Phone:
970.596.3228
Good morning from Crested Butte,
Last Thursday, Crested Butte Mountain Resort (CBMR), Mt Crested Butte town council, the Crested Butte Town Council and hundreds of locals, business leaders and ski resort employees gathered at the Mountaineer Square ball room to listen to CBMR’s presentation of their Master Development Plan for the ski resort. The hottest topic and the reason 99% of us were at the meeting was Snodgrass and the progress the ski company is making toward getting its resort expansion plans approved.
CBMR wants to expand skiing onto Snodgrass because the main mountain consists of only 31% intermediate terrain, while over 50% of their overnight guests are intermediate skiers. The resort says the lack of quality and diversified intermediate terrain puts them at a competitive disadvantage with other destination ski resorts. Currently, the main mountain offers only 362 acres of intermediate terrain, less than half of most of its competitors, and among the lowest of destination resorts in the Rocky Mountain region.
While most Crested Buttians want to see CBMR and their new owner, CNL, succeed with their expansion plans there are some groups in our valley that are adamantly opposed to resort expansion onto Snodgrass Mountain. Crested Butte’s Town Council says "no on Snodgrass" and Mayor Alan Bernholtz and Town Council member Billy Rankin spoke up at the meeting and publicly denounced CBMR’s plans stating flatly that CBMR has no business developing Snodgrass.
CBMR received recent "approval’ by the US Forest Service to enter the crucial NEPA process after an important geology report was released last week, Crested Butte Mountain Resort officials had indicated that the Forest Service had told them the plan would be accepted into the NEPA (National Environmental Protection Act) review process if the resort avoided hazard areas pointed out in the report. The resort changed the trail plan to avoid these hazard areas and now they march on into NEPA. (See above graphic). More later on this hot topic.
Thanks for reading today,
Channing Boucher
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