings, things aren’t better. Overloaded roofs risk collapsing, ice dams abound and force homeowners to remove snow on roofs. 

To add insult to injury water problems don’t all originate from overloaded roofs, many come also from melting snow over a frozen ground that can only escape into crawl spaces, basements and lower spaces, requiring sump pumps and the like. 

Finally, far less sunny and pleasant days become hard to endure and end up depressing us all. Did I mention the lack of good visibility when we ski under cloudy skies and in the middle of a snow storm? 

When all is said and done, we might be better of with just half of that snow, but thank God, we don’t control the volume!

Are atmospheric rivers bringing us more snow?

Just like California, Utah has been slammed this winter by a series of snow storms associated with the atmospheric river phenomenon resulting in record accumulation of heavy, dense snow.

These long and wide plumes of water vapor flowing from the tropical Pacific regions are amplified as Earth warms, according to climate scientists. 

 Still, Utah is typically known for its dry environment. But these recent atmospheric rivers have paradoxically brought an influx of rain and snow, creating a buildup of snow-pack that could ease drought conditions. 

According to climate specialist, these massive rivers, which sometimes carry 15 times the water volume of the Mississippi River, deliver half of the western United States’ total precipitation in less than 15 total days. Since pre-industrial times, Earth’s atmosphere has warmed about 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit, and after observing heavier rain in storms, hurricanes, daily precipitation researching are now focusing on atmospheric rivers. 

This new development might play a critical role in supplying mountain snow-pack, which serves as an important source of freshwater as it melts in the spring and summer. Yet, as global temperatures rise, the snow level is getting higher in altitude and that good trend for skiers might be limited in time. 

We’ll see what happens, but the for the moment we’re seriously snowed in!

US Inflation: One year late, percent points short?

I’m not a fan of the current Fed boss, but must admit that Jerome Powell has been able to get some results since he began to raise the interest rates. 

Sure, he should have begun a year before and be more decisive like Paul Volker was in 1980 These past few months though the rate of decline seems to have slowed down as we appear to have hit a zone of diminishing returns.

How soon can the US return to its target rate of 2 percent? Hard to say. In my view, certainly not before 2023 is over, so the meek Powell will need to keep on raising rate and not get distracted by the recent bank failures that have spooked the financial markets. 

This said I’m afraid he will, and US inflation will continue its long grind in 2024...

Thinking about taxes…

In America, tax season is upon us and with it, family discussions about that government requirement that we must pay taxes to keep our (very expensive) Nation running smoothly. 

I’ve recently read that for the year 2022, the US federal income tax brackets range from 10% to 37%. Back in 2018, the top 50% of taxpayers paid 97.1% of all federal income taxes and among them, the average income tax rate was 14.6% with an average tax paid of $20,663. 

This said, Americans love to “avoid” paying too much taxes. Big corporation lead the way by showing some intricate examples of “engineering” their tax situation by paying nothing. How then can you expect the average American to pay their fair share willingly and happily?

I’ve always said to my family that I wish I paid millions of dollars in taxes every year, as it would indicate that I’m making plenty of money, but no one seems to be moved or inspired by my heartfelt, hypothetical, fiscal generosity. 

Even my own offspring seem to have fallen for that American sport consisting at minimizing their tax bite at any cost. Well, this won’t change my view on the matter as I can proudly proclaim that I’m done with my taxes for 2022. 

I don’t think I’ll pay excessively and I feel quite good about this annual exercise!