Endless Progress

  

“This is never going to end, is it”, I asked my wife while queuing up behind another endless line of dump trucks making a left-hand turn into the limitless quarries in Brown’s Canyon.  “No, it probably isn’t, even if they run out of rock, water, open space and imagination”, she replied wistfully.  And that is the point of it, isn’t it, the truth.  Growth and development, building and ‘progress’ are here to stay, and we might as well all get used to it.  There is another entire city growing around Jordenelle, the open space at Kimballs Junction is going to be something big, and Heber City is off the charts, about to experience death by suburbia.  Try as we may, we are not going to stop it.

Years ago when we were involved in building Deer Valley we told ourselves that we might as well do it to make sure it was done right, because someone else was going to do it anyway.  When the Olympics came, we welcomed the world here and then were surprised when half of them stayed.  When Vail took over and tried to take our town name we were outraged initially but were smugly satisfied when we ultimately won the naming rights to our own home.  A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.  Then when Covid came and folks came out to occupy their second home that make up half of our town, we were understanding, but we never expected them to stay and telecommute to Timbuktu forever.  It was these big decisions that shaped our future as well as the little, day-to-day positive commitments like trial networks, open space, affordable housing and round-abouts.

We chained ourselves to bulldozers with cell phones and laptops, showed up Ad-Infinitum at meetings and spoke Ad-Nauseam at public hearings, much to our dismay.  Zoning changes from 16 units to 1600 units were moderated and mitigated but still approved at 1200 units when an obvious compromise of 808 units would have been more than reasonable and palatable.  We took that sitting down but that set the stage for a pro-growth, development friendly future.  Backroom deals with developers were rampant when money talked, and nobody walked in Park City.  Compromises and trade-offs were made.  When we stood our ground, the State stepped in and limited the impact fees we could charge development to at least pay for itself or they circumvented our input and approval process completely in the name of affordable housing and mass transit.  We never stood a chance.

It is the mind set of a cancer cell to grow unrestrained, but it is ultimately human nature too.  It happens everyplace good and nice despite all of our NIMBY good intentions.  Sometimes I visualize what all this will look like at buildout, if that ever comes.  Every flat spot will have something on it because this is a property-right, individual freedom type state out here in the wild wild western USA.  Will we look like Phoenix, Boulder or Vail, or something nicer like Aspen, Carmel or Stowe.  Will the next new generation still think it is nice and special around here and that the traffic is not a real problem?  What I prefer to do is try to think of this place as it was 50 years ago when we had an old run down mining town, endless meadows and hills and a blank canvas to draw on.   Did we do the best we could?  Did we give up.?  Did we sell out?

So don’t despair or be discouraged, this type of ‘progress’ is not unique.  We are not re-inventing the wheel.  It is not complicated, and we are not building pianos here. We can go out there and see what other towns are doing or have done and try to imitate and assimilate the best of it.  Aspen and Vail, Boulder and Bend did not become perfect examples of new urbanism overnight.   If we make mistakes, we can fix them.  Nothing is forever.  As the final interpretive panel prosaically predicts at the Mc Polin Barn nature trail. “The landscape is everchanging.”  We have to try.  We have to insert ourselves and our opinions into the process, relentlessly, and strive to elect good leaders, religiously.  We still have a choice and we still have a say and we still have the resilience to accept, for better or worse, what has been done with this pretty nice place.  Stand up, speak up, and forever hold your peace. 

Grateful Life

 

With the earned gratitude of the summit, I checked to make sure my boots were buckled and bindings switched from climb-up to ski-down position, at the top of the peak I had been climbing for the past hour. I was happy to be there since I had not toured the backcountry in three years because of various nefarious disabilities to my head and heart, body and soul. My loss of visual acuity and emotional stability, from too much head trauma on skis and bikes, had left me shaky and tentative. The new pacemaker for my erratic heart had also put me back a few rungs. Then a torn Achilles and a frozen shoulder further complicated my recovery. I was living on my reputation as a hard charging powder-hound, and the memories of what I once was. Age had brought wisdom and social security but along with it - self-doubt, and I questioned what I still had.

