The summer ski season
Bill seeks to expand summer resort recreation

A few of Purgatory at Durango Mountain Resort’s summer offerings sit idle early this week. U.S. Rep. Mark Udall has introduced a bill that would encourage summer recreation on ski areas that are sited on public land./Photo by David Halterman

by Allen Best

Where to draw the line on developed recreation? The U.S. Forest Service has been asking that question since at least 1919, when young landscape architect Arthur Carhart was dispatched to northwest Colorado to design a road around a remote lake.

Why not leave the land alone? Carhart asked after returning from Trappers Lake. His Forest Service bosses agreed. The lake is sometimes called the cradle of wilderness.

Now that question about lines is being asked again, this time as the result of a proposal from the ski industry going before Congress. Legislation being readied by U.S. Rep. Mark Udall, a Democrat from Colorado, would broaden the allowed uses of national forests by ski area operators.

“My bill would make it clear that activities like mountain biking, concerts and other appropriate uses can be allowed at these ski areas,” said Udall.

Environmental groups, however, say Udall’s proposal is too broad. The bill, argues Ryan Demmy Bidwell, executive director of Colorado Wild, a ski industry watchdog, “leaves the door open to urbanized recreation activities like roller coasters and water parks that are inappropriate anywhere on national forest land.”

The Forest Service has long struggled with defining what is appropriate. Carhart wanted the Forest Service to enable the general public to enjoy national forests by building campgrounds and roads. The agency did, and after World War II, picked up the pace. A major partner – the largest source of visitors to national forests – have been the ski areas.

In deciding what is appropriate recreation, the Forest Service is guided first by a 1986 law that defines ski areas as being places that offer alpine and Nordic skiing. Not mentioned is snowboarding – or, for that matter, many other uses occurring even then. Forest Service regulations further state that activities on all national forests must be “natural resource based” and oriented toward the “outdoors.”

Still, Forest Service rangers are troubled in defining what is acceptable. “Some of the proposals are bumping up against what reasonable people would define as natural resource-based recreation,” says Ken Kowynia, winter sports program manager for the U.S. Forest Service in the Rocky Mountain Region.

An easy call, says Kowynia, is mountain bikes. Ski areas began soliciting mountain bikers in the 1980s and have now expanded their programs. Kowynia argues that by congregating mountain bikes at ski areas, that use can be managed. However, the ski industry says the legislation is needed to clear up whether mountain biking is a permitted use.

Geraldine Link, public policy director for the National Ski Areas Association, says that ski areas want the right to cater to mountain bikers. They have been paying attention to a mountain bike park at Whistler that has recorded more than 100,000 visits per summer. “Just as terrain parks are increasingly popular, I would see mountain bike parks becoming increasingly popular in summer,” she says.

But others describe the Udall bill as a Trojan horse for the ski industry and other commercial users. Making that case is Scott Silver, of Bend, Ore., who campaigns on a website called Wild Wilderness. “There has been this creep that has been transforming the forests, and this is just another part of that creep,” he says.

Ski areas have exceeded their authority in how they use national forests, he says. The Udall bill would move the line of what is unquestionably acceptable. If ski areas succeed, other commercial operations will follow, he predicts.

rider flies down Purgatory’s Alpine Slide on Tuesday morning. Critics of Udall’s bill fear that it will open public land ski areas to more mechanized and urban recreation activities including theme-park attractions/Photo by DavidHalterman

Few ski areas could be confused with wilderness by even the most concrete-hardened urbanites. Ski areas are warrens of roads. Vast amounts of electricity are needed to power ski lifts, which are at the heart of a ski area’s business. Pipes carrying water and compressed air to manufacture snow when the natural stuff is absent, border trails. Lately, some ski areas began selling advertisements (technically called “sponsorships”) on chair lifts. The warming huts of old have given way to mountain-top restaurants that are almost swank.

The larger questions are about summer amusements. Are golf Frisbee courses appropriate? Zip-lines? Alpine coasters?

The latter is proposed for Vail Mountain. The coaster cars would run on tracks erected 2 to 10 feet above the ground. Operating similar to a luge run, with the aid of gravity, the proposed course would be primarily in the trees, although entirely on national forest.

Somewhat different than coasters are alpine slides, where the rides are in concrete troughs installed into the mountainsides. Breckenridge and Winter Park both have such slides that were created in the 1970s, but are entirely or primarily on private land. The slide at Durango Mountain Resort, on the other hand, is entirely on federal land.

The Forest Service hasn’t ruled on Vail’s proposal, according to Roger Poirier, winter sports program manager for the White River National Forest. The review was postponed to allow review of projects of higher priority to Vail Resorts, he said. Bidwell thinks the line should be drawn clearly. “I think Vail’s coaster is a good example of a project that we don’t think belongs on public lands, because it’s not an activity dependent upon a natural resource setting,” he says.

Udall’s office, when asked whether the legislation would allow Vail’s coaster, did not respond.

Language in the draft bill is ambiguous. It proposes to give the Department of Agriculture, of which the Forest Service is a subagency, broad latitude. It does speak to the need to engage the general public in public lands. According to the bill’s verbage, “It is in the national interest to encourage Americans to take advantage of opportunities during all four seasons to engage in outdoor recreational activities that can contribute to their health and well-being.”

Colorado Wild, along with 16 other organizations across the West, this week sent a letter to Udall favoring the bill, but asking for major changes.

“As written, the proposed legislation could result in the authorization of absolutely any outdoor recreation activities on public land,” stated the letter.

The bill, as drafted, would give the Forest Service “too much discretion” that would “result in haphazard interpretation” and “inconsistency in the types of activities and facilities permitted at ski areas.”

The conservation groups also object to the statement that any proposed activity must “harmonize with the natural environment to the extent practical.” The phrase, they say, must be deleted.

“We’re not against recreation on public lands, and we’re not against developed recreation on public lands,” says Bidwell. “We do think there needs to be sideboards that clearly establish what does and does not belong.”

The NSAA’s Link counters, “You have to be realistic about what kinds of activities will bring people off the couch and into the outdoors to appreciate the natural environment. The average person does not don a 40-pound pack and hike 9 miles into the forest for their recreation.”

As for Bidwell, he says the Udall bill needs to be more explicit about where that line is drawn so that “one ski area doesn’t think it’s acceptable to have NASCAR on their ski trails and another one thinks it’s unacceptable to have a hot dog stand.”

Of course, Silver, of Wild Wilderness, wants neither. •