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NEW YORK (AP) — The Mountain West Conference is doing some serious climbing.

A league that has always had to fight for respect as it tries to join the ranks of the power conferences, the 11-year-old Mountain West had three teams in The Associated Press’ Top 25 on Monday, one more than the Atlantic Coast Conference and three more than the Pac-10.

Kansas (22-1) remained the runaway No. 1, receiving 55 first-place votes from the national media panel. Syracuse (23-1), which received eight first-place votes, moved up one spot to become the fourth No. 2 in as many weeks. The ranking is the highest for the Orange since a six-week stretch at No. 1 in 1989-90.

Kentucky (22-1), which was No. 1 on two ballots, moved up one place to No. 3, while Villanova and West Virginia, which met Monday night, were fourth and fifth.

New Mexico, BYU and UNLV, which are in a three-way tie for first place in the Mountain West, give the league three teams in the Top 25 for the first time.

“BYU, New Mexico and UNLV are reaping the benefits of unprecedented national television exposure and enhanced non-conference scheduling,” Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson said in a statement. “All three teams have really extended their schedules and some very quality wins are now being reflected. It is a real tribute to the coaches to see Top 25 matchups each week in Conference play as well.”

No. 15 New Mexico (21-3) is ranked for the third straight week and seventh overall. BYU (22-3) dropped five places to 17th following its 88-74 loss to UNLV, the game that forged the three-way tie for first and moved the Rebels (19-4) back into the poll at No. 23.

BYU has been ranked for six straight weeks, while UNLV jumps back in after being out the last eight weeks. The Mountain West has sent more than one team to the NCAA tournament in nine of the last 10 years.

“It’s been a push of our league the last several years,” New Mexico coach Steve Alford said. “We already felt our league has been at that point for a while now. It’s good to start getting some national respect. I think we’ve got some really good players and some really good teams.”

The ACC has Duke and No. 20 Georgia Tech in this week’s poll, while the Pac-10 is without a team in the Top 25 for the fifth straight week since Washington dropped out.

Purdue moved up two places to No. 6 followed by Georgetown, Duke, Kansas State and Michigan State, which dropped five spots after losing to Wisconsin and Illinois last week.

The Big East has the most teams in the rankings with five and four of those — Syracuse, Villanova, West Virginia and Georgetown — are in the top seven.

The Big 12 and Big Ten have four teams each in the poll, while the Southeastern Conference has three.

Wisconsin led the second ten followed by Tennessee, Ohio State, Texas, New Mexico, Gonzaga, BYU, Butler, Northern Iowa and Georgia Tech.

The last teams were Temple, Vanderbilt, UNLV, Baylor and Pittsburgh.

Mississippi (17-6) dropped out from No. 25 after losing 85-75 to Kentucky before beating Alabama 74-67. The Rebels were ranked for the last nine weeks, reaching as high as No. 14.

The Villanova-West Virginia game is one two games between teams in the Top Ten with Purdue at Michigan State on Tuesday the other.

One game being played this week has often been a matchup of Top Ten teams, Duke at North Carolina. The eighth-ranked Blue Devils held up their end of the matchup, but the defending national champion Tar Heels (13-10) fell out of the rankings three weeks ago after starting the season at No. 6.

Including Wednesday’s game, Duke and North Carolina have met with both being ranked in the Top Ten 41 times, including 30 of the last 60. Since the AP poll began in the 1948-49 season, one of the teams has been ranked when they met 147 of a possible 163 times, including 128 consecutive games since Feb. 27, 1960. One of the teams has been in the Top Ten in 115 of those games.

Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

The Mountain West Conference is doing some serious climbing.

A league that has always had to fight for respect as it tries to join the
ranks of the power conferences, the 11-year-old Mountain West had three teams in
The Associated Press’ Top 25 on Monday, one more than the Atlantic Coast
Conference and three more than the Pac-10.

