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Show EDUCATION, A-5 C-1 B-1 A LOST GENERATION CARRIES THE SHOW CHLOE KIM JUMPS FROM PIPE TO PODIUM STAY UP TO DATE Follow us on Twitter @parkrecord for all the latest and breaking news in Park City and Summit County STATE OF MEDICAID, A-10 GOVERNOR SIGNS AWAY ELIGIBILITY FOR SOME EVEREST BASE CAMP TREKKERS BRING TRASH BAGS Park Record. The PA R K C I T Y, U TA H W W W. PA R K R E C O R D . C O M Wed/Thurs/Fri, February 13-15, 2019 Serving Summit County since 1880 One dies in slide, threat continues | Vol. 139 | No. 3 50¢ Precious medal for a Parkite Brita Sigourney earns The avalanche danger a halfpipe bronze in a career milestone remains high in the backcountry BEN RAMSEY ANGELIQUE MCNAUGHTON The Park Record A 49-year-old man from Mona died Saturday in an avalanche in the eastern part of Summit County, according to the Summit County Sheriff’s Office. Lt. Andrew Wright said the avalanche occurred in the East Fork of the Chalk Creek area, east of Coalville. Dispatchers received an SOS signal from an avalanche beacon around 1:20 p.m. Avalanche beacons allow backcountry users to send a GPS signal to emergency responders in the event of a slide. The man, later identified as Jason Lyman, was snowmobiling with his friend Shannon Marchbanks and Marchbanks’ 14-year-old son when the avalanche was triggered, according to a Utah Avalanche Center Facebook post. He was buried in snow for 30 to 40 minutes before Marchbanks and two others were able to dig him out. They performed CPR on Lyman until a Utah Department of Public Safety helicopter arrived to transport him to a hospital in Evanston, Wyoming. Lyman was pronounced dead at the hospital. “None of us are an exception,” Marchbanks said in a video posted to the Utah Avalanche Center’s Facebook page. “I get to go home. My son gets to go home. He doesn’t get to go home.” No one else was injured in the avalanche, which was estimated at between 500 and 600 feet wide and 4 to 10 feet deep. The avalanche was one of two Saturday in eastern Summit County that trapped recreaters. The other slide was reported in the Mill Hollow region near Woodland. A snow bike rider triggered the avalanche at an elevation of around 8,200 feet, according to a Utah Avalanche Center report. A rider was buried in the slide, with only one hand sticking out of the snow. However, he was ultimately rescued and did not sustain serious injury. Craig Gordon, a forecaster with the Utah Avalanche Center, said avalanche danger remains high in backcountry areas across the state, particularly in the western Uinta Mountains. The Utah Avalanche Center has recorded 14 avalanches statewide since Feb. 8, with at least two partial burials and several near misses. “People need to be flexible with travel plans and terrain objectives,” he said. “It doesn’t mean you can’t ride in the backcountry. It just means we need to choose gentle terrain.” The Uinta and Wasatch Mountains are producing an active avalanche cycle, especially with human-triggered slides. Gordon attributed it to an onslaught of snow, water and wind. Last week, 35 to 75 inches of snow fell across the state. But, he said the added water weight was a “game changer.” “This is kind of abstract concept, but 4 to 6 inches of water fell and what The Park Record Where do the years go? For Brita Sigourney, they’ve seemed to pass in a flash. It’s been nearly eight years since she left Carmel, California, her hometown that sits tucked into a bay on the Monterey Peninsula, and her position on the water polo team at U.C. Davis for the snowy heights of the Wasatch Mountains. When she came to Park City, she was one of the pioneers of freeskiing, joining the U.S. team in its infancy in hopes of making a name for herself in the sport she’d participated in since she was 2. The sport has since grown and changed rapidly. But Sigourney, the oldest competitor in Saturday’s ski halfpipe World Championships at 29, still has what it takes to compete. By results, she is still in the summer of her career. Lately, she’s been hoarding bronze like a laid-back, 5-foot-7 dragon. A year ago, she notched perhaps the biggest achievement of her career with a bronze at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. After that, she took third in qualifying for the World Cup in Tignes, France, last March — then took bronze in the competition itself. She struck again in December, quali- TANZI PROPST/PARK RECORD Parkite Brita Sigourney won bronze in the FIS World Championships’ freeski halfpipe competition Saturday at Park City Mountain Resort. Though at 29, she is much older than some of her opponents, she plans to continue competing at the highest levels of the sport. fying third for the World Cup at Copper Mountain in Colorado, where she once again scooped up a medal made of a certain copper and tin alloy. On Feb. 7, she qualified third for the World Championships in halfpipe skiing. And finally, on Saturday, she did it again. She stood on that little dais off the snow near the base of Eagle Superpipe at Park City Mountain Resort and bowed as someone slung a medal of you-know-what color over her head. “I think it’s honestly just self-confidence, and feeling good,” she said. “I’m having a lot of fun. I’m not trying to put Please see A Parkite, A-2 TANZI PROPST/PARK RECORD Brita Sigourney smiles after receiving an FIS World Championships bronze medal. A 2030 Winter Olympics preview? Sort of Ski champs offered a glimpse of how a Games may be staged ANALYSIS JAY HAMBURGER The Park Record The FIS World Championships closing ceremonies on Main Street on Sunday ended the largest winter-sports event in Utah since the 2002 Winter Olympics. And the event may end up being the largest winter-sports gathering in the state before the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in 2030, the year that the Games could return to Salt Lake City and the surrounding Olympic region. The United States Olympic Committee in December selected Salt Lake City as the nation’s bid city for a future Games, likely those in 2030. The International Olympic Committee is expected to name a host for the Games in 2030 in 2023. The Park City area is