The Ski Journal - Volume 15, Issue 3
OUTER BOUNDS: As resorts expand, the ski community looks for common ground
Words: Heather Hansman 2021-12-01 06:58:34
Workers at Snow King, WY, keep the ground damp as they install the resort’s new gondola towers with the help of a helicopter. Photo: AJ Dakoulas
North of Duluth, MN, near Lake Superior, a group of obsessive backcountry skiers has been planning the Midwest’s first backcountry ski area and a hut-to-hut ski-touring route along the North Shore. Rory Scoles, the founder of Superior Highlands Backcountry, a local nonprofit, says hacking around outside in the winter is core to the culture there. They’re working to get people excited about ski-touring, and to bring Midwesterners into the mountains.
The Great Lakes region might not seem like an ideal backcountry zone, but the dense hardwood forests of those northern mountains pitch and dip into perfect mini-golf ski lines. The snow stays deep and cold. And to make that terrain even better, the organization hosted its first glading parties for the hut system this fall. The centerpiece of the plan is Moose Mountain, which holds arguably the best backcountry skiing in the Midwest—1,000 vertical feet of sugar maple and rolling terrain.
But the backcountry skiing on Moose Mountain, and the hut-to-hut traverse plans, are at risk because of another ski project in the works.
In 2017, Lutsen Mountain, the biggest ski resort in the Midwest and owner of the eastern third of Moose Mountain, proposed an expansion into 496 acres of Forest Service land. The project is currently under environmental review and would include seven chairlifts, a “mountaintop chalet,” two new snowmaking reservoirs and 1,260 parking spaces to augment the 200 they have currently. “What they’re proposing is basically quadrupling the area. It’s huge,” Scoles says. “One of the many questions that arises just from the facts: Are they fully utilizing the terrain they have? In my estimation they have not. I own the pro shop; of course I want the ski area to succeed—but not like this.”
Jim Vick, Director of Operations, Marketing and Guest Services at Lutsen, says the mountain’s on-hill skier density is usually pretty low, but expanding will allow the resort to offer more beginner-friendly terrain and appeal to a broader audience. “We’re adding a mix of terrain, and the expansion allows for additional services like rental and parking lots,” he says. “It’s what we need to stay competitive with the big [resorts].”
In many ways, the debate centers on differing definitions of a single word: access. For resorts with expansion plans such as Lutsen, increasing access involves designating more lift-accessed terrain and amenities—essentially whatever it takes to get more people on the ski hill. For recreationists that frequent public land under their own power, preserving access means keeping development—resort or otherwise—off of National Forest land and keeping that terrain available for public use. With more and more resort expansion plans arising over the last decade, it’s a tug-of-war that has been amplified in mountain towns across North America.
Historically, policy has given resorts priority in how the Forest Service manages ski area permits. That’s because Forest Service policy was initially established in the 1940s during a time when the government was trying to encourage growth on public land. According to the National Forest Ski Area Permit Act (1986), resorts are able to request the expansion and outline the viable alternatives in the Environmental Impact Statement. For instance, at Lutsen, Vick says they went back and forth with the Forest Service to develop the EIS before it became public. Now backcountry skiers and other users, like hikers and seasonal hunters, are asking to have a voice in how the lands they use for recreation are managed. They’re urging the Forest Service to amend its policy to include other options from when expansion plans are first proposed and to consider all kinds of use—not just lift-accessed skiing.
In the past five years, more than 25 ski area expansions have been proposed or approved on Forest Service land. That’s in part because of the Ski Area Recreational Opportunity Enhancement Act (SAROEA) of 2011, which allows ski resorts to offer year-round recreation in addition to skiing and snowboarding, kicking off a wave of growth that’s still going strong. This growth isn’t restricted to small and midsize resorts. Deer Valley, Steamboat and Keystone all have expansions in the pipeline as well. In March 2020, Alterra Mountain Company announced plans to invest $223 million in capital improvements across its 15 North American mountains.
Hilary Eisen, policy director of Winter Wildlands Alliance (WWA), says those expansions can also be a way to spur real estate development on adjacent private lands, which can bring benefits to parts of the community. “While we are not opposed to ski areas making infrastructure improvements or even increasing development within their existing permit area, we do not support, nor does SAROEA require, unchecked resort expansions,” Eisen wrote in a February letter to Chris French, the then-Acting Deputy Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service.