Kansas (22-1) remained the runaway No. 1, receiving 55 first-place votes
from the national media panel. Syracuse (23-1), which received eight first-place
votes, moved up one spot to become the fourth No. 2 in as many weeks. The
ranking is the highest for the Orange since a six-week stretch at No. 1 in
1989-90.

Kentucky (22-1), which was No. 1 on two ballots, moved up one place to No.
3, while Villanova and West Virginia, which met Monday night, were fourth and
fifth.

New Mexico, BYU and UNLV, which are in a three-way tie for first place in
the Mountain West, give the league three teams in the Top 25 for the first time.

“BYU, New Mexico and UNLV are reaping the benefits of unprecedented
national television exposure and enhanced non-conference scheduling,” Mountain
West commissioner Craig Thompson said in a statement. “All three teams have
really extended their schedules and some very quality wins are now being
reflected. It is a real tribute to the coaches to see Top 25 matchups each week
in Conference play as well.”

No. 15 New Mexico (21-3) is ranked for the third straight week and seventh
overall. BYU (22-3) dropped five places to 17th following its 88-74 loss to
UNLV, the game that forged the three-way tie for first and moved the Rebels
(19-4) back into the poll at No. 23.

BYU has been ranked for six straight weeks, while UNLV jumps back in after
being out the last eight weeks. The Mountain West has sent more than one team to
the NCAA tournament in nine of the last 10 years.

“It’s been a push of our league the last several years,” New Mexico coach
Steve Alford said. “We already felt our league has been at that point for a
while now. It’s good to start getting some national respect. I think we’ve got
some really good players and some really good teams.”

The ACC has Duke and No. 20 Georgia Tech in this week’s poll, while the
Pac-10 is without a team in the Top 25 for the fifth straight week since
Washington dropped out.

Purdue moved up two places to No. 6 followed by Georgetown, Duke, Kansas
State and Michigan State, which dropped five spots after losing to Wisconsin and
Illinois last week.

The Big East has the most teams in the rankings with five and four of those
— Syracuse, Villanova, West Virginia and Georgetown—are in the top seven.

The Big 12 and Big Ten have four teams each in the poll, while the
Southeastern Conference has three.

Wisconsin led the second ten followed by Tennessee, Ohio State, Texas, New
Mexico, Gonzaga, BYU, Butler, Northern Iowa and Georgia Tech.

The last teams were Temple, Vanderbilt, UNLV, Baylor and Pittsburgh.

Mississippi (17-6) dropped out from No. 25 after losing 85-75 to Kentucky
before beating Alabama 74-67. The Rebels were ranked for the last nine weeks,
reaching as high as No. 14.

The Villanova-West Virginia game is one two games between teams in the Top
Ten with Purdue at Michigan State on Tuesday the other.

One game being played this week has often been a matchup of Top Ten teams,
Duke at North Carolina. The eighth-ranked Blue Devils held up their end of the
matchup, but the defending national champion Tar Heels (13-10) fell out of the
rankings three weeks ago after starting the season at No. 6.

Including Wednesday’s game, Duke and North Carolina have met with both being
ranked in the Top Ten 41 times, including 30 of the last 60. Since the AP poll
began in the 1948-49 season, one of the teams has been ranked when they met 147
of a possible 163 times, including 128 consecutive games since Feb. 27, 1960.
One of the teams has been in the Top Ten in 115 of those games.

AP Sports Writer Tim Korte contributed from Albuquerque, N.M.

Nebraska keeps winning and climbing up the Top 25.

The unbeaten Cornhuskers (21-0) moved past Notre Dame to No. 3 on Monday in The Associated Press women’s basketball poll. Nebraska trailed the Irish in the poll by 27 points last week, but were buoyed by victories over then-No. 10 Oklahoma State and 12th-ranked Texas A&M to move two points in front.

“They are still undefeated and are beating some pretty good teams,” said voter Paul Zeise of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, who had Nebraska No. 2 on his ballot this week. “They’ve played a lot of teams that have been ranked in the top 10 and beat them all. They haven’t really had a close game.”