Covid had put a damper on everybody’s lifestyle, closing ski resorts along with everything else, and my solution was to retreat into a Waldenesque isolation.  I was trying to live small, not in quiet desperation but deliberately, simplifying life and my own pursuit of happiness or self-entertainment. Subsequentially, the recreational-industrial ski complex had taken over the local resorts, making them crowded and impersonal, disrupting our quiet ski world to its core. We had lost more than a few close friends, some by their own hand and some from a broken heart, unable to reconcile the changes in themselves and their community or unwilling to accept what came with these inevitable changes. Initially it made me sad, now it made me mad. This summit was consequently a test of my mental and physical abilities, but also of the healing power of landscape, snow, sun and sky. Summoning what courage I had left, I started skiing tentatively down the blind rollover to the slope below.

Earlier, my gnarlette wife Tracey, cattle dog Eva and I were looking to do a little midwinter skiing on a sunny Saturday morning to test our ailing bodies and spirits. We knew however, that our local Wasatch ski resorts were unobtainable, especially on a weekend. So, we headed east, to a Wilderness jewel among the local gems, a place untrammeled, where we were just visitors who leave no trace except tracks and we eventually leave. While not exactly an early ‘alpine start’, we got to the trailhead at 10 a.m. and smoothed our climbing skins to our ski bases. It was zero degrees with zero people around.

The snowpack was huge and after 20 years of drought, this kind of coverage was truly amazing. The Atmospheric River had been pointing at us all winter, like a firehose, but nothing lasts forever, not even snow, the earth and sky. As a hydrologist I could appreciate the record snowpack but I was determined to ignore the numbers, live in the moment and make the best of what nature had provided. An old cowboy once told me that only fools and tenderfoot try to predict the weather. Nature always bats last.

We could distinguish a ghost of the normal, low-angle climbing route but we opted for a more direct and steeper approach further upstream. Setting a skin track in shifts we found that it was wicked steep, perhaps too steep for my mechanical heart. Fortunately, the pitch soon moderated, before I blew a gasket, and we settled into a sustainable groove with enough purchase for us and punch for Eva. We shed layers to avoid a cold and clammy sweat and settled into the familiar routine. It felt like home.

For the first time in years, I heard my heart in my head and felt my pulse in my groin from the rigorous exercise. After my heart rate dropped by half last summer, doctors quickly installed a pacemaker designed to keep my heart modulated. It’s like having a weird governor on my engine that keeps me running within the proper limits for my age and ambition, mileage and experience. I am all about moderation these days, but it is disconcerting to have a device or even a doctor dictate that. I was going with it, no matter how humbling at this age. Now with my pulse pumping loud and clear in my extremities, I felt healthy and athletic for the first time in a long while.

The pucker-brush and understory shrubbery that populates these low elevation approaches was buried this year with the abundant snowpack, leaving some exquisite hummocks.  Up higher, the slope was feathered with surface-hoar flakes the size of potato chips, formed by subzero temperatures of the previous night, freezing the moisture rising from the snowpack, shining like mini-rainbows in the low angle winter sun. We called this pitch Ruffle’s Ridge after the corrugated potato chips commercials of the 60’s. This area had almost certainly been clear-cut at some point and fire probably played a role in the succession of the Oak/Aspen to Herbaceous/Conifer vegetation. Nothing is stagnant in nature, and we were looking at a perfect picture in time that develops slowly but is ever changing.

Above 8,000 feet, the slopes opened into low-angle meadows with dwarf red spruce trees, blighted during the latest beetle kill. Topping out, we investigated several pitches and agreed on a shaded, north-facing gully and we de-skinned quickly so we wouldn’t catch a chill. “Thirty-degrees-in-the-trees” is our avalanche mantra for skiing low angle, vegetated slopes for worry-free fun-in-the sun, even on high hazard days. The snowpack was deep, but stable and the usual, subconscious distraction of the sleeping hazards was the furthest thing from our minds. Nonetheless, we practiced prudent safety protocol with one descending and the other watching from an island-of-safety, as we had done a thousand times before, on and off the snow.

