Alta Ranks Among Top in Environment

by Erik Olsen on

Here’s yet another reason to love one of my favorite ski areas in the West: Alta.

According to a new report out from Colorado Wild, an environmental group based in Durango, CO, the resort ranks among the top ski areas in the West in how they manage the environment around the ski area. This is not so big a surprise to those who know and have skied Alta, which limits the number of skiers who can come on a given day and is generally off-limits to snowboarders (not that I have anything against MOST snowboarders).

The Ski Area Citizens’ Coalition report rates 77 Western ski areas on a matrix of environmental policies, such as preservation of undeveloped areas, so-called ”green building” practices and energy and water use. Sundance (Robert Redford’s area) and Alta resorts were ranked in the Top 10, but Idaho’s Sun Valley received a D on the report card, notching 45.5 points on a 100-point scale. Deedle deedle deedle. The fact is, lots of ski areas these days are overbuilding and over-developing. Have you been to Mammoth lately? It’s becoming fricken Disneyland. (they get a “C” in the report). These are important issues, and it’s wise to bring them into the public view lest our mountains become polluted, over-built amusement parks.

Everest Trash as Art

by Erik Olsen on

A buddy of mine who has climbed Everest a few times started a program years ago to bring trash down from the top of Everest. The South Col and other camps at the top of the highest mountain in the world had become virtual trash heaps, places where climbers for decades had left behind the solid detritus of their expeditions. My buddy said that at one point, when you reached the South Col, there were so many discarded oxygen bottles that you had to step around them to get where you were going…namely, the top. And so the program he helped form used Sherpas and funding by climbers to start hauling that stuff down. Little did they know that the trash they carried might someday be considered works of art.

Enter Jeff Clapp, who says he became drawn by the trash climbers leave behind. Clapp says he was inspired by a documentary about Everest’s trash heap (a documentary in which my friend starred), and so he traveled to Nepal and brought a load of discarded oxygen bottles back to turn them into art. He turns them into bowls and bells, after buffing them down to a shiny silver sheen. Prices range from $1,600 to $3,000 for bells, and $500 to $1,500 for the bowls. Come on, isn’t this great? You have to admire guys like this that see opportunity where others see garbage.

Friday Funny: National Park Cartoons

by Erik Olsen on

Folks here know what passionate fans we are of the National Parks; we blog about them endlessly as they are, in the parks own words, our nation’s family jewels. I’ll not comment editorially on the current administration’s handling of park policy because that would take far too long. The topic is worthy of an essay-length post.

And you know what, pictures speak louder than words anyway, and pictures WITH words speak louder than pictures alone. And so I offer you a few posts by one of my favorite blogs Park Remark, that show some of the editorial cartoons by David Horsey, a Pulitzer-Prize-winning cartoonist from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Good for a laugh as well as a moment of thought. Good stuff for your brain to gnaw on on this Friday.

Exploring the Soviet Fleet in Murmansk

by Neil Woodburn on

I’ve had the good fortune to travel to many places in Russia but there are still many more I want to see. One such place at the top of my list is Murmansk.

Murmansk rests in the far north of Russia near the tip of Norway and Finland and is the country’s northernmost ice-free port. Throughout most of the Soviet era, the city was heavily militarized and off-limits to foreigners. Today, it still remains a strategic military port but tourists are now allowed to visit certain portions of the town. Many military facilities still remain closed off to the public, such as the notorious port where decommissioned nuclear submarines lay rotting in their berths. (side note: this is a huge environmental time bomb just waiting to explode).

Such secrecy and tight security, however, can’t stop us from visiting the more sensitive areas of Murmansk thanks to Google Earth.

EnglishRussia.com, a great site I’ve been checking out lately, has posted a number of satellite photos of the Murmansk region and all that it has to offer the curious tourist. It is quite a frightening peek into the recent demise of the Soviet Union’s once mighty military.

I wonder how many of these “graveyards” are accessible on foot. I also wonder how many are pulsing with radioactivity and probably not a very good place to explore on your own.

Thanks to Google Earth, we can now do so from a very far, and very safe distance.

Watching (and helping) Turtles Hatch

by Erik Olsen on

The Cape York turtle rescue project seeks to help turtles survive the nasty human encroachment on their million year old traditional turf. And turtle helping has become a cottage tourist industry in Australia. In this piece at the Age, Australia’s fine daily newspaper, writer john Coomber talks about going down to the beach to help along these cute little palm-sized amphibians.