Agreed, I wouldn't advocate for developing a ski lift in Denny Creek either.Quote:
Originally Posted by kamtron
That's exactly what I'm saying. I was surprised to see how much land the Ski area owns. I had no idea that when you climb the tooth you're actually on private land, albeit it's inside the wilderness area and there may be agreements that I'm not aware of that make it all but public.Quote:
Originally Posted by phatty
I'm sure that's true and that it's totally infeasible to actually expand ski areas. I can only think of two cases of ski area expansions in Washington in the last 20 years or so (I admit my knowledge on the topic is limited). 1. The White Pass expansion which had been part of their master plan for decades and seemed to be buried in endless legal battles forever before it was actually realized. 2. Crystal building the Northway lift, but I don't think that really expanded the ski area so much as just put a lift into an area that was already within the ski area boundary but not lift served.Quote:
Originally Posted by ptavv
With that said, it does seem like there's a lot of private land in areas that the environmental crowd would love to see preserved that could be purchased and then exchanged for a modest expansion of say Stevens, or Crystal, or even Snoqualmie. You know, trade 10,000 acres of currently at risk timber land near an existing wilderness area for 1000 acres of land adjacent to an existing resort that already sees really high usage and significant human impact. I realize that's a crazy idea and the odds of it happening are about 1 in 1 billion but man, why does that have to be the case?
My point in all of this is simply that there is clearly demand for more lift accessible terrain. I don't think that problem is going away anytime soon. I think that expanding lift capacity within the existing ski area footprints is more like a bandaid solution than a real solution. I fully understand that the logistical hurdles to expand ski area footprints are probably insurmountable, not to mention the financial risk posed by climate change.
In the case of Alpental, I do wonder why none of the proposals in their master use analysis didn't include pushing lifts further out the valley considering that they own the land and the wilderness boundary would technically allow it. Or maybe they did propose that and I just didn't see it. I'm sure there are all kinds of reasons why that's not really feasible, not least of which the fact that most of that terrain is complex. No doubt intermediate groomers are best for their bottom line and spending a fortune to get more double blacks probably doesn't pencil out...
