The Lake Tahoe Regional Planning Agency approved a scheduled-for-2014 opening of an entirely revamped base village for Homewood. The 1,253-acre village will include a 75-room hotel, 70 condos, 25,000 square feet of retail and a lot of pedestrian chill space. Local and environmental opposition seems to have tapered since the developer plans to use a combo of solar, geothermal and hydroelectric energy and will include expanded water taxi service and the use of hybrid/electric vehicles for shuttling guests. Part of the plan also includes a new 15,000-square-foot, mid-mountain lodge served by eight-person gondolas.

Bolton Valley is doing okay, despite a failed effort to sell itself to a larger investor. The 650-acre area is the quintessential “locals’” mountain, in the shadow of much tonier places like Stowe and Sugarbush. The owners acknowledge that their bread and butter is Vermonters, and that they come because the mountain is more affordable. But at some point Bolton may get sold; the present owners say they’re in the real estate business, not the ski business, even as they’ve added and upgraded infrastructure, such as a wind turbine to help lessen the area’s carbon footprint, and there are plans to add a second one. That’s just the sort of thing that you’d think would attract some smart investor…

Because you need UCI points, and to have those, you’d better be on the UCI’s new list of “elite” teams for 2012.  Only two teams, Trek World Racing and Ghost Factory Racing (Ghost is a big brand in Germany but not sold in the U.S.), are “elite” in both gravity and endurance events, and all that means is that of the 27 teams granted elite-ness, very few have the money to field serious squads in every discipline. If you aren’t elite it’s harder to get UCI points, and Olympic spots are largely determined by who has status. Talent? Talent matters. But so does team support. Hugely.

Streetsblog really hit a raw nerve with this post. The partial read is here, but the setup is that a reader said that there’s a double standard on reckless behavior, and spelled it out as follows… Start it here, but click through to the post if you’re an urban cyclist who wants to see the debate that ensued: “Yesterday I saw a bicyclist do [insert dangerous, stupid, inconsiderate, boneheaded move here] and it nearly inconvenienced me. This means all bikers better watch out because the responsible, productive, law-abiding members of this community aren’t going to tolerate this kind of of anti-social behavior from you riffraff much longer…Yesterday I saw a car driver do [insert dangerous, stupid, inconsiderate, boneheaded move here] and kill someone! A tragedy, but it was an accident, no one’s fault really, just one of those bad parts of living in the modern age that we all have to put up with. After all, anyone can make a mistake…”

That’s the question in Idaho, where a blog recently reported that the state’s Wildlife Services agency, which is again considering shooting wolves from the air, was until recently representing wolf kills on an aircraft much the same way that fighter pilots used to adorn aircraft with symbols of gunned-down enemy planes. In this case the “enemy” is hotly open for debate. Opponents of the shooting say it’s being done to protect elk just so that hunters can kill them for pleasure (the wolves obviously are killing them to survive). The state says the elk herds are dwindling. Ranchers say wolves are a threat. But the question remains: Even if wolves end up in the crosshairs, should a hunt by the state be treated like sport?

Liftopia, which is already the largest online marketplace for discounted ski lift tickets, yesterday launched an app version for iPhones. You can use the iPhone’s location awareness to have it auto-shop deals, or search by date or region. A pretty sweet feature is that you don’t have to print a lift pass; you just show your bar-coded receipt on your phone’s screen at the ticket window at participating resorts. Currently Liftopia is working with 150 ski areas, including a lot of the majors, like Aspen, Copper, Stowe, Squaw, Mammoth, Taos, Bachelor, etc. And, yes, Android folks, they’re working on your app, too.

To achieve up to one-quarter of its target for carbon emissions reductions by 2050, the European Cyclists’ Federation says the nations of Europe just need to imitate the Danes, who don’t even ride that much; the average person from Denmark rides about a mile a day. But if that happened across the EU it would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 55 million to 120 million tons annually, or 5 to 11 percent of the EU’s overall emissions target, by 2020. Since the EU is unlikely to meet its targets with more efficient technology alone, the report says a shift away from cars is critical. Meanwhile, New York City transportation officials say the number of people bicycling in Manhattan this year is double the ridership in 2007, largely as a result of increased bike lanes across the city.

Most of us aren’t aware of light pollution until we head somewhere like the Utah desert and all of the sudden we look up at 10 p.m., and BAM! There’s the sky, clean and bejeweled and magnificent. But now you can see the reason for the contrast between city and not-city via The Blue Marble Nightlights map which harnesses a composite of Google satellite images to show light density, which happens to be strongly correlated with income and infrastructure. Note that Africa is truly the “dark” continent in this case, and that whole swatches of central China are dark. But also note: These are nearly nine-year-old satellite images — we bet China and India are lot brighter today.

100 years ago yesterday, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen became the first man to reach the South Pole, besting his British nemesis, Robert Falcon Scott. There’s still a lot to be learned from Amundsen’s triumph and Scott’s tragedy. Amundsen studied how arctic-dwelling Inuits survived near the North Pole, and adapted their techniques for the Southern assault, including wearing animal pelts and using sleds pulled by dogs, while Scott famously and disastrously chose horses and sledges. What was true 100 years ago is still true today: Conrad Anker’s recent third and triumphant try on the Shark’s Fin was the result of trial, error, and adaptation, not bull-headed will.