Introducing Cascade Backcountry Alliance

Super excited to see this project start to come to fruition - establishing a more unified voice to advocate for BC ski community seems long overdue in my mind and will only become more important as use increases in the years to come.

That being said, it's a big range an pretty clearly there's also a big range in opinions about where priorities stand / what the best way to increase access to the backcountry is. I would certainly be interested in hearing more folk's ideas about where and how this organization could make the most difference for our community of human-powered backcountry users.

Thanks for leading the charge on this bear of a project, Conrad.

-Brendan Smith

Excellent initiative to get this thing going!
Let us know about meetings, fundraisers, etc.
See you in the snows soon, Conrad

Hi Conrad,

I think a page detailing the members of your board of directors would be huge, similar to the winter wildlands alliance < winterwildlands.org/board/> ;. Speaking of which, I think it would also be telling to know how the CBA is to be structured. How will the board of directors be chosen? Do you have an executive director? Obviously you are probably still working out the details but I would be curious to know if you do have a plan. 

If you can gain statistical information about backcountry users you may be able to leverage that information into getting a piece of the pie provided by Washington's Recreation and Conservation Funding Board. I know little about the grant agency but have always been curious if we could shift a bit of the pie our way. Currently we have no representation on the Recreational Trails Program Advisory Group. If you don't know you can search for grants using prism, you will find mucho funds appropriated to snowmobiling and cross country skiing with zero for backcountry skiers.

A whole other lift is getting state parks or the forest service to support backcountry skiing like they support cross country skiing, and snowmobiling. If you have any intention of accomplishing this lift you will have to bring in the other winter advocacy groups into the discussion.

Thank you for doing the heavy lifting of getting an advocacy group going, hope you enjoy politics (;

Thanks for the response. The website is a little light on details right now, sorry. We are incorporated in Washington, which requires fairly limited disclosure of internal structure in the incorporation process. I am trying to get our internal governance documents fully in line with Washington State law before we publish them. If you are a lawyer or know one, let me know. We will work on adding a "Who we are" page to the website as well.

I greatly appreciate the heads up on the recreational trails program- that is potentially an excellent source of project funding. I note that the grants require matching, but that is hopefully within our reach for a good cause.

Your point about our relative invisibility to the Forest Service, as well as to the Washington RCO and other entities, really gets at what we are trying to accomplish: give this entire group of people with a shared set of interests a political voice. No one likes politics, but everyone like policies that benefit them, so hopefully we can keep our focus there.

An interesting note about the Forest Service in particular is that if you dig deep into the Mt. Baker/ Snoqualmie forest plan, which dates back to 1990 at this point, Backcountry skiing isn't even a named activity. Here's some of the relevant bullet points from the "Winter Recreation" section:

1. Each major winter recreation activity (Alpine and Nordic skiing, snowmobiling, and snow play) will have areas designated and managed to accommodate them. Other activities occuring within these areas should be limited or prohibited if they conflict with the primary activity, or if overcrowding develops.

On the other hand, the section also notes that

4. Different skill levels of users shall be provided for and considered when designing trails and related facilities. A spectrum of opportunities for winter recreation will be maintained, including primitive dispersed opportunities with no facilities.

and

6. Alpine ski permittees will be encouraged to integrate winter dispersed recreation into their operations if and when the opportunity and demand exists.

Here's the link to all that.

Excellent initiative to get this thing going!
Let us know about meetings, fundraisers, etc.
See you in the snows soon, Conrad

Thanks Kam, we will hopefully be e-mailing folks soon about fun things like beer and stoke, and not just plowing through legal documents!

Conrad, thanks for the reply and info

Here is a link to another human powered winter recreation advocacy group -- consider coordinating with them

www.snowrec.org/