So far, because of current policy and practice, that resort growth has been difficult to fully check. At Mission Ridge in Wenatchee, WA, owner Larry Scrivanich, who also owns an adjacent 800-acre parcel of private land, is proposing a 30-acre ski-terrain expansion to connect the two pieces as part of a larger 500-acre expansion plan that includes parking lots and new lodge facilities, among other amenities. While the 4,000-bed housing development Scrinavich has planned—made up of condos, townhomes and single-family homes—could continue without the expansion, the additional acreage would allow for direct lift access for guests and residents, a selling point for potential investors. Local backcountry skiers, organized by El Sendero Backcountry Ski and Snowshoe Club, say the development, which is slated for a low-water, high-fire-danger area, would, among other things, impact elk habitat and cut into a recently designated winter nonmotorized zone.“[Scrivanich’s Tamarack Saddle LLC] sold it to the community as a ski area expansion, but really it is a resort expansion,” Gus Bekker, president of El Sendero says. “They’re proposing to develop the private land real estate at the expense of the community and the county.”
While the USFS has yet to fully approve the plan, Scrivanich filed a lawsuit against Chelan County in September, contending that the lengthy permitting process has cost his company $6.4 million dollars.
In Idaho, Tamarack Resort is proposing a 3,307-acre expansion into the Boise National Forest that would quadruple the area’s current size of 1,100 acres. Local activists think it’s a real estate move instead of a push for better skiing, and an unnecessary one given the skier population. “A 4,407-acre Tamarack Resort would be the seventh-largest ski resort in terms of acreage in all of North America, juxtaposed with [the nearby town of Donnelly, ID] with a population of 152. The entirety of Valley County has less than 10,000 people,” Sean O’Brien of the Leave Our Lands Alone Alliance says.
O’Brien says the Alliance worries the expansion is a play to bring in wealthy second homeowners, cutting off the area’s existing form of public access in the process. “It destroys unspoiled parts of our National Forest system and impacts backcountry users by de facto privatizing public lands. Even though it technically remains public land, if we were to enter the area without a Tamarack pass, they could arrest us for trespassing,” he says. Representatives from Tamarack, on the other hand, say they’re expanding access to new parts of the forest by increasing their acreage and adding more lifts—actions they feel may serve more skiers in the long run.
“It is public land, and I think the great thing about public land is when you make it accessible, people will come,” Scott Turlington, president of Tamarack Mountain Resort, said in a statement.
Scoles says backcountry skiers aren’t necessarily rejecting all development, they just want to have a say in what happens to the public lands they use. Vick says his resort is open to working together with backcountry advocates. Still that collaboration may come down to a change within the Forest Service process itself, which will need to amend its decades-long policy in order to give the community an earlier seat at the planning table.
The push for realistic change is particularly clear in the Tetons, where two recent ski area expansion projects have brought the issue to the forefront. In March 2021, the Jackson Ranger District of the Bridger-Teton National Forest approved an expansion onto the south side of Snow King Mountain Resort, the ski hill that stretches across the south rim above the town of Jackson, WY. Snow King says it needs the expansion to stay economically viable, especially with a destination resort like Jackson Hole Mountain Resort in their backyard. “There was a period of time over the past 30 years where JHMR continually made huge investments to improve their mountain’s infrastructure, lifts and base area. During that time Snow King invested little to no money into the ski hill and the result was that both locals and visitors migrated to JHMR,” Ryan Stanley, president of Snow King Mountain Resort, says.
He adds that Snow King went through a multi-year EIS with the USFS and reviewed expansion plans with local elected officials and community members, arguing the expansion felt like the best option for keeping the resort in operation. “This is all important because Snow King is at the heart of Jackson,” he says. “It’s where many locals have grown up skiing, recreating in the summer, and where we continue to provide affordable skiing…to make the sport more accessible to our community.”
The local skiers of Teton Backcountry Alliance, a grassroots group that advocates for all kinds of winter backcountry recreation, say they love Snow King, but they don’t think the expansion, which includes a zip line and a new chairlift, was valuable for skiing or the ecosystem. “A low-elevation, south-facing ski area doesn’t make sense, and it’s encroaching on what was a really nice wilderness area,” says Gary Kofinas, chairperson of the Teton Backcountry Alliance, who has spent decades ski-touring in backcountry chutes just out of bounds.
He also says some community members didn’t feel like they were listened to throughout the process. “There were lots of comments; it got lots of objections,” he says. “But because the need and purpose statement was so narrow, USFS didn’t consider them. In the end they said, ‘Thank you for your objections’ and went forward.”
Because of the way the current laws and regulations govern ski area management on public lands, the entity proposing an expansion has a lot of influence over the decision-making process. When Congress passed the National Forest Ski Area Permit Act in the ’80s, it gave the Forest Service the power to approve and regulate permits on public land. In doing so, the Forest Service must follow the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). That act mandates an environmental review and public comment period, but no additional regulations that address the specific issues and challenges associated with ski area development guide the process. And public comments don’t necessarily have to be incorporated.
