WMC Update 2012

The Need for More Non-Motorized Winter Recreation Areas

In winter, the National Forests in Washington winter have become motorized playgrounds. Very few areas of the Forest outside of Wilderness are closed to snowmobiles. Because most Wilderness Areas are relatively inaccessible in winter to skiers and snowshoers, the Wenatchee Mountains Coalition believes that there is an important need for more non-motorized areas, outside of Wilderness, in our multi-use National Forests.

Sadly, even significant portions of Wilderness have been used as snowmobile playgrounds regularly and intentionally on a large scale for a decade. The Forest Service has not rallied to deter Wilderness snowmobile use. In summer, however, non-motorized adjacent lands have been created as buffers to Wilderness. In winter some of these same buffers could enhance Wilderness protection and at the same time provide non-motorized recreation areas.

To address these issues and the need for new, significant areas for non-motorized winter recreation in the Wenatchee National Forest, a group of backcountry skiers and snowshoers formed the Wenatchee Mountains Coalition. We invite other winter recreationists to help us and to join the ‘Thousand Skiers Project,’ (described below).

Additional Background

Non-motorized and motorized winter visitors of our National Forests travel at dramatically different speeds and seek different experiences from their visit. Mixing these groups creates experiential, aesthetic, and safety incompatibilities. Historically steeper, unroaded slopes, ridges, and bowls were places where non-motorized users could naturally separate and recreate without the need of designated non-motorized areas.

Today, however, skiers and snowshoers, are increasingly discovering that even if they travel far, they are likely to find themselves competing directly with snowmobiles on mountain slopes, ridges, and alpine bowls, as well as on roads, in meadows, and in forests. Advances in snowmobile technology means that, each year, more terrain can be visited quickly and frequently by snowmobiles. With the capabilities of modern snowmobiles no longer creating a natural separation, there’s a modern need for the USFS to facilitate separation by designating new non-motorized areas.

What the Wenatchee Mountains Coalition (WMC) asks for is parity. There are significant numbers of non-motorized winter recreationalists, yet the non-wilderness portion of the Wenatchee National Forest allows a disproportionate amount of the Forest to be monopolized by one use - snowmobiles. We do not wish to prohibit snowmobiles on the Forest (some of us are also snowmobilers), but because motorized and non-motorized uses are incompatible on the same terrain, we ask for more non-motorized terrain. We invite all winter recreationalists to share their thoughts about this issue and this need with the Forest Supervisor (email address below).


About the Wenatchee Mountains Coalition

Purpose: Advocacy for non-motorized winter recreation on Forest Lands.
Goal: Designation of USFS Non-Motorized areas for winter recreation. Specifically, we seek non-motorized status for the pristine unroaded crest of the Wenatchee Mountains.
Initial action -- the Thousand Skiers Project: One thousand skiers/snowshoers/Forest users will write (email) the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest Supervisor and request designation of new non-motorized areas on the Wenatchee Mountains. The ‘significant’ area we are targeting is the unroaded Wenatchee Mountains ridge crest from Van Epps Pass to Three Brothers (mountain). This encompasses Ingalls Peak, Fortune Peak, Iron Peak, peaks surrounding Bean Creek, Earl Peak, Navaho Peak, Three Brothers and the Wenatchee Mountains Crest from Rd 9716 to the west of Diamond Head across Tronsen Head, Mt. Lillian including down to the Old Ellensburg trail to Mission Peak and on to the Mission Ridge Road including Lake Clara, Mission Peak, and surrounding areas. This area would offer many short day-tours, long day tours, overnight self-powered ski tours, and snowmobile road-assist tours. We hope to generate a thousand comments by August 15, 2010.

Contact information: Mail, email, or call
Rebecca Heath, Forest Supervisor
Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest Headquarters
215 Melody Lane
Wenatchee, WA 98801
(509) 664-9200
Email:  Rebecca Heath, OWNF Supervisor, and the Forest Plan Revision Team:  r6_ewzplanrevision@fs.fed.us
Carbon Copy Us: wenatcheemountainscoalition@hotmail.com. We need to track our support and to capture additional thoughts and ideas of non-motorized recreationalists. Your privacy is paramount, we will not share your contact information or reveal your identity.
Help us Succeed. Please forward this message to your skiing/snowshoeing friends. Ask for their involvement.
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The skier in the photo is in the NE bowl of Navaho Peak in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness in February 2010. Below the skier and on the ridge are snowmobile tracks.

