Over in the snowmo-bikes thread, samthaman wrote:
The only clear solution is to make everything a ski resort. That'll keep all the snow-machines out ....
I assume this was written with tongue in cheek, but it touches an important point.
Virtually all Wilderness Areas in Washington were created at a time when snow machines were much less capable than they are today. The Forest Service has failed to update its travel management rules for snowmobiles, and now they've been ordered by a U.S. District Court to do it. According to
this article
, the Forest Service must issue new rules by September 2014, after which individual Forests will need to revise their travel management plans.
Effectively, we've had snow machines restricted in Forest Service wilderness areas and ski resorts, but nowhere else. This arrangement was "legal," but the Court has ruled that it is now obsolete.
The new rules will need to take into account past habits, present opportunities, and future capabilities of different user groups.
It makes sense to me that we'd want to create non-motorized buffer zones surrounding ski resorts. These are areas where muscle-powered skiing is popular and it pre-dates motorized use by many years. Examples include Clara Lake near Mission Ridge, Skyline Ridge near Stevens Pass, and Bullion Basin near Crystal Mountain. I'm sure you can think of other areas.
I think it also makes sense to limit motorized use along highway corridors that provide the best (and most traditional) access points for non-motorized recreation. The Stevens Pass corridor includes a lot of places (like Jim Hill and Nason Ridge) where I think a strong case can be made that non-motorized use should take precedence over motorized use.
It's going to be a contentious process and, sure, everybody has a personal agenda. The best we can do is to work through the public process and make our preferences heard.