Sounds like a familiar scenario to UConn, which remained No. 1 for a record 38th straight week. The Huskies (23-0) routed West Virginia and Louisville this week. Connecticut has won 62 straight games, all by double digits.

Stanford remained second with Notre Dame falling to fourth — despite winning twice this past week — and Tennessee fifth.

While there wasn’t much surprise at UConn’s continued success, the Cornhuskers didn’t even start the season ranked and didn’t crack the Top 25 until the fourth week of the season. Before this run, Nebraska’s highest ranking had been 12th in 1997.

Nebraska, which will visit Kansas on Wednesday and Missouri on Saturday, has won most of its games by double digits with Miami being the only team to come within five points.

The Hurricanes knocked off North Carolina this week, dropping the Tar Heels nine spots to 18th. North Carolina, which also lost to then-No. 15 Florida State, hasn’t been this low in the rankings since being No. 19 on Feb. 25, 2002.

Things don’t get any easier for North Carolina, which plays No. 8 Duke on Monday night. The Blue Devils fell two spots after losing at Boston College. Xavier and Ohio State moved up to sixth and seventh. Despite a 33-point loss to UConn, West Virginia moved up to ninth — its best ranking ever. Florida State jumped up five places to 10th.

Baylor climbed four spots to No. 11, starting a run of five straight Big 12 teams. The Bears were followed by Oklahoma, Texas A&M, Texas, and Oklahoma State.

Georgetown moved up two places to 16th. The Hoyas were followed by Kentucky, which is in second in the Southeastern Conference. The Tar Heels were next followed by Georgia and Iowa State — the seventh Big 12 team in the poll.

Georgia Tech, Gonzaga, LSU, TCU, and St. John’s rounded out the poll. After falling out a week earlier, TCU re-entered the Top 25. Wisconsin-Green Bay was the lone team to exit the poll.

The mind-numbing monotony of repetitious exercises doesn’t do much to sell
the benefits of a gym membership. Bar goes up. Bar goes down. Bar goes up. Bar
goes down. After a few months of that, even NASCAR doesn’t seem so tedious.

But let’s face it, that extra junk in your trunk isn’t going away just
because you made a New Year’s resolution to lose a few pounds.

So what are you supposed to do?

Well, gyms aren’t always so blah.

Consider Das Kletterzentrum Extrem — or Extreme Climbing Center — in
Ludwigshafen, Germany. Don’t let the name fool you; it is a gym. To be more
precise, it’s a warehouse-size climbing gym.

What it does is replicate the experience of scaling the side of a cliff in
good weather (it’s much more dangerous — even impossible — to climb some
mountains when the weather isn’t good). It does for climbing what indoor skate
parks do for skateboarding; that is, it brings an extreme sport inside so you
can do it without waiting for the rain to stop or summer to start.

The climbing center in Ludwigshafen has more than 200 marked and unmarked
routes along its main, 20,000-square-foot climbing hall. Some of the holds
climbers are expected to grip on their way to the top aren’t much bigger than a
big wad of used gum. Others are easily as big as softballs.

The center’s vertiginous paths range in difficulty from 2 (not much harder
than climbing a ladder) to 9+ (about as easy as swimming to the moon) on the
difficulty scale. For these, even the most experienced climbers have to be roped
in to avoid the risk of taking a 30-foot header onto the floor.

Thanks to the ropes, though, the worst threat to most climbers — at least
those experienced enough to climb out on an overhang — is the pendulum-like
swing and painful crunch into the wall after losing a grip on the ceiling (which
photographer Ben Bloker and I watched happen. The climber bounced, apparently
unscathed).

If being strapped in isn’t your thing, there’s also a bouldering room where
climbers can traverse across an additional 3,000 square feet of faux caves and
cliffs without ropes but with thick mats to cushion the inevitable fall.

It might not sound like the optimal way to concentrate and cast off stress,
but those who have felt the acid burn in their forearms and calves on a tricky
ascent say differently.

