Wyoming News Briefs

UW raises ACT score requirement

LARAMIE (WNE) — The University of Wyoming’s board of trustees voted this month, at the request of university administrators, to set a minimum ACT score of 17 for students to be admitted to the school.

Previously, high school graduates could be assured admission to UW, albeit with some remedial classes, if they had a cumulative grade-point average of 2.5-2.99. No standardized test score was required.

However, that new policy will still require those students with a sub-3.0 GPA to have a GPA of at least 17 or an SAT score of 900.

Kyle Moore, UW’s associate vice provost for enrollment management, said that, in recent years, about 20 freshmen admitted under the old requirement would now be disqualified from admittance based on low ACT scores.

Only about half of those students continue at the university after their freshman year, he said.

Forty-five students who were admitted during 2018’s record-breaking freshman class would be disqualified.

About half the students have not returned to school, and 16 were suspended for substandard grades, Moore said.

UW’s top attorney, Tara Evans, who guides much of the university’s revisions to its regulations, told trustees this month that “the administration believes this is a very positive thing” to ensure students succeed as freshmen.

“We wanted to make sure we weren’t putting students in a position where they were going to struggle and not succeed,” she said.

Climber rescued after falling in Grand Teton

JACKSON (WNE) — A 20-year-old French Canadian man was climbing by himself in Grand Teton National Park on Sunday morning when he fell 50 feet.

Although Maxime Blondel was injured, he was able to pull out his cell phone and call for help.

Park rangers got the call around 11:30 a.m. Sunday and flew by helicopter to Blondel’s location.

“They were unable to land or perform a short haul because it was so windy,” park public information specialist C.J. Adams said. “There were rangers in Garnet Canyon, so they responded there to his location.”

Rangers reached Blondel, provided an initial assessment and took him down via a wheeled litter — essentially a stretcher mounted on bicycle-like tires. Including the painstaking procedure of moving the litter down the mountain, the rescue took about eight hours.

“Because of the conditions they weren’t down until 7:30 p.m.,” Adams said.

Park officials said the incident serves as a good reminder that rangers and rescue personnel can’t always respond by helicopter.

“It extends the time needed to extract people out of the mountains,” Adams said.

Details about how Blondel fell were not available at press time. He was attempting to climb Disappointment Peak.

His injuries were also not released, but officials said they were not life threatening.

Campbell County joins air service program

GILLETTE (WNE) — One of the final pieces to the puzzle of statewide air service was put in place Tuesday, when Campbell County commissioners signed an agreement with WYDOT.

In June, the Wyoming Department of Transportation approved a contract with SkyWest Airlines to provide air service to Gillette, Sheridan, Riverton and Rock Springs, but it required agreements between WYDOT and those four communities.

The agreement guarantees Gillette will have three daily roundtrip flights to Denver. The third flight will be available starting Oct. 6, a Sunday.

Riverton and Rock Springs signed the agreement but Sheridan has tabled it until more details are worked out.

Gillette will keep its early morning and late night flights. Now it has an early evening flight as well. The third flight would leave Gillette at 5:56 p.m. and land in Denver at 7:21 p.m. And while the time can be changed, the flight will not go away.

Commissioner Mark Christensen wondered about one part of the agreement that says the communities have two years to reduce their per-passenger costs by 10 percent.

“The only way to offset that is to increase ridership, because we don’t have any control over any of the other expenses,” he said.

Cheyenne smoking ban now includes e-cigs

CHEYENNE (WNE) — E-cigarettes and other electronic smoking devices are now on a list of smoking instruments banned in certain public places by a 2006 ordinance.

With an 8-1 vote Monday night, the Cheyenne City Council gave final approval to an amendment that adds electronic smoking devices to an ordinance that already bans cigars, cigarettes, pipes, hookahs and water pipes.

The amendment bans electronic smoking devices “that can be used to deliver aerosolized or vaporized nicotine to the person inhaling from the device, including, but not limited to, an e-cigarette, e-cigar, e-pipe, vape pen or e-hookah.”

The amendment excludes devices designed to deliver prescription medications, such as inhalers.

“I’m very pleased that the amendment passed,” said Councilman Jeff White, who sponsored the ordinance amendment. “I just feel it was a logical extension of an already existing ordinance, that most businesses had already put signs up that said no vaping in their establishments.”

The amendment redefines smoking as “inhaling, exhaling, burning or carrying any lighted or heated cigar, cigarette, pipe, or any other lighted or heated tobacco, nicotine or other product intended for inhalation, including hookah and marijuana, whether natural or synthetic.”

Hikers to pay for helicopter rescue

RIVERTON (WNE) — Two hikers are paying for the helicopter that flew them out of the Wind River Mountains after getting lost on a camping trip last week, officials said Friday.

The male subjects were uninjured, and they had food and water, Undersheriff Mike Hutchison said, but they “bit off more than they could chew” and “realized they were in over their heads.”

