Burton Snowboards has announced the impending closing of their Vermont snowboard manufacturing plant. From the Burlington Free Press:

“The environment here is not very manufacturing-friendly… a board costs more to make than you than you sell it for,” Burton CEO Laurent Potdevin said Tuesday. Burton will keep its global headquarters in Burlington.

Specifically, the CEO said, labor costs, real estate and utility expenses made it difficult to turn a profit with boards made in Vermont. Health care benefits are among the factors making manufacturing here expensive, he said. It costs “significantly less” to manufacture in Austria, where Burton has made boards for more than 25 years, he said.

I won’t even go into the “health care benefits” issue, being that Austria has tax-funded universal health care, and the health care debate is currently raging, and the main difference between health care in the U.S and health care in Austria is profit, and..oh, wait, I said I’d not go there.

Burton already makes most of their snowboards in Austria and China, but it’s sad that a company that once made all their boards in Vermont is totally pulling the plug on U.S. board manufacturing.

My second snowboard was a Burton. As was my third. And my fourth. But my fifth, a splitboard, was made by Voile in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. And my next snowboard purchase will likely be handcrafted by a backcountry-loving dude in Silverton, Colorado, USA.

Oh, and if any soon-to-be-laid-off Burton employees are looking to move out West, Voile and Venture are hiring:

Ski and snowboard production workers Looking for anyone with experience working with a combination of wood, fiberglass, and composite materials. Ski and snowboard building includes wet lay-up of wood, fiberglass, and composite materials. Hand bending and fitting of steel edge material. Router cut-out of plastic base material. Band saw cut-out and machine sanding and grinding of skis and snowboards. Email your resume to jobs@voile-usa.com or call us at 801-973-8622.

PRODUCTION TECHNICIAN Full time seasonal worker needed to assist with all phases of the production process at our Silverton, Colorado factory from April through October. No experience necessary but a positive attitude, strong work ethic and passion for snowsliding are a must. For a complete job description and application email info@venturesnowboards.com.

Here’s a little old school Jeff Brushie to cheer you up:

From a January 25th "On The Edge" post on Westword.com: "Photographer/ski bum Scott Limbird sent the above photo of Vail from yesterday, a day he called 'ridiculous.'"

Westword has what may be the best Colorado outdoor/ski/snowboard blog/column/thingy going. The alt-weekly’s “On The Edge” feed has been bringing home the bacon since it launched. And you thought Westword just did music, food, art and bar reviews for hipsters, medical marijuana dispensary listings, and ads for, um, “escorts.”

Their secret sauce? Multiple bloggers/writers feeding the beast, producing a solid delivery of content in Goldilocks form – not too much, not too little, but just right. The content is useful and entertaining, thoughtful and informative, short and visual – all the stuff you want without a bunch of marketing bull (the regular feature “Gear you want but don’t need” is classic).

Some recent posts of note:

• Vail lift line from Hell
• Japanese watermelon snowboarding
• Keystone used to ban you dirty snowboarders, but Breck has been shredding for 25 years

You should check it, RSS it and get your knowledge on.

Now if only they could improve their lame page re-re-re-reloader, I mean slideshow viewer.

Jason Blevins of the Denver Post fills you in on the mysterious man in the camper with a story on his arrest:

From the story:

Toups first ran afoul of the Forest Service, which prohibits living on public land, in 2007 when he was back living in Loveland in the ski area parking lot.

So, he fired up his most recent home — a tired Ford, its hood and doors closed with ropes, its bed topped with a dilapidated camper. He rattled over Loveland Pass, towing a trailer full of old skis and a rusting Honda motorcycle. He landed in the Colorado Department of Transportation utility lot on Forest Service land next to Arapahoe Basin ski area.

On Nov. 14, five months after a Forest Service cop issued Toups a ticket for camping on public land in the CDOT lot, they came for him with a warrant for his arrest.

Toups had missed two mailed summonses, sent to an Aspen-area post office box he never visited.

While there are other ski and snowboard bums living part of the year in parking lots, snow caves, campers, buses, cars, trucks, yurts, teepees, closets, porches, sheds, garages, and attics, few seem as dedicated to skiing as Toups.

“I ski because it is a portal, a gateway to health,” he said, noting that in all his years on skis he has never been injured. “But when I moved into that lot, I was desperate. Sure, I may live like a bum, but I do not behave like one.”

Here’s hoping that Toups is soon back on the slopes.

UPDATE: There’s now a FREE CHARLIE TOUPS! Facebook page. It has 583 fans as of 9:45 p.m. MST on Monday, Jan. 11.

UPDATE 2: Charlie is free, receives deferred prosecution.

Drive Interstate 70 in the Colorado mountains, and have an iPhone, Blackberry or Android? Then GoI70.com would like to check your beta action. From the GoI70.com blog:

GoI70.com is looking for Jackrabbits – volunteers to help test and give feedback on the GoI70 mobile phone application. The application is the mobile connection to the GoI70 social network, travel alerts and road information.  Users will receive mobile phone updates of I-70 road conditions and speeds, and can send and read messages by other users along the highway.

The mobile software is in an early beta stage of development. It will be revised and expanded in response to the testers feedback on ease of use and desired features. The mobile app testers are the first members of the I-70 Jackrabbit Corps which is the core of the I-70 social network.

