Over the ropes

When it comes to Peak 6, a 12,582-foot mountain in Summit County’s Ten Mile Range, backcountry skiers and planners at Breckenridge Ski Resort agree on one thing: It’s awesome skiing.

“It’s rare intermediate terrain above tree line, and it holds great snow,” said Rick Sramek, the vice president of operations at Breckenridge, last week.

“It’s perfect. It’s easily accessible skiing with little avalanche danger,” Ellen Hollinshead said on a ski tour of the area just days before.

That is where agreement ends.

Breckenridge wants to expand into the area, which lies just north of its boundary. A week ago, the resort submitted a proposal to the U.S. Forest Service for 450 acres of skiing, a lift, a warming hut and a restaurant.

Conservation groups and some local backcountry skiers say the area is better left alone. They question whether the needs of the resort, which covers Peaks 7, 8, 9 and 10, should override the needs of wildlife and human-powered recreation.

The debate, which will continue during a public comment and environmental assessment period required by the Forest Service, is emblematic of the growing competition for public lands in the Rocky Mountains, where almost all types of recreation are booming, and increasingly bumping into one another.

“They say we can go ski anywhere, we don’t need Peak 6,” said Hollinshead as she skied through untouched powder. “But really, there aren’t that many safe, easily accessible places for us. We’re being squeezed out.”

Hollinshead, a member of the nonprofit Backcountry Snowsports Alliance, which advocates for nonmotorized areas on public lands, led a group of backcountry skiers through glades of fir and spruce loaded down with snow. The thick, grizzled trunks in the proposed expansion area indicate that many of the trees probably predate the town below. She has seen mountain lions and moose here.

“That’s what I’m really concerned with,” she said. “I could accept losing some of the best backcountry skiing, but we just don’t have that many remote, undisturbed areas in the Ten Mile Range. This is pretty much it.”

The busiest days at Breckenridge see more than 20,000 skiers, according to employees. Because backcountry skiing on Peak 6 takes the fitness to plow through deep powder in the thin Rocky Mountain air and the knowledge to spot potential avalanche terrain, the area sees only a fraction of that.

“I’d bet it only has a few dozen people a winter,” said Sramek.

Plans for Peak 6 submitted to the Forest Service show six intermediate runs cut below tree line, and a series of intermediate and expert runs above tree line. (See Out There 3.) Planners say no other expansions are planned.

Breckenridge Chief Operating Officer Lucy Kay doesn’t expect Peak 6 to boost the total number of skiers, just to spread out the existing number. “But if we want to continue to deliver on guests’ expectations, we need to give them more room, especially more intermediate runs,” she said.

Breckenridge already is ex-panding base areas on Peaks 7 and 8, with an estimated 450 residential units and 75,000 square feet of commercial space.

Rocky Smith, a spokesman for the ski-industry watchdog group Colorado Wild, said the resort’s expansions are driven by marketing, not skier numbers.

“We call it the ski area arms race,” he said.

Colorado skier numbers have risen about 10 percent in the Past 10 years, though firstquarter visits are down 12.5 percent this season from the same period last season, according to Colorado Ski Country USA.

But, Smith said, ski areas can use expansions to market their mountains and sell basearea lodging.

“It’s just sprawl,” he said. “At some point, you have to sit back and ask how much of it we really need.”

Rick Newton, district ranger of the White River National Forest’s Dillon Ranger District, which includes Breckenridge, said he expects the Peak 6 expansion plan to be approved with minimal changes.

In the almost five years he has been district ranger, no skiarea expansion in his district has been turned down.

“I see a lot of merit in (Peak 6),” he said. “We generally don’t accept proposals we don’t think have a good chance of being approved.”

However, he said, the area will have to go through an analysis to determine how it can be developed in a way to balance the needs of wildlife, wetlands and old-growth forest.

The process is expected to take 12 to 14 months. If approved, Breckenridge could begin construction on Peak 6 by 2010.

As for backcountry skiers that might be displaced, Newton said the White River National Forest has large swaths of wilderness set aside for nonmotorized recreation, while ski areas and their potential expansion boundaries would gobble up only up to 5 percent of the forest.

Up on Peak 6, Hollinshead looked out from the top of an untracked bowl. Below, fingers of gladed firs wove into dense forest.

There was no sound except the wind. There was no movement except the blowing snow. There was no sign that anyone had visited since the last storm.

The lack of people is one of the prime arguments Breckenridge uses to justify expanding — the mountain could be enjoyed by more with a lift. Backcountry skiers and snowshoers use the same argument to fight the expansion.

“What makes this place special is that there are very few people here,” Hollinshead said. “It has a real wild character, and that has value.”

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0223 or dave.philipps@gazette.com