When a resort proposes an expansion or development project on National Forest land, the local District Ranger or Forest Supervisor first considers whether the project is compatible with the forest plan and other governing regulations. The Forest Service will often work with the project proponent to tweak the proposal as necessary for it to be considered for approval. Once this initial screening process is complete, the Forest Service publishes a notice of intent to analyze the project, kicking off the formal environmental review process—the NEPA process—with a “scoping period” to collect public comment about the initial proposal and input on any issues that should be considered in the review. At the start of the NEPA process, the Forest Service defines the project’s “purpose and need,” which frames the whole review. The purpose and need statement essentially outlines why the proposed project should happen. That purpose and need shapes the environmental review because, according to NEPA, the review must include alternatives that fit within the project’s stated purpose and need. The Forest Service analyzes and compares the impacts of each alternative and pulls elements from various alternatives to make its final informed decision. Kofinas says the Snow King NEPA review was too narrow and all the alternatives were slight variations on the original plan rather than a comprehensive compromise. He says his group lost the battle on that project, but now they’re asking the Forest Service to hold off another proposed expansion on the other side of Teton Pass, where Grand Targhee wants to expand farther into the Caribou-Targhee National Forest, potentially doubling the number of skiers in critical wildlife habitat. The project has already been scaled back. After listening to local concerns, Grand Targhee general manager Geordie Gillett pulled a proposed cat-skiing zone from the original proposal in January 2021. It was an important step, reaching a sought-after middle ground in the fight over ski resort expansion, but advocacy groups such as the Teton Backcountry Alliance are hoping to have a more official seat at the table earlier in the process rather than relying on last-minute intervention.
Like so many access and equity issues in ski towns, it’s not just about the skiing. In addition to wildlife and skiing impacts, there will also be social and economic impacts if more resort skiers flood into Driggs and Victor, ID. Expansion helps to bring more people to the hill and provide an economic boost to local lodging and hospitality industries, but it also puts additional strain on infrastructure and public works projects that were designed with local populations—not necessarily a massive influx of visitors—in mind.
Because the Targhee access road is in Idaho, but the ski area is in Wyoming, all of the revenue from lift tickets or food sales goes to Wyoming, while Idaho shoulders the bulk of the costs of emergency services and traffic using the resort’s access road as well as employee housing, which is also located in Idaho. While the Idaho side may benefit from a trickle down of increased ski area revenue into towns such as Driggs and Victor, county commissioners and advocacy groups are worried about increased infrastructure bills. With what they’ve learned from—and lost—at Snow King, community groups such as Teton Backcountry Alliance are putting pressure on the Forest Service to assess a wider range of alternatives addressing these realities, and to look at the bigger-picture impacts—both positive and negative—of expansion. While the USFS isn’t required by law to take those growth consequences into account, county commissioners on both the Idaho and Wyoming sides of the pass are looking to do their own research, with both sides recently pledging close to $25,000 for a study to assess how the expansion might impact roads, traffic, waste management, labor and housing in the area.
“All of those things will…impact the county and city,” Cindy Regel, a commissioner from Teton County, ID, told Jackson Hole News and Guide in October. “That’s the crux of why I wanted to see a more in-depth socioeconomic impact analysis: to figure out what the impacts are going to be and what it’s going to cost.”
Expanding ski resorts is about far more than just skiing, and the scenario taking place in the Tetons is a microcosm of what’s happening in many rural mountain areas. In Wenatchee, they talk about fire danger and water access. At Tamarack, O’Brien says they’re worried about housing shortages. Advocates and activists are working to open up conversations with the resorts, to find the balance between economic growth, habitat protection, non-resort recreation and more.
That’s why backcountry advocates in all those places feel strongly about also having a voice in the expansion and permitting process. The Winter Wildlands Alliance is attempting to consolidate the battles and encourage the Forest Service to put more checks on its decision-making process to ensure the broader interests of the community are considered from the get-go. They understand expansion can mean economic growth and stability for an area, but know such growth comes with costs not reflected on a balance sheet, and they’re pushing to make sure the full picture is understood before plans move forward.
“Ski area development can have many effects…but the current way in which the Forest Service analyzes these projects fails to capture the full range of [it],” Regel says. “We’re not trying to ban expansion unilaterally, just change the process so that all stakeholders can have a voice.”
She, along with the skiers whose backcountry zones are currently incorporated within expansion plans, want to be heard in the debate over public lands. Scoles is trying to show something similar at Moose Mountain and Lutsen—how different ways of backcountry recreating can benefit the community and the ecosystem, while still working in conjunction with local resorts. When he’s not asking skiers to sign petitions in his shop, he’s trying to get the ski community to think outside of the current framework of expanding, to be open to the resorts’ desire to stay competitive—which Vick says is crucial to the health of the ski industry—while still considering popular backcountry zones.
Collaboration holds the key to a sustainable future for both ski areas and public land users, but what exactly that looks like is a debate that is widening cracks in mountain towns across the United States. Though that collaboration may begin with an amendment to a nearly century-old USFS policy, backcountry advocacy groups, resorts and the communities they represent realize they need to find common ground quickly before the wedge is driven too deep.
©Funny Feelings LLC. View All Articles.