Is there an official website with more information about this?

There is no website. No budget, no funds, just some skiers advocating for non-motorized winter recreation. We have the email address. We have informal discussions and email communications. We talk to USFS personnel and we write to USFS as individual citizens. The WMC core are acquainted with each other.

What is important is for individuals to write to USFS with their views and requests, which we ask to support the above. We believe in the influence of individual non-motorized winter recreationists who communicate with the Forest Supervisor. At this point we will advocate from the email address.

We are avoiding putting names out in public because of the immediate and aggressive tactics used by individuals who state that they are motorized advocates. Some of us who have advocated have experienced the foul language, threatening language, phone calls to homes, email messages. Some of those opposing non-motorized advocacy seem to want to intimidate anyone advocating for non-motorized recreation. On some motorized Forums names and addresses of non-motorized advocacy folks are posted, stories told of intimidating 'skiers,' vandalizing 'skiers' cars, even a story of snowmobile riders punching a skier in order to properly educate him. We will not be intimidated, but will not give easy opportunity for their foolish behaviors.

Thanks.

I am a lifelong skier and more recently a sledder and while I support your objective, I totally disagree with your approach. Seems to me that asking the FS to ban sledding in areas where it has been historically permitted based on the actions of a few scofflaws is like asking to close a public road because some drunken teenagers used it as a drag strip. In my experience, the vast majority of sledders respect the boundaries and disapprove of illegal poaching of closed areas. Should the majority be punished for the actions of a few bad apples? As a BC skier, I value the current snomo access rights in the very areas you are seeking to close, specifically because it permits me to ski tour in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness in winter. How else would anybody gain access to the W side of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness in winter (e.g., Van Epps, Solomon Peak, Harding Mountain, etc., which is where I ski practically every weekend) if sled access to those areas is closed? It also strikes me as shortsighted to ask for new closures, when the FS is currently doing absolutely nothing to enforce existing boundaries. How do you envision these buffer zones improving the situation if the FS continues to shirk their policing responsibilities? Rather than seeking to close new areas to sleds, why not advocate for/assist in the enforcement of the current boundaries? We BC skiers and boarders can help the FS do its job by reporting snomo incursions into closed areas. Those reports would become much more meaningful if the FS actually did something about them. We could probably also help raise enough money to assist the FS in purchasing some decent sleds (as has been done for SAR many times before), so that they could actually do some enforcement.

WMC,
Like Good2Go, I'm a bit confused by your aim!
I'm not a sledder but I intend to be soon and I am not familiar with the area in question.
AND
Sledding in Wilderness areas= no question shouldn't be allowed AND it should be enforced!
BUT
YOU want more non-motorized areas because when you tour there you find it tracked out by THEM( your words) and because there are more non-motorized users than motorized users( in your opinion) , YOU should get a bigger part of the untracked pie ( paraphrasing your argument)?

YOU therefore want an area that YOU love changed in designation so that THEY cant use it even though BOTH of you are currently allowed access.!

Problem I have is that even when areas are designated non-motorized, skiers still go to areas (and bitch and moan when they go) that do allow access to snowmobiles. There never seems to be an area where skiers can just accept snowmobile access without bitching and your group just always seems to want more and more areas free from snowmobiles.

Now what if areas where designated non-motorized( no 'bilers) and some areas motorized only( no skinners or hikers). Would you accept  that.??Seems only fair.

BTW: WenatcheeOutdoors.org promotes "muscle powered outdoor sports" ( their tag line) so it's a good guess they are affiliated, maybe the same people who formed WMC?????

The majority of skiers won't bother to access the areas you are describing. It's just too far of an approach in winter and into the spring. Are you proposing road plowing as well? How will the non-motorized users you describe access these areas and how often?? The wilderness line currently exists along the crest you describe. North facing is wilderness, South facing is not. This is a skiers dream!!! We skied Mount Stuart twice in two days this weekend and I wouldn't have done it without sled access to the wilderness border (call me lazy). We parked at Longs Pass and saw no snowmobile tracks North of the ridge extending from Ingalls to Earl. I agree with Good2Go. Buy the USFS some sleds and have them enforce the law. I disagree with your approach, and FYI North facing slopes are better to ski anyway. By the time the snow melts enough to access Bean/Beverly, there will be no sledders there. When the creeks are running and snowbridges are gone, sledding ends.