What’s wrong with this picture?

Something white began falling out of the sky Tuesday. Weird and wonderful. Yet in general, people stilled seemed a bit on edge. It is moving into late January and there aren’t exactly bushels of snow lining the driveways. This is a ski town. Crested Butte is one of the places where “bad” weather is desired. Now, I could write about other resorts being in worse snow shape than the Butte. I could write about the joy of skinny skis. I could write about Craig McManus surviving something like 900 severe medical situations and still turning 60 and playing Jimmy Buffet on Monday morning on KBUT… but I’m a bit on edge too, so I’ll rant, I mean write, about what I’m hearing…

A group of people flew into the Gunnison-Crested Butte airport last week. Like many deplaning in Gunnison, they boarded Alpine Express busses. But I hear that instead of heading north, these busses drove to Telluride. Apparently all the flights into T’ride and Montrose were full so the skiers flew into Gunnison to ski the San Juans. What’s wrong with this picture?

The Crested Butte council is walking a razor’s edge over a vanilla letter to the Forest Service concerning S-grass. The mayor’s point of comfort and safety seems to again be in the sands of ‘process.’ She and I have had this respectful discussion before but I’ll argue again that habitually hanging your hat on process is a handy way to continue down the trail to — who knows where? And that’s because instead of setting the direction, it’s too easy to get caught up in trying to ‘fairly’ read the map. What’s wrong with this picture?

The spring weather in January is both a blessing and a curse. We are a winter ski town and another five or six feet of snow would be helpful. But as someone pointed out to me last week, the mountain bike trails will melt out earlier if we take a hit this season and the season is already almost half over Anyway. Ouch.
WWWTP?

National rant break—President Obama seems to have forgotten there is limited time and opportunity to make stuff happen. Instead of focusing on issues people are really worried about—honest jobs, a solid future, a real middle class—he appears mired on a constantly morphing health care plan (without any public option) that is taking all kinds of concessions (bribes?) to get through a Congress controlled by the same political party as the president. Disconnect. On top of it all, expanding questionable wars, dismissing Arabic-speaking officers in the military because they are gay, appointing Timothy Geithner, head of the New York Federal Reserve during the entire financial melt-down, as Secretary of the Treasury, bailing out antiquated, arrogant auto companies and saving overpaid, arrogant bankers on Wall Street is not exactly in the spirit of hope and change. Where’s my bailout? And why are you shocked the Democrats lost that Senate seat Tuesday in Massachusetts? WWWTP?

CBMR takes a chance with early season snow conditions. It’s far short of what we’ve received the past two seasons. But those that make the call don’t let people on the Extremes… even the North Face and the Glades, which is mostly extreme in name only. Some of the old-time workers up there lobbied to open up the terrain because the snow that was there in early January was thin but good to go. The higher-ups wanted to save the snow (and maybe some $?) for a huge dump that we could have gotten in early January. The thought seemed to be that it would be set up great instead of being skied to the rocks. The dice were rolled and it came up a… seven. Oops. The Extremes remain closed. Local ski shops bemoan the amount of P-tex they have stacking up. WWWTP?

A guy named Conan is “penalized” $40 million to not work at 11:30 p.m. any more. Would someone penalize me please? WWWTP?

The resort finally puts real ice in their ice rink. WWWTP?

CBMR puts out the word that a S-grass expansion would garner a total of 116 acres of additional intermediate terrain. CBMR did the math on this one, not the FOSMs. Those in the middle shift toward the “Seriously? 116 acres will save this place?” attitude and go back to watching American Idol and praying for mud slides in L.A. which can bring blizzards to the West Elks. WWWTP?

A relentless opponent of lifts on S-grass calculated that out of the 25 people who spoke for expanding lifts on the mountain to the Crested Butte Town Council last month, 48 percent were CBMR employees. That figure isn’t quite correct since a few people who don’t actually work directly for the resort were counted. In the same vein, it was immediately pointed out by an advocate for lifts on S-grass that 78 percent of the people who spoke against lifts at the same meeting don’t have (or at least need) a job. That figure probably is not quite right either. Ahhh… Peace and Love in the mountains. WWWTP?

Ok, back to the top. It is said that during an El Niño year in terms of snow, the beginning is okay, the middle is brutally bare and the end is pretty sweet with lots of fresh pow. We seem to be on that path but let’s hope the end starts in late January and not late April. We could all use more than a little snow to adjust the attitudes. Bring on the “bad” weather and bring it on in feet, not inches.