Climbing, said Christian Stolina, a Ludwigshafen local and three-year member
of the center, is “a very spiritual thing.”

Stolina started climbing in 2006 after a job-related climb to the top of a
tall tower revealed to him an almost overwhelming fear of heights.

“That’s why I started climbing,” he said. “I was afraid of it.”

Most of the year, though, he’s outside. He climbs in the center during the
winter to get better for the next outdoor season, he said.

“It’s really more for getting power and training on your climbing
techniques,” he said.

And, of course, having a good time while doing it.

---

Directions: Ludswigshafen is on the west side of the Rhine, just over
the river from Mannheim. To get there from east or west, take Autobahn 6 toward
Mannheim. At Kreuz Frankenthal (on the west side of the Rhine), take exit 21 to
merge onto A61 toward Karlsruhe/Neustadt/Weinstrasse/Ludwigshafen. Take Exit 60,
Kreuz Ludwigshafen, and merge onto the A650 toward Ludwigshafen, then take Exit
8, Ludwigshafen Oggersheim-Sud, toward LU Friesenheim. Turn right at K3
(following signs for Friesenheim) and then another right onto Mannheimer Strasse.
About a mile down the road, take a left onto Saarburger Strasse and follow it
around the curve. The climbing center will be on your right.

Times: The center is open 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Friday, 10
a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturdays, Sundays and holidays.

Costs: A one-day pass for the whole center costs 13 euros for adults,
11 euros for students (with ID) and 8 euros for youths 5 to 13 years old. For
those wanting to stick to the bouldering room, it’s just 8 euros a day.
Newcomers can rent shoes, a harness, chalk bag, belay device and a carabiner for
7 euros (shoes — at 3.50 euros — are the only real necessity in the bouldering
room). Group rates, memberships and family discounts are also available.
Beginners can take two, three-hour lessons for 69 euros.

Food: Energy drinks, water and beer at standard prices.

Information: The center’s Web site,
www.kletterzentrum.de, is in German.
Some of the staff members speak English; call them at 0621-528-374.

 

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Duane Raleigh, editor and publisher of Rock and Ice magazine based in Carbondale, doing a mixed climb up Coal Basin west of Redstone. Raleigh and a number of Redstone residents have created Redstone Winterfest this weekend to bring attention to the area’s prime climbing spots.

Duane Raleigh, editor and publisher of Rock and Ice magazine based in Carbondale, doing a mixed climb up Coal Basin west of Redstone. Raleigh and a number of Redstone residents have created Redstone Winterfest this weekend to bring attention to the area’s prime climbing spots.ENLARGE

Duane Raleigh, editor and publisher of Rock and Ice magazine based in Carbondale, doing a mixed climb up Coal Basin west of Redstone. Raleigh and a number of Redstone residents have created Redstone Winterfest this weekend to bring attention to the area’s prime climbing spots.

Submitted photo by Julie Albrecht

Redstone Winterfest

REDSTONE, Colorado — Wintertime in Redstone isn’t just about dogs and sled dog racing anymore.

In fact, the inaugural Redstone Winterfest this weekend is intended, in part, to showcase another attraction on the frozen Crystal River Valley landscape that has been growing in popularity — ice climbing.

“Ice climbers know the Crystal Valley as a somewhat tucked-away, unknown destination for great climbing,” said Becky Trembley of the Redstone Community Association, who is one of the organizers of the event.

Duane Raleigh, a Redstone resident who is also editor and publisher of the Carbondale-based magazine Rock and Ice, has teamed up with Dick Jackson of Aspen Expeditions to help draw some attention to the sport through Winterfest.

Jackson holds permits and insurance for ice climbing in the Crystal River Valley, and will be on hand organizing ice climbing demos during the weekend.

The festival begins tonight with a beer tasting and live music at the Expo Tent, which will be set up on the lawn of the Redstone Inn for the weekend.

Besides climbing, there’ll be dog skijoring clinics, a Saturday dog parade on Redstone Boulevard, snowshoe and Nordic races, a scavenger hunt, a kids ski run and snow sculpting.

