COMMENTARY

Public Lands Lockdown at Colorado Ski Resorts?

By Bob Berwyn, 12-14-06

Ski area boundary management was once again a topic in the Denver Post’s “Outdoor Extremes” section, published every Tuesday as part of the sports pages and focusing, in the winter, on snow sports. Jason Blevins reported on increased fines that could potentially be levied against skiers and snowboarders who violate the strict Colorado Skier Safety Act by seeking access to public lands adjacent to ski resorts. The story does a good job of outlining some of the concerns of ski area patrollers and volunteer search and rescue team members who face potentially hazardous conditions if they’re called out to look for resort guests who wander out of bounds in search of freshies. But the article ignores the fundamental question of whether or not the U.S. Forest Service is living up to its obligation to provide reasonable access to those lands, as outlined by a regional agency policy. Some ski resorts in the Rockies have been moving toward more of an open-boundary policy in recent years, reflecting the growing public demand for backcountry access, but most of the major resorts along the I-70 corridor, notably Breckenridge, Keystone and Copper Mountain, appear to be stuck in the dark ages when it comes to this issue.

The stiffer penalties for poachers were rammed through the State Legislature last year at the urging of Summit County Sheriff John Minor, backed by State Representative Gary Lindstrom of Breckenridge and the ski resort industry. There was no sign that there was a groundswell of public support for the measure, suggesting that this was a classic case of state-sponsored nannyism at its worst.

The rationale was that the fines would deter poachers and prevent costly search and rescue missions, which have been on the rise in recent years. But the question for many backcountry enthusiasts remains whether experienced skiers who are prepared to take responsibility for their own actions are taking a big hit on behalf of a few bad apples.

On the other side of the coin, the argument goes that there is plenty of public land available for anyone willing to strap on skins or snowshoes to earn their turns. But what doesn’t sit well with some powder seekers is that, at the same time the resorts are advocating for higher penalties for poachers, they are expanding operations into nearby terrain that has long been a haven for backcountry enthusiasts. While those issues have been scrutinized by some Colorado ski-town reporters with a keen interest in backcountry access, the corporate Denver-based media have downplayed the public lands access issue. And the Forest Service, always eager to avoid controversy, has neatly side-stepped the entire question, in the process shamefully abdicating its responsibility to ensure reasonable access to public lands. The agency’s silence in the matter amounts to a tacit lockdown of national forest access from permitted ski resort terrain at some major Colorado ski areas.

And yes, there are a handful of so-called backcountry access points at some of these resorts through which it is legal to exit the ski area and travel on adjacent national forest lands. But they are few and far between, and the Forest Service would be hard-pressed to show that those constitute reasonable access by any commonly accepted standard.

But good powder is, as they say, priceless, and it’s doubtful whether the higher fines really will deter people from looking for the goods outside the ski area when in-bounds conditions get bony. Ski areas should have the right to close parts of their permitted terrain for safety and other operational reasons, but that’s not what this is about, since the rationale for upping the penalties was related to the supposed increase in the number of backcountry search and rescue missions.

The real solution to this problem — if there really is a problem — lies in better education and better collaboration between the public, the resorts, law enforcement agencies and the search and rescue community. Before taking the easy way out by making an end run around the public interest in the State Legislature, those officials should have engaged in a meaningful dialogue with public land users, establishing some buy-in on a commonly accepted definition of “reasonable” access. Based on that discussion, the Forest Service could have created some new, desirable and well-marked backcountry access points at the resorts in question. But that sounds like work, doesn’t it?

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