While I held the dog, Tracey took the first line, top-cutting the slope to the left, skiing smooth and ever more confident telemark turns as she descended. When she stopped and whistled from her safe perch, I released the hound. Eva initially plowed downhill in Tracey’s serpentine tracks, but eventually centerpunched the deep untracked snow, making dollar signs as she gained momentum and bravado. When it was my turn, I started slow on the roll-over with free heels and an open mind, hugging the left side of the gully. I was surprised how good the snow was and how easily the turns came. I gained speed and began reading the slope further ahead - always a good sign. The pucker-brush hummocks turned into soft moguls to be seen and skied deliberately.  Before long I was launching dynamic tele-turns, hopping between bumps to switch feet, angle and aspect. Near the bottom I dropped one last deep knee for the finishing dynamic carve and stopped deliberately. I was back. Reborn and renewed. My heart was full and my sight was true. Like old times. I had thought I might not ever be able to do this again but the muscle-memory and balance, the soulful and liberating feelings returned.

Although we had planned to be one-and-done after a single run, it was too good to leave. So, we ate, drank, skinned up and did it again and again and again. On the final run we got separated and out of synch on the up-track, which added some drama to the day. With a trace of panic in my throat, I felt momentarily abandoned and vaguely alone, frustrated and emotional, with a head full of doubt. Lately, we had been struggling because of different physical ailments and conflicting priorities. We missed the shared outdoor experiences and adventures that had solidified us in the past and had been floundering in our detachment. This was the first time we had returned to our roots in months, to the places that bond and connect us. I whistled our secret code, to no avail.  Eventually our miracle herding dog connected the dots by running back and forth between us until we happily merged. There is nothing like a moment of uncertainty to solidify what we really know about ourselves and each other. The Boss reminds us, “God have mercy on the man who doubts what he’s sure of.”

Eva’s feet were getting cold, as she alternately hung one foot after another, so we ultimately skied to the bottom and headed back to the car before we were tired or hurt, broken or cold. Sometimes less is more. We loaded up the car and headed down for a late lunch in the foothill cow town where we ate burritos the size of footballs and chatted up the new cafe owner in hobbled Spanish. Back on the road, the hometown mountains spread out before us in the alpenglow, hazy in their polluted popularity and the visible sublimation of our old lifestyle. We felt almost relieved to miss another day at the resorts, but also nostalgic for how it used to be. We didn’t need a crowded, corporate ski resort to have a great day, just the grandeur of gravity in the local Hinterlands, as well as the natural purity of fresh snow and blue sky. We had our health of body and soul, the wealth and wisdom of our age, and the companionship and camaraderie of each other.  For that we were grateful.

 

Runoff - Are You Kind

 

Well runoff season is upon us, and the days have heated up with a sun as strong as the 24^th of July.  The snowpack is isothermal and ripe and coming off orderly at 1-2 inches of Snow Water Equivalent a day and most streams are flowing Bankfull without much of an issue.  Streams and rivers are peaking in the night and they slow by the next morning, only to ramp up again higher than the day before.  Melt rates of 3-4 inches a day would cause pervasive flooding but nights are cooling and I don’t see that happening any time soon.  We dodged the first bullet by melting low snow first, then the south, west, east and north and finally the deep snow up high.  If we can stage that respectively we should be OK.  Combine 2 or 3 of those areas and we will have trouble.  It ain’t over until it’s over. 

Neighbors seem to be sharing the high water with most people routing what flows they can but there are a few unnamed rich folk and farmers who choose to dump their excess water on others or ignore it completely.    They will undoubtedly want their water back when the summer becomes hot and dry.  Just like we would all like the water back that we pumped from the Great Salt Lake in the 1980’s to evaporate in the west desert.  Now we have toxic dust clouds threatening Vatican-West in Salt Lake City and we are buying water from farmers and sending less alfalfa to China to save the lake.  It’s water Karma. 

 Most communities have helped with the maintenance of their stream channels and underdrain groundwater systems, but some choose to stick their head in the sand and ignore them.  Good luck with that.  But I have seen countless examples of kind neighbors helping neighbors sandbag and clear debris, like they were just released from the local Ward house of good intentions.  No one is blue and no one is red, we are all just friends.  I saw a kindly county commissioner, in fresh-pressed Carhart’s, bend down and lift my dirty, smelly dog into the back of his ATV, while we toured a flooded area.  And that’s how it should be in times of trouble, where everyone contributes what they can with what they are good at.  Some sandbag and some clear debris, some get down and dirty, some buy the beer.  Strength in diversity. 