Evening events include live music and screenings of the German film “North Face.”

Although the annual sled dog races will not be happening this year, Trembley said the plan is to bring them back in the future. The key organizer was not available to put the event together this year, and the Community Association has been looking to expand the winter festival theme anyway. So, it was the perfect opportunity to make the break and do something different this winter that would have some broader appeal, she said.

“We’ve been wanting to take it up a notch, and make it more of a rounded weekend of winter activities,” Trembley said. “It’s going to be bigger and better than ever, especially with the ice climbing.”

A few events that have become part of the sled dog race weekend in recent years will also continue, including the dog parade and the snow sculpting.

“Skijoring is also a big event, and it’s a great replacement for the sled dogs,” she said. “It’s kind of taken off and built some momentum of its own in this valley.”

jstroud@postindependent.com

WASHINGTON — The day after Congress raised America’s debt ceiling above $14 trillion — potentially adding another $6,000 in debt to every man, woman and child — a surprisingly upbeat January jobs report that showed unemployment dipping below 10 percent prompted President Obama to declare that “we are climbing out of the huge hole that we found ourselves in.”

Obama assessment was partly based on a report out Friday that showed the unemployment rate dropping in January from 10 to 9.7 percent, while employers shed only 20,000 jobs.

But it’s not all roses, as the Labor Department revised its past employment estimates to show that job losses from the Great Recession have been much worse than previously state. The economy has shed 8.4 million jobs since the downturn began in December 2007, up from a previous figure of 7.2 million. That’s the most jobs lost in any recession, as a percent of total employment, since World War II.

The figure for November was revised higher, however, to show a gain of 64,000 jobs. That was initially reported as a gain of 4,000.

Obama, speaking Friday at a small business in a Washington suburb, took pains not to overstate the gains detailed in the new government report.

“These numbers, while positive, are a cause for hope but not celebration because far too many of our of neighbors, and friends and family are out of work,” he said.

The unemployment rate dropped because a survey of households found the number of employed Americans rose by 541,000, the Labor Department said Friday. The job losses are calculated from a separate survey of employers.

Obama’s economic adviser, Christina Romer, responded to the jobs report with cautious optimism.

“Even as today’s numbers contain signs of the beginning of recovery, they are also a reminder of how far we still have to go to return the economy to robust health and full employment,” Romer wrote on the White House blog.

“There will likely be bumps in the road ahead,” she continued. “The monthly employment and unemployment numbers are volatile and subject to substantial revision. Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative.”

Much of January’s report offers hope that employers are starting to reverse course and may start adding jobs soon. Aside from November’s gain, January’s job losses were the smallest since the recession began and are down from the huge loss of 779,000 jobs in January 2009.

But Republicans weren’t impressed, as they focused on the 20,000 jobs lost last month.

“Washington Democrats promised that the trillion-dollar ’stimulus’ would create jobs ‘immediately,’ keep the unemployment rate from going above eight percent and that 90 percent of the jobs created would be private-sector jobs,” House Minority Leader John Boehner said in a written statement.

“None of that has occurred, and the Obama administration’s job-killing policies are only making matters worse,” he said.

Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., the No. 2 Republican in the House, charged Obama and Democratic leaders with perpetuating “an environment of uncertainty with the threat of even more mandates and red tape, skyrocketing deficits, and tax increases that prevent job creation.”

The manufacturing sector added jobs for the first time since January 2007. Its gain of 11,000 jobs was the most since April 2006.

Retailers added 42,100 jobs, the most since November 2007, before the recession began. Temporary help services gained 52,000 jobs, its fourth month of gains. That could signal future hiring, as employers usually hire temp workers before permanent ones.

The average work week increased to 33.3 hours, from 33.2. That indicates employers are increasing hours for their current workers, a step that usually precedes new hiring.

The number of part-time workers who want full-time work, but can’t find it, fell by almost 1 million. That lowered the “underemployment” rate, which also includes discouraged workers, to 16.5 percent from 17.3 percent.

