Welcome to Avimor. Just inside the Boise Foothills is a new community unlike any other in Treasure Valley. Wake up in the country and drive to work in Boise Idaho.
30 Oct
Avimor’s Last Trail Day For 2012 – Sunday Nov. 4th at 11am
The Fall rains have arrived and with them, the season for digging new trails in the Avimor system. The last trail day of the year will be November 4th, and it will provide the perfect opportunity to dig a new beginners’ connector trail from Spring Creek up to Harlow’s Hollow which will create a great system of short loops. This will also be a good day to learn the art of trail building and encourage families to come out and share the experience.
The day will start from the pond on Avimor drive at 11:00 AM and will commute back to the work location. Please bring gloves, long pants, sturdy boots/shoes, and water. A BBQ will be help afterwards to celebrate everyone’s hard work and another wonderful year of enjoying Avimor’s trail system.
8 Oct
Updated High-Quality Avimor Trail Map
SWIMBA (Southwest Idaho Mountain Bike Association) did an excellent job on these new maps. For a higher-quality version visit their website: http://swimba.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/AVIMOR_SWIMBA_MAP_061.pdf
17 Sep
Black Bear Visits Avimor, Causes Quite a Stir
On Sunday September 9th, Ada County Sheriff’s Deputies were called to Avimor for a reported break in attempt. However, in this unique scenario, the offender was a 175-pound mature male black bear. A homeowner reported the bear was trying to get in his back door.
“You could hear his claw marks scraping on the door,” said Glenn Harbig, an Avimor resident who spotted the bear trying to get inside his home. “He was down here banging on the door knob trying to open the door.
Harbig was cooking bacon at the time – the smell of which most likely drove the bear’s attempted “break in”. The bear tore two window screens on the side of the house before moving to a nearby tree. Local authorities were the first to arrive on the scene, and kept an eye on the bear until officers with the Idaho Dept. of Fish and Game responded and tranquilized it.
However, by the time the bear had been tranquilized it had managed to climb so high in the tree that he couldn’t be brought down safely. So, while the bear slept on a 70-ft-high branch in an Avimor cottonwood tree, Fish & Game officials set a trap, complete with doughnuts, day-old birthday cake and sardines.
The hungry bear came down from the tree late Sunday, and walked right into the trap. He was captured approximately 10pm.
“It was a textbook capture,” said Fish & Game Spokesperson, Evin Oneale. “The bear walked into the cage to get food, and the door shut behind him.”
The bear was tagged and released in a wilderness area of the Payette River drainage on Monday.
Sources:
http://www.idahostatesman.com/2012/09/10/2266070/bear-at-avimor-spent-night-in.html
http://www.idahostatesman.com/2012/09/09/2264910/ada-county-sheriff-alert-residents.html
http://www.ktvb.com/news/Officers-tranquilize-bear-near-Avimor-169132096.html
http://www.kboi2.com/news/local/Bear-Boise-Idaho-News-169131176.html
7 Sep
Building the Zip-Rose Custom Home at Avimor (Part 1)
8/15 – Zipf-Rose Custom Home at Avimor – Footings formed, rebar being installed, scheduled for inspection and pour later that day.
8/21 – Foundation stripped and damp-proofed with a special tar-like coating. Tomorrow, they will install some foundation insulation and back-fill begins.
8/10 – Utility trenching underway this morning to be followed by back-fill. This morning they also installed rigid foam insulation along the exterior foundation walls of the future living space areas (entry,shop and exercise room).
8/23 – Back-fill Continues on the Zipf-Rose residence at Avimor. The utility trenches are now buried. Base material is shown being delivered. This material is used under the concrete flatwork for the driveway, garage, and basement. The water meter will be installed this afternoon and the plumber will begin the under-slab plumbing work tomorrow.
This morning bright and early the concrete flatwork crew was busy forming for the basement floor. Grading around the back continues. Flatwork is being poured right now. Framing scheduled to start tomorrow.
Framing on the custom home at Avimor is underway!
8/29 Sunrise at Avimor in the Boise foothills is always beautiful. And for a home builder, watching framed walls rise is a beautiful thing too.
Photo shows basement wall framing underway. The grading around the lot is almost complete. Installation of the curtain drain to provide additional protection to the home against water run-off will start today and is expected to be complete tomorrow.
Custom Home at Avimor Update: Exterior walls of main floor are framed and up!
9/6 – All of the interior walls are now framed. The framing crew is tying up loose ends today as we lost a day on the schedule due to crane operator availability. Tomorrow a crane will be on site to help set the trusses. This morning we laid out the cabinets on the floor and are making as-built adjustments.
17 Aug
Avimor Demo Day is September 8th!
Enjoy all the dirt, beer, wine, food & music you can handle at Avimor Demo Days. Local bike shops will demo their newest bikes and product, and you can test their products on various trails in Avimor. There will be live music and guided trail rides on 90+ miles of bike trails. Not to mention food and refreshments. It will be fun for the whole family!
