Castle Valley Comments
October 10, 2013
by Ron Drake
Oct 10, 2013 | 1542 views | 0 0 comments | 26 26 recommendations | email to a friend | print
As I mentioned last week, 46 skydivers who were part of the 10th annual “Mother of All Boogies” skydiving festival landed in a drop zone on Pace Lane in Castle Valley, and they were treated to a barbecue by Mike Messick and Julie Wentz. Among those who “dropped in” for dinner was German Formula One race car driver Michael Schumacher, a seven-time Formula One world champion.

For the past nine years, Messick and Wentz, who are avid skydivers themselves, invite some of the Moab festival participants to skydive into their backyard on Pace Lane and enjoy a barbecue afterward. Over the years, they had to limit the amount of skydivers to two plane loads out of the giant twin-engine Otter. Veteran skydivers say the Castle Valley jump is their favorite jump because of the beautiful scenery.

Before he retired, Schumacher was listed as the highest paid racer in the world and the second highest earning sportsman in the world by Forbes magazine in 2004. In 2005, Eurobusiness magazine listed him as the world’s first billionaire athlete. Messick was told that the only reason Schumacher traveled from New York to Moab was specifically for the Castle Valley jump. I’m guessing it was for the view, or they must have some really awesome food at that barbecue!

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Plans are now underway to begin an emergency medical response course in preparation for an EMR team to be established in Castle Valley. The course is under the direction of Paula Dunham, assistant director of education with the Grand County Emergency Medical Services. The course will be 60 hours in length and will cover all aspects of emergency medical care. The course is scheduled to begin Nov. 4 and classes will be every Monday and Thursday, with a week break around Thanksgiving and a three-week break around Christmas.

Members of the Castle Valley Fire Department and the Day Star Academy have signed up so far, but organizers are actively seeking other members of the community to join the course and be part of the eventual emergency response team here in the valley.

The goal of the team is to respond to medical emergencies in the Castle Valley area and provide immediate lifesaving care to critical patients who access the emergency medical system. The team will possess the basic knowledge and skills necessary to provide lifesaving interventions while awaiting additional EMS response from higher-level personnel from Moab. Grand County EMS will provide an ambulance to be stationed in Castle Valley, but it will be a non-transport vehicle to store medical equipment and get a patient out of extreme weather if necessary. Dr. Michael Duehrssen will be the director of the local team.

Anyone interested in the course and being a part of providing a vital lifesaving service is encouraged to contact Paula Dunham at 435-259-8901 or 435-820-1140, or call me at 435-259-8588 for more information.

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Castle Valley and the surrounding area went black Thursday, Oct. 3 at around 10 p.m. when the electrical power blinked a few times before it went out for good for the next six hours. Pat and I were getting settled in to watch the nightly news when the power went out. We thought that maybe the federal government shutdown somehow had something to do with our electricity. But we did get over a third of an inch of rain that night and the wind was gusting relentlessly during the night, so we figured those two weather occurrences had something to do with us not having electricity.

Officially, Jeff Hymas of Rocky Mountain Power said the electricity went out at 10:04 p.m. and was restored at 3:35 a.m. the next morning. The power outage affected 700 customers including Castle Valley, Cisco, La Sal, Thompson Springs and part of Moab, probably upper Spanish Valley. The power failure was caused by a weather-related pole fire, probably from arcing of wires caused by those relentless winds.
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