A leap ahead with Reserve Loop

The earth-moving machines, surveyors and excavators are busy wrapping a new road around Glacier High School.

And road workers need to be busy: They have a mid-August deadline to complete the Reserve Loop, a 1 1/2-mile stretch of four-lane road that will run from U.S. 93 near Costco to the intersection of West Reserve Drive and Stillwater Road.

This is a critical vehicular connection to the new high school that opens this fall and it's heartening to see work proceeding so swiftly on the new road.

The Reserve Loop won't solve all the growing traffic problems at that end of town, but without it the driving challenges would have increased.

THE THIRD TIME was the charm for Whitefish cinematographer David Rasmussen.

Last week he reached the summit of Mount Everest. He was part of a group of 16 people researching the effects of extremely high altitudes on the delivery of oxygen into the body.

Rasmussen, a veteran climber and outdoors cinematographer, was filming the expedition on the world's tallest mountain for the British Broadcasting Corp.

This was Rasmussen's third Everest expedition in the last four years. In 2003 and 2005 he was filming Italian and British Army expeditions, respectively, but didn't join the summit groups on those ventures.

Congratulations to one of our own for joining the exclusive club of people who have made it to the top of Everest.

If you didn't get enough soccer last weekend, there's more on the way.

On the heels of last weekend's Montana State Cup tournament in Kalispell and Whitefish, coming up this Saturday and Sunday is an even bigger tournament in terms of teams: the Three Blind Refs Tournament.

Over the Memorial Day weekend, 72 teams from across the state vied for Montana titles in 12 divisions. Soccer fans were treated to top-notch and highly competitive games as teams battled for the right to advance to regional competition.

Coming up is an even busier weekend, when the soccer fields will host 92 teams for the annual Three Blind Refs affair. For Three Blind Refs, teams will come not only from Montana but also Idaho, Washington state and Canada.

Aside from the sheer sporting fun of such tournaments, the economic impact of the soccer invasions shouldn't be underestimated. The thousands of players, families, fans and officials spending weekends here surely give an early boost to the tourism season.