We are looking for people with advanced smart phones (iPhone, recent model Blackberrys or Android-based phones) who drive the I-70 corridor. Testers will load the application on to their phone and use it when they are traveling I-70. We need volunteers who will participate in our traffic monitoring program and send messages to the I-70 social network about driving conditions encountered in their travels. Because this is software in early development we are looking for volunteers with a healthy curiosity about new technology, a bit of free time and lots of patience.

If you are interested, send an email to info@i70solutions.org Tell us your name, smart phone type and model, phone number, and an email address where we can send you information.

Smart riders in Colorado know to avoid I-70 at peak times (Saturday mornings, Sunday afternoons), but sometimes you just can’t help it. Since the solution to ski traffic on I-70 is still decades and piles of $$$ down the road, here’s hoping that technology can help out.

Or you could move to Leadville, live in a van down by the Arkansas River and hike your butt up to ride down. Sounds like a solid Plan B to me.

Check the race to open updates on Twitter @LovelandSkiArea.

The view from the base as snowmaking operations continue at Loveland Ski Area in Colorado on Tuesday, October 6, 2009.

Cold temperatures and natural snowfall arrived earlier than expected allowing us to officially kick-off snowmaking for the 2009-2010 season. Crews fired up the system at 11:00 am, 3 days earlier than they were able to last season. With a favorable weather forecast for the next few days, conditions look good to get some good, productive hours in.

Loveland starts the guns a' blasting on Monday, September 21, 2009. (Loveland Ski Area)

Colorado Ski Country USA blogged with member reports on the summer snow.

Keystone had a timely and savvy react to the change in the weather, with a slick video of the storm cut with stock powder footage to get you all excited.

And photographer Jack Brauer nailed a sweet last day of summer photo down in Ouray, Colorado.

From the tale of discovery:

In search of a good bargain, the Rogers family decided to ride the free gondola up to the top of a mountain while on their vacation in Wyoming.

“We do anything that’s free,” Jane Rogers said.

“I was over on a pile of snow… sliding down on my feet and my mom just told me, ‘Quickly, quickly, come over here,’” Dustin Rogers said.

In a melting pile of snow, Jane had found a silver money clip – and it was full.

Yeah, heartwarming and all, but what those 9News peeps didn’t tell you is that there’s millions of dollars worth of cash, cell phones, ski poles, gloves, sunglasses, bags o’ weed, gold chains, goggles, GPS’ssses, flasks, diamond rings, cigarettes, lottery tickets, bongs, ladies unmentionables, lighters, Golden Tickets, full bottles of beer, wine and liquor, and other sundry and skeezy items just waiting to be absconded by you! That’s right, run up to the hills right now and start looking under all the lifts and scouring all the runs, ’cause there’s treasure just a-waiting to be found.

From the story:

“Poppen built the first Snurfer in 1965, a board similar to a water ski, but better suited for the snow for his children. His idea was picked up by the local Brunswick Corp., which manufactured Snurfers for distribution around the country. It would be almost 20 years later before snowboarding really took off, but Poppen’s original idea was never forgotten.

Much love for Sherm. I owe my winter happiness to him.

Here’s some seriously old-school Snurfing action on the Tubes, which looks much like the modern NoBoard. Funny thing, history. What goes down goes around.

Larkspur Bowl at Beaver Creek, 9:01 a.m., Saturday, April 4, 2009.

Dust storm over northeastern Arizona, April 3, 2009. (NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center)

A few bloggers and news sources have posted about the storms, but Gunnison Country Times Editor Chris Dickey nails it:

“It’s not unusual to have dust storms,” said Doug Crowley, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service (NWS) in Grand Junction. “But what it comes down to is that this has been an active spring season. Seems like it’s been windier than normal.”

Friday’s event — which turned skies an eerie shade of red, reduced visibility in some towns to next to nothing and, combined with moisture, in some cases made it literally “raining mud,” according to Crowley — wasn’t the first dust storm of the year. But it definitely was the biggest.

Some longtime weather watchers called Friday’s dust storm “the worst they’d ever witnessed,” according to Chris Landry, who closely monitors “dust on snow” events for the Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies in Silverton.

“This is the biggest event of this nature that I have seen in the 20 plus years I have been here,” said John Scott of Gunnison’s National Resource Conservation Service.

The Vail Daily covers the “Brah, it was that volcano in Alsaka” rumor.

CBS4 in Denver brings you the “Danger in the High Country!!! (film at 10)” angle.

All joking aside, the dust does appear to have an effect how how fast the snowpack melts, and possibly on avalanche risk. Some sciencey-types take you to school on the subject of the West getting dustier and dust storms in winter.

Also, the trip reports documenting the dust have been slowly appearing like, uh, dust on your VCR:

http://splitboard.com/talk/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6716

http://www.mountainphotographer.com/dust-invasion/

http://www.14erskiers.com/blog/2009/04/purple-peak-s-couloir-4709/

http://www.14erskiers.com/blog/2009/04/the-s-tube-4809/

http://www.14ers.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=18254&p=222157

Whew, what a stack of links this post has been. Don’t let the dust get you down. Dusty snow is better than no snow.

Hope you are having a superb spring of snowriding. I know I have.

Rocky Mountain News winter sports edition cover from January 31, 1937.

Colorado lost a good friend this week, as the 150-year-old Rocky Mountain News ceased publication on Friday, February 27, 2009.

I will miss many things about the Rocky, from the outstanding photography to the great investigative reporting to the tenacity and hustle to report the news. And I will miss their ski and snowboard coverage.

It’s a sad day for journalism.

RIP RMN.