9 Aug
Boise Rated Among the Top 10 Turnaround Housing Markets
Inventory is down and list prices are up in Boise, according to MarketWatch Realtor.com ranked Boise as #4 in the top ten turnaround towns for the second quarter.
Boise was recently named the second best place to raise a family by Forbes, and its housing market is also looking up. Median list prices in Boise rose 19.58% in the second quarter, compared with a year ago, and inventory fell 29.59% over the year. In Ada County, new-home sales increased 52% in June; existing-home sales rose by 2%. Boise has a 7.3% unemployment rate.
Turnaround markets are those that are “either at what we would call a bottom or a turnaround, or have already reached that point,” said Julie Reynolds, vice president of Realtor.com. The cities are ranked based on trends including median list price, drawdown in inventory, the drop in the amount of time homes are spending on the market and unemployment rates.
“A turnaround market is where all the key measures are in better balance than they were four or five years ago,” she said.
The Phoenix-Mesa area topped Realtor.com’s list of turnaround towns for the second quarter in a row, despite the fact that Maricopa County still has one foreclosure filing for every 284 homes. Other than Phoenix-Mesa, Boise was preceded only by Oakland and Miami.
Read the full story here:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/top-10-turnaround-housing-markets-2012-08-08
3 Aug
“Birding is Fun” Blog visits Avimor
Robert Mortensen, the voice behind bird watching blog, Birding is Fun, returned to Avimor last week for some bird watching and reminiscing. Mortensen’s Birding is Fun blog had originally started as the Avimor Bird Blog, named for the Boise foothills community where Mortensen lived and worked.
The area consists pf mostly of desert steppe hills, worked over and abused for over a hundred years by sheep and cattle. There are several small canyon draws with a little running water. Those draws are packed with birds. I enjoyed dozens of Lazuli Buntings and Black-headed Grosbeaks. The young birds were capable of flight and appeared to play and chase one another, but were still food-begging from their parents. Hundreds of California Quail, with still very tiny chicks – perhaps a second brood.
Avimor is a breeding ground for Lazuli Buntings and Black-headed Grosbeaks, along with over 60 other species that I Mortensen has documented over the years.
One of my favorite local breeders is the Yellow-breasted Chat. Do you know where you can go and see a dozen or so chats in a half-hour walk? Avimor is such a place. This bird is so un-warbler like that certainly it must soon be rearranged on the taxonomic lists
For additional pictures and details on Mortensen’s return to Avimor, check out his blog:
23 Jul
Getting to Stack Rock
GETTING TO STACK ROCK
Q: We have been reading for the past couple of years that you can now get from Avimor to Stack Rock.
We have tried riding a couple of times on this route, only to hit dead ends with locked gates and “no trespassing” signs. The one that stands out is some timber company.
Any suggestions on where we can get a map that shows us how to travel this route?
For those that have not been on the Avimor trail system, it is truly a gem for our community.
— LOUIS MILLER, via email
——
A: Sorry to say, there is no legal access to Stack Rock from Avimor.
It would be neat to have the access, but there are large parcels of private land along the way.
One large parcel is signed well and owned by the Hoff Timber Corporation, said David Gordon, Ridge to Rivers trails coordinator.
The only public trailhead to Stack Rock is located near the entrance of Bogus Basin Mountain Recreation Area, 16 miles north of Boise.
Just before coming to Bogus Basin, there’s a trailhead off Bogus Basin Road for the No. 120 Eastside Trail.
Park there and head out. You can see more details at the Ridge to Rivers website by going to ridgetorivers.cityofboise.org.
It’s a pretty hefty hike. It’s about 16 miles round-trip.
You take the Eastside Trail 6.4 miles, which winds its way on mountain contours.
At the junction of the Eastside Trail and the Mr. Big Trail, you’ll soon come to No. 125 Freddy’s Stack Rock Trail, which is a 3.5-mile loop.
Answer via Pete Zimowsky, The Idaho Statesman column
20 Jul
Avimor Bird Walks are Back!
Saturday, July 28, 2012 – 8 to 11 am and Saturday, Aug. 18, 2012 – 8 to 11am
Join local bird enthusiast, John Shortis, for a bird walk in the Riparian and highland areas of Avimor. You will learn basic birding skills, like how to use binoculars & traits to identify birds. Dress appropriately for the weather & wear sturdy shoes. Most of the walk will be on improved trails. Children are welcome!
You can also visit our website to download the Avimor Bird Guide, a list of all bird species seen in the area is being compiled by residents, employees, contractors, and visitors of Avimor. We are confident that as riparian and shrub steppe areas are restored with native vegetation, populations of native birds will return and thrive. We can use your help in tracking our progress, and we request that you let us know of any special sightings of birds.
Contained in the Avimor Bird Guide are pictures and information about birds that may be found at Avimor. To date, not every bird in this guide has been identified at Avimor, and it is very likely that you will come across birds not yet in the guide. We would be delighted if you would share with us the lists of what you discover! Download
For more information on bird walks contact Roberta at (208) 939-0343 ext 209
Avimor Village 