They called the Sublette County Sheriff’s Office earlier this week via satellite phone, according to reports. That agency contacted the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office at about 8:40 a.m. Thursday after confirming the hikers’ location.

Coordinates listed on the sheriff’s report indicate the hikers were at a lake along Bull Lake Creek east of Douglas Peak.

“They were in a pretty remote alpine area,” Hutchison said. “They walked in somewhere around 30 miles [and] they didn’t know where to go from there.”

The spot in question is designated as wilderness, he said, so a helicopter was not able to fly to the men directly.

“We’re not allowed to land helicopters in the wilderness if it’s not a dire emergency,” Hutchison said.

Instead, officials asked “some pretty experienced mountaineers” to give the hikers directions to a rendezvous point at the wilderness boundary where they could be picked up.

By Friday mid-morning Hutchison said the hikers had reached the designated spot and a helicopter had been dispatched to meet them.

The ride will cost about $1800 an hour, Hutchison estimated, and the hikers will get the bill.

White Pine lodge fire ruled accidental

PINEDALE (WNE) — The July 12 fire that consumed the lodge at White Pine Ski Resort has been ruled accidental. 

According to Sublette County Unified Fire Public Information Officer Mike Petty, an investigation involving local, state and insurance agency investigators determined the fire was caused by a propane leak with one of the furnaces that found an ignition source in the lodge.

White Pine representative Robyn Blackburn said, “We are waiting on the insurance company to accept the cause and origin, then get permission to remover the rest of the structure.” 

“There’s a lot going on in the background,” she continued. “We are hoping to use the existing concrete for warming huts in the upcoming ski season.” 

“We plan to open for the season,” said White Pine General Manager Katie Lane. “We hope to move in temporary buildings. The goal is to provide, rentals, ski school, food and beverages – everything we need for a ski resort.” 

The race is on to finish and open around Thanksgiving depending on the snow, she said. “Then in the spring we hope to be ready to rebuild,” Lane said. “We will rebuild.” 

Initially reported as a wildland fire, when SCUF fire crews reported the entire lodge was already engulfed in flames when they arrived. Fire crews contained the fire to the lodge building and monitored the surrounding areas to ensure the fire didn’t spread to the surrounding forest or buildings. 

Man drowns after drift boat overturns

JACKSON (WNE) — A family was fly-fishing from their drift boat on the Snake River on Friday when their trip took a deadly turn.

The private drift boat hit a rock near the bridge just north of the Snake River KOA, first responders said.

Officials are now trying to determine how 69-year-old Greenville, Mississippi, resident George Roulhac died in the accident.

“The driver of the drift boat said they were coming down under the bridge where there is construction, and someone had told him to stay to the left to avoid a new wave, so he did,” Teton County Sheriff’s Office Master Deputy Kurt Drumheller said. “But he ended up hitting a rock, and it pushed them into the bridge support beam and it threw them sideways and it flipped the boat.”

Roulhac and two other men who were in the boat were tossed into the water and floated about a quarter-mile downstream.

As they floated toward the Snake River KOA, everyone, including Roulhac, was accounted for and alert, Drumheller said.

“One of the men said to Roulhac, ‘Hey, are you OK?’,” Drumheller said. “And he said, ‘Yeah, I am good.’ “

Witnesses said Roulhac seemed fine and was close enough to shore to stand up, but about 15 seconds later they turned around and he was “floating face down.”

Relatives pulled him to shore at the KOA and started CPR, which deputies and paramedics continued for an hour, but Roulhac couldn’t be revived. He was pronounced dead on scene.

Man sentenced to prison in overdose death

GILLETTE (WNE) — The man who injected a 27-year-old woman with a dose of heroin that killed her and abandoned her in a car after staging it to look like suicide will spend 12 to 16 years in prison for the two crimes.

Jacob G. “Wally” Wallentine, 28, was sentenced Friday afternoon to eight to ten years for manslaughter and four to six years for disposing of a dead human body to conceal a felony. The terms are to be served consecutively, or back to back. But they are to be served concurrently with a three- to five-year prison sentence Wallentine received in June for possession of meth.

Tamlyn Delgado was found dead Oct. 3 in the driver’s seat of her car with a tourniquet around her right arm and a syringe in her lap. Campbell County Chief Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Nathan Henkes said Wallentine “staged” the scene to look like she had given herself the overdose.

Delgado’s mother, Sophia Allen, told District Judge Michael N. “Nick” Deegan that the last two years have been devastating for her family because of addiction. Fifty-three days before Delgado’s death, her brother died of an overdose, despite Delgado’s efforts to revive him before paramedics arrived.

She had vowed that the death of her brother Galen not be in vain, Allen said. She started attending recovery meetings to work on her habits and hangups.

But then Delgado, who was 80 percent wheelchair-bound because of a rare autoimmune disorder, got involved with Wallentine.