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Show A-7 The Park Record Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues, October 1-4, 2005 MOUNTAIN TOWN NEWS A Roundui CSORISJERSTOISJE HOME MORTGAGE Building pace picks up in Ouray-Ridgway area 250 pickup is among the most polluting vehicles on the planet. It •Yellowstone Club creator in gets only 12 to 16 miles per gallon, and if it burns diesel, it emits an the news awful lot of particulates that can BOISE, Idaho - Montana's get into lungs. Yellowstone Club was billed as the So the news in Truck.ec of a world's first private ski and golf man who is reducing his polluting resort. To join the club, located ways by mixing in hiodiescl is only near the Big Sky Resort, located the silver lining of a dark, dark between Bozeman and West cloud. Yellowstone in the scenic Gallatin Like in the movie called River Valley; members must first "French Fries to Go," produced in prove a net worth of $3 million or Telluride three years ago, this more. The initiation fee is employee of an architectural firm $250,000, and $16,000 in uses the cooking oil from a Chinese restaurant to create annual dues are assessed. The man who created that club, biodiesel. Because biodiesel conTim Blixseth, is now in the news in geals in colder temperatures found Idaho. He has purchased 180,000 in mountain towns, most people acres of limberland from Boise dilute their regular diesel by only Cascade. He intends to trade large 20 percent. chunks of that land to the Forest Everybody seems to win in the Service, giving the federal agency arrangement, in which the restaucontrol over the wonderfully sce- rants saves $45 per moth in disposnic Payette River Canyon between al fees, the- driver saves in fuel Boise and McCall. But he intends costs on his thrice-weekly 60-mile to continue logging other chunks commuter from home to work. of the property, which is located in And, not least, the air is slightly the broad region around the less polluted - but only slightly. Brundage and Tamarack ski areas. • Biodiesel - it isn't the cure for The Idaho Statesman reports everything. that some neighbors worry that Blixeth will log off the woods and •Inmates could be warmed develop the land into subdivisions. by fires from thinned trees Land values in the region have doubled and even tripled in the CARSON CITY, Nev. - A last year. Furthermore, govern- company based in Carson City, ment review in unincorporated Nev., near Lake Tahoe, is trying areas is negligible. Blixseth says he to put together a partnership has no interest in selling the property, and probably will buy even more. "Development is a long way away." he told the Statesman. Conservationists seem to have high regard for Blixeth. Blixeth had originally planned a ski resort in an area of Montana that environmentalists and the Forest Service thought would have been environmentally destructive. Instead, he did a land swap, keeping the development land more compact at the Yellowstone Club. The Idaho Statesman says that the latest dream of the 54-year-old Blixeth is the Yellowstone Club World, a global resort club with properties already in Scotland, Mexico, and Alaska. He wants to buy resort properties around the world for use exclusively by his members. Membership fee is on a sliding scale of up to $10 million. subsequently closed. By ALLEN BEST Record guest writer RIDGWAY, Colo. - If you see a photo extolling the beauty of Colorado's mountains, chances are good that it comes from near Ridgway, at the north portal to the San Juan Mountains. For all its knock-down beauty, however, Ridgway and Ouray County have not been bowled over by development. That, however, is starting to change. The Telluride Watch, which does business on the other side of that magnificent background of mountains, reports that current building proposals would double the size of Ridgway. •Speed dating arrives at pub in Summit County SUMMIT COUNTY, Colo.-Speed dating for unattached Gen Xers is arriving in Summit County. The way it works is that men and women are given the opportunity to have up to 12 meetings lasting six minutes during an evening. The event is at a brewpub already noted for its lively singles season. The event is limited to singles aged 26 through 39, reports the Summit Daily News. Cost is $39 per person. •Another small ski area scheduled for opening WESTCLIFFE, Colo. - For years the mom-and-pop ski areas were closing. Now, stories are appearing of small ski areas being opened. The latest such story comes from near the town of Westcliffe, in south-central Colorado. Then Terry Cook is erecting a single ehairlift at the Aspen Country Mountain Park. He bought the ehairlift and a Snocat groomer from Idaho's Bogus Basin Ski Area. Steady supplies of snow seem to be a general problem in that region, hut Cook claims the location of h.s ski area last year got 342 inches. He plans to charge $22 for lift tickets, drawing customers from Pueblo, a city of about 110,000 located an hour's drive to the east. A ski area featuring a single rope tow operated at the site for at least 20- years, but patrons lost interest -in 1990 when another ski area opened nearby. That ski area that will yield a $6.4 million project that will take waste wood and create energy and mulching soil. Such projects are now being talked about frequently in mountain towns of the West, where aging forests are yielding dead trees that are becoming fire hazards. Few such projects have actually been built, however. The facility in Carson City would consume such things as empty pallets. Trees from thinned forests in the increasingly fire-prone forests around Lake Tahoe could provide a quarter of the wood. As an energy source, the facility in Carson City could save a nearby prison $1.2 million in fuel costs. More yet could be coming. While the U.S. government's Healthy Forest Initiative laid out a plan for thinning of forests near settled areas, it'provided no money to do so. If the U.S. government ever quits launching wars in the Middle East, cutting taxes, and having to contend with hurricanes in the South, there may actually be money to thin forests - and provide trees for such facilities. Your Mortgage Specialists! Committed to Service i GregSardo Keara Sardo Becky Stover Amy Yost "There's no substitute for Experience" Lending provided in the Park City and surrounding areas for over 18 yrs. * Primary * Second Homes * Purchase * Refinance * Jumbo Loans * One Time Close Construction Loans * Low Doc Loans * No Doc Loans * Equity Lines * Second Mortgages * 800-297-8585 435-649-8585 www.cornerstonehomemtg.com Allen Best has edited mountain town newspapers for 20 years. He has served as managing editor at four different mountain town newspapers and is now living in Denver. unoat/ LBest Treat yourself to Utah's "BEST SUNDAY BRUNCH" with live music. 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Adults, S29 Children 5-12, S19 Under 5, free Reservations: 645-645 5 www.steinlodge.com •Biodiesel reduces the big cloud of pollution STEIN ERIKSEN LODGE MID-MOUNTAIN DEER VALLEY let puking "Uiih't B«[ Sundiy Brunch." W/ Lair TRUCKEE, Calif. - A Ford F- J&L CHECK OUT TUP. 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