Tamarack Resort drops plans for snowcat skiing

BOISE – A new Idaho ski resort is scuttling plans to offer snowcat skiing on adjacent U.S. Forest Service land this season after opposition from snowmobile groups that were concerned they’d be barred from trails they’ve ridden for years.

Tamarack Resort near Donnelly, Idaho, which opened lifts Dec. 15, withdrew its application for backcountry skiing on 12,000 acres of land in the Boise and Payette national forests.

In the document, the resort had wanted to forbid other users from 20 percent of the federal land, or about 2,400 acres, and snowmobilers objected.

Withdrawing the application leaves Tamarack without one of the attractions it had hoped would lure buyers of real-estate that’s averaged $450,000 per lot in two property sales since last summer. The resort, one of the first to open in America in a quarter century, hopes to eventually sell 2,043 lots in what’s been billed as a $1.5 billion ski, golf and marina project.

Resort executives say they plan to work with snowmobilers to come up with a solution.

“We’re not sure how long it’s going to take us to put a proposal together,” said Scott Turlington, Tamarack’s director of external affairs. “There was some concern. So we just wanted to make sure that we had everybody at the table in putting together a proposal that makes sense.”

The resort still may offer some snowcat skiing on 2,100 acres of state land. But that would be an abbreviated version of what it had hoped for because its lifts already cover much of that area.

Forest Service officials said meetings between the snowmobile community and the resort had led to “polarization.”

“Resort officials recognized their application had created concerns in terms of the existing motorized users,” said District Ranger Ronn Julian in a statement. “My office was fielding lots of questions from the general public, which is an indication of the level of controversy.”

Snowmobile groups in the state have expressed concern over losing trails where they’re allowed to ride.

Conservationists in northern Idaho recently filed lawsuits trying to curb the activity, and snowmobiles have been limited in Yellowstone National Park in neighboring Wyoming.

Tom Crimmins, who helps head a public-lands committee of the Idaho State Snowmobile Association, said his group is willing to share.

But he vowed to fight efforts to restrict snowmobiling on public land.

“Tamarack agreed that it would be a multiuse kind of thing,” Crimmins said Thursday from his home in Hayden. “Then, they had changed their request, where they wanted the snowmobiles pushed out of the area.”