On a larger, metaphoric scale, the western states are fighting over the shrinking Colorado river like it is the last lifeboat on the Titanic.  Over allocated and under delivered, with increased use and climate change, the river is stretched to the breaking point with the upper basin fighting the lower basin, farmers fighting cities and lawyers fighting engineers.  In a few years we may lose the ability to make power, and in a few more years we may lose control of the Grand Canyon, if nothing is done.  States (mostly California) can’t agree on cuts and President Joe needs Arizona and Nevada to win the White House again, so he does not want to take anyone’s water.

So, with the inevitability of change, death and taxes, the climate is dishing out challenges to us all, both near and far.  Like the Tragedy of the Commons, we can ignore these challenges or dump them on our neighbors to solve, or we can all pitch in and do what we can with what we are good at.  Because that’s what neighbors do in times of need.  Be kind.

Weather and Climate - 2023

 

Ok, so we have had our first heat wave and associated first wave of low elevation, local flooding.  There is still a huge snowpack up high and a potential for more pervasive flooding to come this spring, but what does this really mean?  Are we going to flood or not?  I once asked an old farmer, out standing in his field, if he thought it would rain that day.  He looked up at the sky and clouds and said “somewhere”.  

The 200% of the average snowpack we have will put a few more feet of water in the Great Salt Lake and maybe 30 feet in Lake Powell.  We need 5 – 10 years of this kind of water to solve those big problems and the effects of a 20-year long regional drought that may not be over yet. Our local reservoirs will fill and our streams and rivers will exceed flood capacities and activate historical flood plains.  It’s going to flood again somewhere, possibly everywhere. 

With 30-40 inches of water up Thayne’s Canyon and in the Uinta’s or 10-20 feet of actual snow in the Cottonwoods and Wasatch, there is a lot of water still to come off.  If it comes off slow and steady, say 1-2 inches a day, we will be ok, but if it comes off late and fast, say 3-4 inches a day, we will flood.  That depends on the weather.  Luckily some of snow cover on the south facing and the low elevation slopes is starting to melt but it should be completely gone by this time of year.  If it all melts at once it is like having a much bigger drainage basin feeding our streams and flows will be high.  Flooding like the early eighties is possible with rapid heating or rain-on-snowpack, as are slope instabilities and mudslides, especially in areas that have been burned.   Remember City Creek running between sandbags on State Street in 83 and the Thistle land slide closing Spanish Fork Canyon for a year.   This may be another wicked year.

Groundwater will be up, and our sump pumps and underdrain systems will be working overtime, even if they are kept clean and clear and legally out of the sanitary sewer pipes.   The sewer district may see as much as 500 million gallons of additional infiltration and additional inflow this spring that is difficult and expensive to treat.   Our depleted aquifers will also be replenished somewhat but that doesn’t mean we should not continue to conserve water with wise use this summer.  One good year is weather, not climate.  We are not out of the drought yet.

This is the worst drought in 1200 years.  Drought is not binary, it is not just a red blob on a map, it is an evolving regional climate condition, and it is a state of mind.   Especially in this age of Disconnect where what happened in the past has no bearing on what happens in the future.  This is the Anthropocene epoch where man is the main cause of change on earth.  We influence the weather and climate, atmosphere and oceans.   So, is this an anomalous year or is there Persistence in this Atmospheric River climate pattern that will last for years, like it did throughout the early eighties where we had five big years?  One big year does not give you climate change, but climate change will give you one big year, and many more. The only things we can count on are more extreme weather events and continued climate changes.  An old cowboy, on horseback, once told me that ‘only fools and tenderfeet try to predict the weather.’   ‘Which one are you’, he asked?

 

Critical Thinking

You better think

Think about what you're trying to do to me

Think

Let your mind go, let yourself be free.

Aretha.

