The exclusive Big Sky, Mont. club is going to great lengths and expense to try to get approval for offering the backcountry experience to members through a spinoff entity, Rocky Mountain Heli, that would also make the activity available to the public. But environmental concerns and objections to how it would disrupt what is considered one of the last truly wild mountain regions promise to continue to pose obstacles and stretch out the process.
Editor’s Note: After this article was published the Yellowstone Club issued this statement through a spokesperson: Yellowstone Club stopped looking into this permit as of late last year and hasn’t been involved with any applications since.
Land managers along the west side of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem are weighing a proposal to open parts of the Centennial Mountains so members of the Yellowstone Club in Big Sky, Mont. can go backcountry skiing with helicopters, the Jackson Hole (Wyo.) Daily reported.
An application being considered by the Caribou-Targhee National Forest is still in its earliest stages, Ashton/Island Park District Ranger Liz Davy told the Daily. If the applicant does get the tentative nod this winter, it will only be to vet and photograph prospective routes and landing pads from a fixed-wing aircraft, and to explore the area via snowmobile, the Daily reported.
“I may give a permit for them to do research this year, but that research would not involve helicopters,” Davy told the Daily. “If I do accept an application, there will be a full-blown environmental analysis, public participation and all that kind of stuff — and we will ask the proponent to pay for it.”
The project proponent is dubbed “Rocky Mountain Heli,” which is a spinoff of sorts of the Yellowstone Club, the Daily reported. The private, luxury community, which houses its own exclusive in-bounds ski area in Montana, initially approached the national forest more directly, but was rebuffed.
“They formed a separate entity to apply for this permit, because they were exclusive to Yellowstone Club,” Davy told the Daily. “We don’t believe that special-use permits should only be exclusive. They should be at least offered to the general public and not for exclusive members.”
Located in Montana’s Madison County adjacent to Big Sky, the club is situated about 50 miles northeast of the heart of the Centennials, a range that forms the boundary between the states of Idaho and Montana, the Dailyreported. The Centennials are wild, remote country along the Continental Divide that reach to the west of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, and they’re seen as a crucial habitat linkage to central Idaho’s wilderness complex.
A call to the Yellowstone Club for comment about the effort was not returned by press time, the Daily reported.
Already, much of the club’s plans have been derailed by the presence of wolverines, an exceedingly rare and large alpine-dwelling cousin of the weasel that inhabits the area, the Daily noted.
“They submitted five or six areas, and we nicked those down to two,” Davy said, “because we knew that there are wolverine dens there, and there are active female territories.”
The two remaining zones that Rocky Mountain Heli applied for and are being carried forward sprawl out around Sawtell Peak and Reas Peak, the Daily noted. Both sites see frequent snowmobile use and are destinations for sledders pushing off from the Island Park, Idaho, area.
“I did mention that to the helicopter proponent: ‘How are you going to deal with snowmobiles that may have tracked up your slopes?’” Davy told the Daily. “They, of course, were like, ‘Well, you give us exclusive use.’”
The district ranger informed them that it didn’t work that way, the Daily reported.
There’s also competition from backcountry skiers, both private and commercial, the Daily reported. Hellroaring Powder Guides has a backcountry skiing yurt on the Montana side of the east-to-west mountain range. Although it’s across state lines and within the Centennial Mountains Wilderness Study Area, the yurt is also a half-mile away from one of the proposed heli-skiing zones, said owner Sam Hansen.
“Obviously, it’s not great for my business to have helicopters flying all over,” Hansen told the Daily, “because people are coming to my hut to stay in a wilderness study area and enjoy those wilderness characteristics.”
Closer to Jackson Hole around the turn of the century, there was a prolonged fight over heli-skiing in the Palisades Wilderness Study Area, on the Bridger-Teton National Forest south of Teton Pass, the Dailyreported. A judge found that increasing heli-skiing use above levels that occurred prior to 1984’s Wyoming Wilderness Act violated that law. The issue was also hotly charged and heavily politicized. In 2018, U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney introduced a bill that fizzled, but the legislation proposed going over the U.S. Forest Service’s head to increase Palisades heli-skiing twentyfold.
“Obviously, helicopter skiing across the western United States is extremely controversial,” Caribou-Targhee’s Davy said.
Already, comments about the plans have been piling in, Davy added. The Winter Wildlands Alliance, a backcountry skiing advocacy group, has alerted its membership to the proposal, encouraging them to help keep helicopters out of the Centennials, the Daily reported.
Centennial Mountains backcountry ski guide Josh Carr is among those who have taken the time to weigh in, the Daily reported. He worries that the addition of helicopters would dramatically alter an experience he values.
“People go there looking for a little more serenity,” Carr said. “I personally I feel like I’m getting away from it all—and I live in the mountains.
“These are some of the last mountains that feel wild,” he added, “and it would definitely take that away.”
Although the deadline for public comments on the 2021 heli-skiing “research permit” has technically passed, Davy says that she’s still interested in what people have to say, the Daily reported. At this stage in the process, she’s seeking information about wildlife, other resources and human uses in the proposed permit areas, more so than people’s thoughts on the merits of heli-skiing.
C+RB reported in 2010 on the Yellowstone Club’s checkered financial history and penchant for offering unique member amenities (https://clubandresortbusiness.com/yellowstone-club-gets-healthy-once-again/)
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