highly important to the Olympic bid. Park City Mountain Resort, Deer Valley Resort and the Utah Olympic Park are identified as competition venues in a Games map. It seems that upward of half of the sporting events would be staged in the immediate Park City area or at nearby Soldier Hollow, and the area would be a priority in transportation, security and celebration planning. The FIS World Championships included competitions at two proposed Winter Olympic venues — PCMR and Deer Valley — and required a broad planning effort involving different jurisdictions. In those ways, the event had at least some resemblance to what could occur in a Winter Olympics even if the magnitude was scaled back from a Games. But in other key ways, such as Please see One dies, A-2 3 sections • 32 pages Classifieds .............................. C-8 Columns ............................... A-10 Crossword .............................. C-4 Editorial................................ A-11 Education ............................... A-5 Events Calendar ..................... C-6 Legals ................................... C-11 Letters to the Editor ............. A-11 Restaurant Guide.................. C-12 Scene ...................................... C-1 Scoreboard ............................. B-5 Sports ..................................... B-1 Weather .................................. B-2 pressure on myself.” She said she has taken some time off from training to go powder skiing and focus on her love of the sport, a tactic she said might have cost her podiums at the X Games and Dew Tour. She took fourth in both of those events. “It’s kind of a rough spot to be in” she said. “You’re so close but you don’t get any of the attention.” On Saturday, she said she was happy to put those results behind her with a podium at the World Championships — her first time medaling in three appearances on that stage. TANZI PROPST/PARK RECORD The FIS World Championships snowboard parallel slalom, held at Park City Mountain Resort, failed to attract a large crowd to the bottom of the run. The FIS World Championships crowds were far smaller than those that would be expected at the Winter Olympics in 2030 should Salt Lake City be awarded the Games. the crowd management and security, the FIS World Championships were vastly different from a Winter Olympics. The FIS World Championships are like the Winter Olympics because: • the FIS World Championships operated in multiple venues in the Park City area, something that necessitated extensive logistical planning. There were events at both base areas of Park City Mountain Resort as well as Deer Valley Resort, stretching the competitions from the Park City limits into the Snyderville Basin. A Winter Olympics would likewise schedule local competitions inside and outside the Park City limits. The PCMR base area inside Park City and Deer Valley are both identified as potential Olympic competition venues with the Utah Olympic Park also a critical venue. The World Championships also tapped Main Street for a major celebration, something that would be expected during an Olympics. The FIS World Championships required overall logistical plans for the Park City area with similarities to those that would be crafted for a Winter Olympics even if the plans that were devised for the recent competitions were miniature in size compared to those that would be required for a Games. • the FIS World Championships were susceptible to the weather, as would be the case during a Games. The venues during the recent competitions are some of those that would be put into the Winter Olympic program. Deer Valley’s freestyle setup has long been heralded as one of the best on the World Cup circuit, while the PCMR snowboarding and freestyle facilities have received accolades as well. The venues would likely be very similar to those set up at the resorts during the Winter Olympics in 2002. The impact of the weather is always an unknown in skiing or snowboarding competitions. The organizers of the FIS World Championships were forced to cancel one competition — the VISITOR GUIDE Art is on the screen at the Park City Library snowboard big air contest — based on the snowstorms that hit the Park City area and significantly alter another. A Winter Olympics, though, is a lengthier event than the FIS World Championships, providing additional opportunities to reschedule competitions that are postponed based on the weather. • the FIS World Championships provided Park City with international exposure even if the publicity from a Winter Olympics would be immeasurably greater than that generated during the recent event. The NBC family — the same network that holds the rights as of now to show the Winter Olympics — televised the FIS World Championships. Many of the competitions during the FIS World Championships were broadcast on secondary NBC channels, but some were shown on the main network, providing the opportunity for a large audience to watch the events. Tourism officials have long seen the international broadcast of competitions at the World Cup and World Championships level as beneficial to the resort industry since the television viewers could be influenced to choose Park City as their skiing or snowboarding destination. The FIS World Championships, like the Winter Olympics would, put the images of PCMR and Deer Valley in front of winter sport fans with more than a month left of the ski season, something that could provide short-term and long-term tourism benefits. The FIS World Championships are unlike the Winter Olympics because: • the FIS World Championships did not draw crowds near the size of those a Winter Olympics would be projected to attract. The FIS World Championships, a free event, appeared to be well attended throughout the week-plus run, but the Winter Olympic spectator counts would be expected to greatly exceed those of the FIS World Championships. The difPlease see A glimpse, A-2 Park City Film will present Thomas Riedelsheimer’s “Leaning Into the Wind” as part of its Art on Screen program on Feb. 14, at the Park City Library. The documentary follows installation artist Andy Goldsworthy. For information, visit parkcityfilm.org. |