With Park City developers telling us lately that their ‘Scaled Down,’ up-zoned, compromise development will actually MAKE TRAFFIC BETTER or that a proposed golf course will actually USE LESS WATER than the worst-case development scenario, or that another proposed zoning change will MAKE THINGS BETTER FOR EVERYONE, it makes me wonder.  Do they think we are stupid?   We have all heard these kind of Pollyanna negotiations before.  If something is too good to be true, it usually isn’t. 

I read recently about the 4 primary mental health components of our intelligence : 1)  IQ which is standard school-type intelligence and learning, 2)  EQ is emotional intelligence, happy/sad sensitivity and how you read and react to people, 3)  SQ is social intelligence on how you make and maintain friends and lovers, 4)  AQ is adversity intelligence with the ability to stick with things when the chips are down and to get up when you fail.  Number four is new, and a surprise to me.  Resilience is intelligence.  Who knew?  We might need it. 

But I would still round out the list with these secondary intelligence components: 5)   PR which is practical intelligence on the day-to-day workings of the world, 6)  NB which is nuts and bolts intelligence on how mechanical things work 7)  PY which is physical intelligence on athleticism and how to ski, ride or play Pickleball, 8) CR is our creative side 9) EM is empathy for others 10) HW is holistic understanding and general wisdom that you gain with age.  We are all different combinations of this spectrum of intelligence.  Everyone is smart, in their own way.

So I wonder HOW developers and regulators are thinking when they propose these preposterous ideas and solutions to our first world problems in Park City like; development, traffic, water, and powder skiing.  We should all be involved in Critical Thinking to define and solve problems and priorities.  I’m not sure what Critical Thinking is because I have not seen much of it lately.   I think it is the ability to tell if someone is blowing smoke up your butt. Believe half of what you see and none of what you hear.  Trust but verify.

 So when crazy ideas like a 50 million dollar art district or a 100 million dollar railroad to Salt Lake City, a 500 million dollar gondola up Little Cottonwood Canyon, a $5 billion dollar pipeline to an empty Lake Powell or 100 billion dollar pipeline to the ocean for the Great Salt Lake are proposed, I have to ask, ‘WHAT are you thinking’?  All this is proposed using ‘other people’s money’, but in the end we all pay for everything.  For everything you do, there is something you don’t do.  You can’t do it all and you don’t get something for nothing. 

As the Corporate Industrial Ski Complex ostensibly ‘improves” our town and local alpine skiing, proposed upsized developments create less traffic and use less water, our nepotistic State Legislature meddle in local approval affairs and pay lip service to the shrinking Great Salt Lake while the Fed ‘s ignore the climate and drought at the peril of the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon, it is not enough just to sit back and wonder.  It is time to personally research and think seriously about this process, then stand up and be counted with your best opinion and options, solutions, and priorities.  Follow the facts, data, science and economics.    Use your personal combination of intelligence components to develop your own Critical Thinking capabilities.  Participate in this process as thinking and knowing constituents.  Think for yourself but think about others.  Don’t let them blow smoke.  Just Think.  

 

UNTRAMMELED

 

My wife Tracey, dog Eva and I were looking to do some skiing last Saturday but knew our local resorts were unobtainable, so we went out to the Uinta’s to get away from it all.   While not exactly an alpine start we got to the Beaver Creek trailhead at 10:00 AM and parked right in front of the entrance gate trail map.  We skinned up and took a picture of the map, like savvy kids do, and we were off.  It was a sunny zero degrees with zero people around.  Perfect.

There was a long, flat approach upstream but downstream we found a zigzag up-track in less than a half a mile.  It was wicked steep, like an old misanthrope had cut it or some young and healthy, macho-millennial showing off to their friends or their date.  Predictably it flattened off after a while after cooler heads prevailed or someone got tired, and we settled into a sustainable groove with enough purchase for us and punch for Eva.

 The higher slopes opened into low angle meadows and dwarf, standing-dead trees.  Thirty degrees in the trees is usually our avalanche mantra for worry free fun in the sun, even on high hazard days.  The pucker brush and understory that populates these low elevation ridges was buried this year with the copious snowpack, leaving some exquisite rollie-pollie hummocks. 

