LEFT TO RIGHT Jackson, WY, resident and ski guide Zahan Billimoria and son, Alyosha, ripping turns down Snow King, the town hill. Photo: Fredrik Marmsater Zahan and his oldest son, Alyosha, ride from their house to Snow King frequently during the winter. The ski area has had a quintessential community feel for a long time, with many local folks taking advantage of the affordable skiing, ski touring and night skiing. Photo: Fredrik Marmsater IN THE PAST FIVE YEARS, more than 25 ski area ex-pansions have been proposed or approved on Forest Service land. That’s in part because of the Ski Area Recreational Op-portunity 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 expan-sions 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 Agri-culture, which oversees the Forest Service. 054 The Ski Journal
The Ski Journal Volume 15, Issue 3: Page 54