The federal government has begun hiring workers to perform the 2010 census, which added 9,000 jobs. That process could add as many as 1.2 million jobs this year, though they will all be temporary.

But job cuts at the state and local levels canceled out those gains, as government employment fell by 8,000.

The construction industry lost more jobs than other sector, dropping 75,000. Most of that loss came from the commercial building sector, the department said.

Still, jobs remain scarce even as the economy is recovering: Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the nation’s output, has risen for two straight quarters. GDP rose by 5.7 percent in the October-December quarter, the fastest pace in six years.

Many economists say businesses are reluctant to add workers because it’s not clear whether the recovery will continue once government stimulus measures, such as tax credits for home buyers, fade this spring.

The debate over health care reform and the scheduled expiration of some Bush administration tax cuts at the end of this year may also hold back some employers, many economists said.

“Until some of these uncertainties from Washington get cleared up, businesses, particularly small businesses, are going to be loath to do any additional hiring,” said Hank Smith, chief investment officer at Haverford Investments.

High unemployment could restrain consumer spending, which has led most recoveries in the past. That’s why many economists think the current rebound will be weak.

Public concern about persistent unemployment has forced Obama and members of Congress to shift their attention to jobs and the economy and away from health care reform. The Senate will begin working Monday on legislation that would give companies a tax break for hiring new workers, Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday.

The budget plan Obama released this week projects unemployment will still be very high — 9.8 percent — by the end of this year.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

SALT LAKE CITY — Health care reform efforts continue to move as slowly as cold tar, but health care spending across the United States raged on in 2009, and when all the data come in, it will likely have had the largest one-year increase in history.

Despite the general downward slide of the rest of the economy, the arc of health care spending grew by 5.7 percent the past year, according to a report released Thursday by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

At this rate, by 2019 health care spending will amount to 19.3 percent of all economic spending nationwide, and its share of the pie increasing to a fifth of all economic activity, compared to one-sixth of all U.S. goods and services now.

It doesn’t take a health insurance actuarial table to see that if a fifth of the economy is health care, there’s a good chance a fifth of your family budget will be going for it as well. Annual premiums for a Utah household of five or six, are hitting $8,000 per year now just for insurance coverage, which doesn’t include co-pays and covering your plan’s annual deductible, which have doubled under many workplace-based plans the past two years.

“This is what we mean when we say the current system is broken and financially unsustainable,” Rep. David Clark, R-Santa Clara, House speaker and co-chairman of the Legislature’s special task force on health care system reform. “This gives a whole new meaning to ‘too big to fail.’ ”

That doesn’t mean it necessarily will fail, especially if states like Utah are allowed to move ahead with retooling their own system as they see fit, no matter what Congress decides to do, let the free market really compete for once, and give consumers options for coverage rather than just forcing them into enroll in whatever plan their employer is offering.

Even in Utah, where health care costs average a third lower than the national average and the care is generally better than most other regions of the country, the future here is no picnic if costs aren’t somehow reined in, said John T. Nielsen, special health care adviser to Gov. Gary Herbert and former Gov. John Huntsman Jr.

“The whole problem with today’s system is we really don’t know what we’re buying, how much a procedure costs or even if it’s going to work,” Nielsen said. “Utah’s on the right track, and further down it than any other state or Congress is, getting closer to injecting some real consumerism into the marketplace.”

On a national scale, the economy continues to slide — down overall by 1.1 percent in 2009 — while health care spending spiked, growing by 5.7 percent, according to the report.

Enrollment in Medicaid, the government underwritten and jointly operated insurance plan for the poor and disabled, is on a historic rise, with spending more than doubling in 2009 to 9.9 percent, up from 4.7 percent in 2008.

Co-pay bumps combined with significant hikes in annual deductibles factored heavily in the 3.3 percent increase in spending on private insurance premiums.

Health care spending in general by working Americans will end up 2.8 percent higher than last year, according to the report.

e-mail: jthalman@desnews.com