We poked around for a while at the top of the openings and agreed on a shaded, north-facing gully, similar to the low angle Driveway slope at Canyons, and we de-skinned quickly so we wouldn’t catch a chill.  Tracey took the first line to the left in the meadow, skiing smoothly and more confidently as she descended.  When she stopped and whistled, from her island-of-safety, I released the hound.  Eva plowed downhill in Tracey’s tracks initially, but eventually centerpunched the deep untracked snow as she gained momentum and bravado. 

When it was my turn, I checked twice to make sure my boots were buckled and in ski mode and my heal lifters were fastened down.  I had not toured in three years, for various nefarious reasons, and I was unsure of myself and ability.  Starting slow, I hugged the left side of the gully, and I was surprised how good the snow was and how easy the turns came.  I gained speed and began reading the slope further ahead, always a good sign.  The pucker-brush hummocks turned into soft moguls to be seen and skied deliberately.  Before long I was launching dynamic Telemarks, hopping in the air between bumps to switch feet, aspect and angle.  At the bottom I dug in deep for the last turn and stopped completely before releasing my final, perfect pinky-toe carve. ‘Its like riding a bike’, I thought.  I was back.  Reborn.

We had to laugh and although we had planned to be one-and-done it was too good to leave.  So we ate, drank, stripped down, skinned up and did it again and again and again.  We uncharacteristically got separated for a while and out of synch on the hidden up-track, which added some drama to the day, but our trusty Healer – Border Collie found us both and connected the dolts by running back and forth until we merged. 

Eva’s feet were getting cold, as she hung-up one foot after another, so we eventually washed out the bottom and headed back to the car before we were tired or bored, hungry or cold.  There would be no alpenglow slog to the trailhead this time with headlamps, frozen toes or blisters.  Sometimes less is more. 

We loaded up and headed into Guero’s in Kamas for a late lunch where we ate ten-dollar burritos the size of footballs.  We made it back home easily in time for beers and popcorn on the couch in our Long-Johns and the evening football game.  We don’t need a crowded industrial ski resort to have a great day; just the gravity of the mountains, Bluebird skies, fresh powder and each other.

SKI TOWN TRICKLE DOWN

 

 

Hey, just a quick note about ski town economics 101.  Say you take a private lesson for $1000 -$1300, for example.  The resort gets a whopping $800-$1000 and your instructors get a paltry $200-$300, before taxes, to spend all day keeping you safe and happy, entertained and elucidated.  That’s about $20-$30 an hour if you count their commute time and ignore their training, certification, prep time, practice, lineup, equipment, exercise and grooming.  That is what they are paying people to bus tables, drive buses and even work the ski Patrol in towns where the average home is $ 4 million, a small room is $1500 and a 4WD car is $500 a month. Sure, ski-workers take the job mostly for the love of the sport, but this is not an employee supply-chain concern or a housing issue, it is a wage crisis. 

During COVID we all learned to show our appreciation for ‘essential workers’, such as the cashiers at Papa Murphy’s, by checking the new Apple tip boxes at checkout for 15,20 even 25%.  Everything in America became 30% more than the listed price, if you included tip and taxes.  We needed to take care of the little guy and they were, literally, not making a ‘living’ wage during those uncertain times.  This was good and proper, and it is fair that it has continued. 

Unfortunately, Corporate America has embraced this and shifted the burden of paying a living wage directly to the customer, bypassing the possible negative effects on their profit margin.  Corporate Industrial Skiing has done the same thing; shift the employee wage burden to the consumers while they take the money and run, under the allure of selling millions of cheap passes that let us all ski for just $20-40 a day.   We all know the model.

And we all know that the proper solution is for the ski corporations to share a bigger slice of the profit pie with their employees.  They made hundreds of million dollars last year and ski school revenues are up at least 50%. But we know that is not going to happen due to worker dedication and poor representation, so the next time you hire someone for a day of instruction and care, guidance and education, consider their economy.  The hundred-dollar ski school tip that seemed generous years ago, is de-minimis now, is less than 10% of the actual cost and is hardly a living wage.  15-20% would be more consistent with the modern, trickle-down, tipping economy and 25% would send the real message of appreciation that you intend, and all our resort workers deserve.  Your largess is their living.