BREAKING NEWS: Skier killed in Aspen Highlands backcountry

Aspen Daily News Staff Report

A skier died this morning after taking a fall off a cliff in Tonar Bowl, in the backcountry near Aspen Highlands, the Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office has confirmed.

Responding to a call of an unresponsive and unconscious skier, ski patrol and Aspen Mountain Rescue recovered the body.

AVH: Two seats, six candidates

by David Frey, Aspen Daily News Correspondent
It’s tough math for voters in the Aspen Valley Hospital district: Two open seats. Six candidates.

And after a candidate forum Thursday evening, many observers, mostly made up of people connected in some way to the hospital, said they were six well-qualified candidates.

Dust on slopes could mean water troubles

by Curtis Wackerle, Aspen Daily News Staff Writer

The red dust visible on Aspen ski slopes last week — a common phenomenon in the spring — could have implications for the annual snowmelt cycle and is tied to the white man’s arrival in the Great Basin, scientists have found.

The dust is “definitely not” innocuous, according to Chris Landry, executive director of the Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies in Silverton. The center is dedicated to researching the alpine snowpack, which provides 50 to 80 percent of the western U.S. water supply. It is carried to the mountains by prevailing winds from the Colorado Plateau, which includes the deserts of the Four Corners region.

Former Bronco star’s home in foreclosure

by David Frey, Aspen Daily News Correspondent

Former Denver Broncos star receiver Vance Johnson could lose his Glenwood Springs home in foreclosure by next month.

Johnson owes $628,878 on his home on the Westbank golf course, south of Glenwood, on a deed of trust dated Jan. 2, 2007.

POLICE BLOTTER: Driver does donuts, dunks in Fryingpan

by Andrew Travers
Several reports to local police over a four hour period led to a 45-year-old Basalt man’s arrest for an alleged drunken joyride that ended in the Fryingpan River on Wednesday night.

At 7:45 p.m., police received a call that a blue Mercedes Benz SUV with its headlights off was doing donuts in the field beside the Basalt post office. The car was gone when police arrived on the scene, but pieces of it were left near trees it had apparently struck.

Costières de Nîmes: Golden and Glowing From Southern France

by Drew Stofflet, Time Out Wine Columnist
I have been writing about flashy and obscure whites for the past month. It was an attempt to bring about some warm sunny weather, and maybe have a picnic or a deck party. As I write this it is snowing. Go figure. I don't really mind though, I guess I will just have to write another column about brilliant white wine and then go backcountry skiing.

This week I picked up a bottle of Chateau Grand Cassagnes' Costières de Nîmes 2005, a blend of two lesser known Rhone Valley white grape varietals, marsanne and rousanne. Costières de Nîmes received its current AOC (highest French wine classification) status only in 1989, but before that its was known as 'Costière du Gard.'

Clooney's 'Leatherheads' Lacks Winning Game Plan

by David Germain, AP Movie Critic
Maybe the best offense in a real football game is a good defense. Not so in a movie about the early years of the sport, when pro football was a poor cousin to the college game.

George Clooney's "Leatherheads" plays everything safe, offering up all the solid defensive moves it needs. Great period costumes, jazzy music, 1920s slang, all of which combine for a nice re-creation of the feel of the era, with Renee Zellweger a sound choice to play a saucy reporter opposite Clooney's gridiron grunt.

Editor's Pick: Sneak Peeks

Aspen Daily News Staff Report

Steel-stringed Love

by Jonathan Bastian, Time Out Staff Writer

Call it the wind or call it life. Either way, for David Crosby, it has blown, blasted and quaked torrentially over the years, shaking sharp bits of memory over six steel strings of a guitar. His voice rises, rests, wails and cajoles into cathartic cadences, or slides and sets into harmonies that are heard only by his ear.

It is magic, maddening, magnificent, spun together into something as simple as a song. Yes, a song, and many of them.

Woody Creek Center Hosts Community

by Damien Williamson, Time Out Staff Writer

It's been four months since the nearly half-million dollar renovation of the Woody Creek Community Center, and locals valleywide are finally returning to the popular gathering spot that laid dormant for more than two years. Once again book clubs are meeting, impromptu discussion groups are forming and patrons are sipping coffee and munching on the center's signature "rumble strip" sandwiches.

And despite (or perhaps because of) the $100,000 budget deficit still lingering above the metaphorical head of the once-dilapidated center, director Ann Owsley has decided to step up the efforts of WC3.

Fighting the Good Fight in Little Cottonwood

by Curtis Wackerle, Aspen Daily News Staff Writer
As soon as that unmistakable sound was unleashed in the crowded tram car — the popping aluminum breaking the vacuum seal — the church lady was on it.

"Excuse me? Hey, Excuse me! That's illegal. There's no alcohol on this mountain. You'll be thrown right out of here and banned for life," she said, seeming to suggest that the kindly old man throw the can out the window of the tram, you know, so he would not be illegal anymore.

Neville A Dull Moment

by Jason Hood, Time Out Music Columnist

People have always thought of New Orleans as a magical place: a mysterious city that doesn't play by the rules. Perhaps it is the aura of romance surrounding the Crescent City, the sultry climate, the venerable old architecture, the keen attention paid to visual and literary arts. Or, perhaps it is the amalgamation of cultures that make up a kind of gumbo community.

But probably it is the city's grand musical tradition that has intrigued the nationwide community more so than anything else. There have been countless influential artists from Fats Domino to Harry Connick Jr. that hale from the cultural hotbed of New Orleans. It's as if the fetid swamps and southern mud somehow conspired to produce a landscape rife with jazz, blues, funk, soul and rock musicians; a land that under stormy skies produced Ivan Neville.

Not quite April Fool’s Day

by Connie Harvey, Aspen Daily News Columnist
Once upon a time, during my formative years, I believed it was important — in fact necessary — to read the newspaper every day. Our newspaper was the New York Times, and its news was always about the war (World War II, to all you youngsters born more recently).

My belief was so deeply ingrained as to be unconscious, and it persisted for decades after that. Only after a long river trip did it occur to me that it mattered very little whether I read the paper or not. News, mostly bad, kept right on happening, even in my absence and in spite of my neglect!

MLK — Where do we go from here?

by Amy Goodman
It has been 40 years since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., while standing on the balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Motel. King was there to support striking sanitation workers, African-American men who endured horrible working conditions for poverty wages. While King’s staff was opposed to him going, as they were scrambling to organize King’s new initiative, The Poor People’s Campaign, King himself knew that the sanitation workers were at the front lines of fighting poverty.

 I went to Memphis on Dr. King’s birthday. There I interviewed Taylor Rogers, one of the striking sanitation workers who marched with King. He told me:

Why go there?

Aspen Daily News Staff Report
Editor:

The AABC car wash really does take the cake.

Pretty spiffy

Aspen Daily News Staff Report
Editor:

The new solar-paneled parking meters are pretty spiffy, but those responsible for their installation might have benefited from a brief tutorial on the sun’s aspect and angle of incidence here in the northern Hemisphere.

Oil shale plan premature

Aspen Daily News Staff Report
Editor:

Under the Energy Policy Act of 2005, Congress’ attempt to bolster our energy future with fossil fuels, comes a plan by the Bureau of Land Management to lease 2.3 million acres of public land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming for oil shale development.