Park Users Criticize Plan For Mountain Mount Spokane Plan Restricts Use In Wild Areas, Bans New Trails
The tough task of managing Spokane’s playground was illustrated Wednesday by yellow Post-It notes on butcher paper.
Asked at a public hearing to write out their comments about a proposed Mount Spokane State Park management plan, skiers, snowmobilers and other users showed that while they share a common love of the park, they have vast differences of opinion about how it should be used.
Some of the responses:
“Snowmobiles must be separate from the Nordic ski area.”
“There’s plenty of room for skiers and snowmobiles on the same trails.”
“We (mountain bikers) are getting the shaft.”
“Why is dog-sledding only permitted on snowmobile trails?”
“I’m a (down-hill) skier. You’re not being fair.”
“Leave the mountain as it is.”
In a continuation of a process started six years ago, state parks staff and a citizens advisory group are trying to decide how the park should be used in the 21st century.
About 150 people attended Wednesday’s meeting at Mount Spokane-Mead High School. Parks staff promised that their comments would be taken into account before the plan goes to the state Parks and Recreation Commission on Oct. 29.
The proposal calls for restricting recreation in about a third of the park. Those so-called “natural forest areas” are designed to protect wild areas that are especially wild.
Rules would only allow foot traffic in natural forest areas and would prohibit building new trails, a prospect that worries people who see the park primarily as a recreational area.
Elsewhere in the park, mountain bikers would be banned from some of the steepest trails, where the advisory committee worried two-wheelers pose a hazard to other users. The plan calls for developing new bike trails down the face of the alpine ski area, although money for that task isn’t yet available.
The plan would leave uncertain the future of alpine skiing.
Some skiers would like the ski area expanded by about 1,000 acres, to the virgin northwest slope of the mountain. State staff recommends delaying that decision, and treating the slope as a natural forest area in the meantime.
The citizens advisory group is still trying to reach consensus on the plan, said its chairman, Cris Currie.
But, he told the crowd, the committee is nearly unanimous on one point: that the downhill ski area should not be expanded.