New West Network

My Page: Michael Conniff

Living Large

Before the hegira to retrieve the relative at the hospital, after the interstate and the tabernacles, there was the work of play to be done. His ticker had the good sense to go bad in Salt Lake City, and so for his elder sibling in Colorado that produced the perfect excuse to do a good deed while doing very well indeed at the Stein Eriksen Lodge at Deer Valley Resort in Park City, Utah.

You can tell everything about a person by where they like to go skiing—and where they stay once the opportunity presents itself. The skier or snowboarder who chooses the down-in-the-muck trailer over more commodious lodgings makes a statement about life styles and financial instruments in the form of a single crash pad. Money is always on the table when it comes to slip-sliding away.
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X Games

Could it be that the Aspen Police, emboldened by the public showing of support for the December drug busts, are venturing further and further still into the realm of downtown law enforcement?

Dude, that doesn’t mean there aren’t mangy cohorts aplenty in Aspen who think God made substances so they couldn’t be controlled. But no matter. When it comes to alcohol at the outdoor X Games concert Saturday night, Aspen Police have finally said no to unfettered boozability.

Don’t forget the X Games glorify all things extreme, on the slopes or not. The X Games at Buttermilk have been known to feature underage chugging contests—of Mountain Dew. Doing the Dew apparently includes making pretend that caffeine is a gateway beverage for alcoholic binges. Not this time around. [more]

x Games

You take your American Dreams where you can find them, and here in Aspen you can always find the dreamers slipping and sliding their way to something better.

Take Chris Klug, the bronze Olympic medal winner, trying to wedge his way into the 2006 Turino Winter Olympic Games even though he came up just short and a dispute has ensued. There’s Gretchen Bleiler of Aspen, the reigning X Games superpipe champeen who is one Olympic medal away from becoming certifiable as America’s sweetheart. And don’t forget Farrah Keenaaina, a snowboarder with all the hair of her telegenic namesake, but also a woman who walked in the door to qualify for the X Games the old-fashioned way.
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Western Civilization

We live in a small pocket of civilization here in the Roaring Fork Valley—an outpost where if things go wrong you can end up dead or worse in a ghost town. Worse would be cut off or otherwise rendered incapable of communicating with other living souls, a kind of purgatory or a living death. But more on that later.

I was forced by circumstances untold to leave the valley with some family cargo, a brother headed for the VA Hospital in Grand Junction. It was lonely out there on the highway for a while, just driving into wide open spaces, the way we assume the West used to be before it was won. But there was something else to be seen wherever you looked in the darkness beyond the dots of light in your rearview mirror and the other ones on the other side of the Interstate coming your way. Everywhere you looked, on either side of the highway, you could see hard lit-up rods coming right out of the earth that looked like missiles in search of a silo and a fail-safe stopgap to go with it. I knew what they were of course—the natural gas and/or oil wells that are turning Rifle, Parachute, Silt, and so on into places of true significance in the global economy.
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Big Shots

You want your Renaissance Person for the new millennium or perhaps thereafter? Look no further than millennial man Walter Isaacson, president and chief executive officer of the Aspen Institute, who writes biographies of people like Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein just for fun.

So little time, so much to do. Even so, with so much on his plate, Isaacson accepted a post on the board of directors of United Airlines as it tries to emerge from 37 months of bankruptcy protection. Isaacson also board-sits for Readers Digest.
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Law And Disorder

The only thing more shocking about the five-hour-plus, long-day’s-journey-into-night hearing Tuesday in the chambers of Aspen City Council would have been in Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis had actually shown up.

As it was, more than 100 people of the People’s Republic of Pitkin County made time for face time with the City Council concerning the vexing subject of drugs in the wake of two controversial undercover cocaine busts in December at Aspen eateries spearheaded by Aspen Police and the federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). The blockbuster at the Council hearing was confirmation from Aspen Police Chief Loren Ryerson—he found the time to show up—that Pitkin County Sheriff Braudis had told the Aspen Chief the Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office wanted no part of any undercover investigation-bust.
That revelation puts the Sheriff in the uncomfortable position of refusing to uphold the drug laws as written. [more]

Stoned Again In Pitkin County

The elephant in the room is finally coming into the room with both feet Tuesday afternoon at 4 P.M. in Aspen. The room in question is in Aspen City Hall in front of the City Council, where local politicos will be holding a hearing to speak about the unspeakable—namely the notion that drug laws have to be enforced, even within the liberal if not always liberating confines of Aspen and greater Pitkin County.

That’s not really what they’re going to be talking about at all, to tell you the truth.

Most of the talk in front of City Council is likely to be about “community policing� and “communication� between the Aspen Police Department and the Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office. Aspen Police and federal drug officials had the temerity to bust a whole bunch of people in a pair of raids December 2, 2005, at Little Annie’s Eating House and Cooper Street Tavern, two heretofore sacrosanct eateries that embrace locals out front and were harboring cocaine in the kitchen. Police made ten arrests on drug charges and another eleven on immigration violations. [more]

Ski Country

Perception is reality in the ski business, and word went forth early in the 2005-2006 that Colorado was getting dumped upon anew and anon. Add in an economy on the rise for the affluent, and the result is 3.1 million skiers -- a jump of 5.6 percent compared to the same period last year -- in the months from October to December in 2005.

In the local market, the quartet of mountains that comprise the Aspen Skiing Company domain posted 5.1 percent increase compared to 2004. Aspen Highlands is surging in traffic—up 20 percent—in large part because of the new Deep Temerity lift that opened up terrain associated with the fabled Highland Bowl. [more]

Drilling Down

The ramp up in natural gas drilling in the White River National Forest is forcing those in charge of caring for the national parks near Rifle to ask for more help.

"There's no way we'll be able to keep up with it and keep up with your expectations for caring for the land…" forest Supervisor Maribeth Gustafson told Pitkin County Commissioners this week. “"I don't believe we'll be able to say 'stop.'"
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Dog Story

The dog that won’t go away just came back.

Buster, like so many others, is a refugee from the natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, but he made the political mistake of biting the boss at Colorado Animal Rescue Inc. (CARE) where the dog was ensconced after Sue Schmidt of Silt saved him from a fate on the bayou that could have been far worse. Not only did the dog bite a worker at the shelter—he took a chunk out of CARE executive director Leslie Rockey. [more]