BIGGER AND BOLDER
sparked by a multi-year legal battle the city and Siskiyou County had faced when the local Winnemem Wintu Tribe and an activist group opposed the Crys- tal Geyser Water Company’s plan to reopen a bottling plant near Mt. Shasta. “But,” says Mullins, “when it came down to the final reading, everyone endorsed our project.” He attributes this success to the com- munity outreach that the resort did in advance. Furthermore, in such a small ski community, it’s no surprise that Mul- lins and his colleagues had personal rela- tionships with the various concerned stakeholders—many of whom are also Mt. Shasta regulars who couldn’t wait to ski the roughly 200 acres of lift-accessed terrain the resort would be adding on Gray Butte, an area above the existing terrain that increased the ski area’s ver- tical drop by about 650 feet. And those relationships helped eliminate what could have been a major roadblock.
In the end, the ski area agreed to place an interpretive sign explaining the cultural significance of Gray Butte at its summit, per a local Indigenous tribe’s request. Forty acres of old-growth for- est was set aside for conservation and potential light pollution concerns were addressed, meeting the requests of envi- ronmental groups. Environmental concerns. As with any project that disturbs a natural ecosys- tem, environmental permits that con- sider things like stormwater mitigation, watershed impacts, the effect on vul- nerable species, and rehabilitation, are a major part of the equation. Becoming familiar with local and state regulations, or better yet, working with a consulting firm that specializes in similar projects, can help ease the process. In some cases, certain regulatory agencies can even be bypassed. For example, Mt. Shasta went through a state-run environmental qual-
ity review but bypassed the National Environmental Policy Act permitting process since its expansion was on the resort’s privately-owned land. And Wisconsin’s Trollhaugen, which added several trails and replaced an existing rope tow with a fixed-grip quad chairlift on property that it was already operating on, was able to elimi- nate the need for a state Department of Natural Resources stormwater mitiga- tion permit by keeping the size of dis- turbed earth to less than one acre. That feat was cleverly done by cutting trees as close to grade as possible and leaving the stumps in place, thereby not disturbing the earth and retaining the root systems, which help to mitigate erosion. Had they removed the stumps, the land would have been classified as “dis- turbed,” and the ski area would have exceeded the one-acre maximum and been required to obtain a stormwater mitigation permit.
Left: Waterville Valley’s (N.H.) second Green Peak terrain expansion proposal includes 140 acres of skiable terrain (light and dark green shading) in addition to the 45 acres added in 2017, a two-stage gondola connecting Waterville’s Town Square to the Green Peak base and summit (red line), and more. Below: Trail blazing underway at Waterville Valley.
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