Should Alta Ski Area be allowed to build a tram to Mount Baldy so its patrollers can do avalanche-control work without using outdated equipment, including a military howitzer?
The public has until Nov. 20 to comment on that proposal and nine others for an environmental assessment the U.S. Forest Service is preparing on Alta’s requests to modify the Little Cottonwood Canyon ski resort over the next five years. Project documents and maps are available for review here.
When Alta first submitted its proposal in December 2015, its wish list included a dozen items.
But after the resort revised the alignment for a new Supreme chairlift to avoid key wetlands, the Forest Service decided that project did not require the extensive review of an environmental assessment and allowed it to proceed this summer. The work, which included removal of the Cecret lift, is scheduled to be completed by ski season.
The resort also dropped a plan to redevelop “Flora Lake” in the bottom of the Sugarbowl area for snowmaking purposes, said District Ranger Beckee Hotze, whose agency determined the other 10 projects met the requirements for more in-depth analysis.
Of those, the proposal to install a tram from Germania ridge to a point just below the peak of Mount Baldy is easily the most contentious.
That highly visible 1,900-foot span would cross over Mambo, High Main Street and Ballroom runs. The tram’s prime purpose, the Forest Service said, will be to “transport ski patrollers to near the top of the mountain to allow conventional explosive avalanche control work.”
The agency said Alta could retire a 105 mm Howitzer and two Avalauncher guns currently used to triggers snowslides down the multiple Baldy chutes and the mountain’s less steep east and west slopes.
“When conditions permit,” the Forest Service noted, a tram also could be used by 150 passengers per hour, opening up terrain previously reserved largely for experts because it was so challenging to reach. These skiers could help with avalanche control, the agency added. “Skier compaction is an effective tool.”
Alta also is looking to modernize its control work on Sugarloaf Mountain and in the East Devil’s Castle and Patsey Marley regions. The resort wants to install GasEx exploders to replace some more Avalaunchers and eliminate the need for helicopters to drop explosive charges to set off slides.
Alta’s proposed revisions to its lifts would remove the no-longer-used Albion lift and replace the nearby Sunnyside lift with a “chondola,” which mixes traditional ski-lift chairs with gondola cars and cabriolet cabins, like the ones that connect the Canyons base village to a parking lot lower in the Park City valley.
Another old lift, Wildcat, would be replaced with a detachable chair capable of carrying twice as many skiers as the current fixed-grip, two-seater. “A higher-capacity Wildcat lift could serve as a back-up to Collins [chairlift] as well as making the Wildcat area more attractive,” the resort said.
In addition, a new two-seat chair called Flora would be built from Sugarbowl to Germania Ridge. This lift and the tram would open the north face of Mount Baldy to expert skiing, although to do so would require the removal of the East Baldy Traverse, which cuts across the middle of the slope.
For decades, skiers have ridden that traverse from the top of Sugarloaf lift across to Germania ridge. Keeping the traverse open “is a drain on snowcat and avalanche control resources,” Alta‘s proposal said, and “is, more often than not, unpleasant because of wind and blowing snow.”
Other Alta proposals include:
• Connecting the Albion Basin and Snowpine Lodge parking lots, an expansion that will replace four dozen spaces lost in the lower Wildcat lot, where more space would be devoted to mass transit staging areas;
• Expand the mid-mountain Alf’s and Watson’s Shelter restaurants;
• Add a two-story storage building on one side of an existing vehicle maintenance building in Albion Basin.