Mt. Spokane plan unveiled

If Gil Harvey has his way, in a few years he’ll be swishing down a whole new set of ski runs on the backside of Mount Spokane.

“I’m all for it,” Harvey, 69, said of the Parks and Recreation Commission’s recent proposal to build a new chairlift and open additional terrain at the Mt. Spokane Ski and Snowboard Park. “I think it would make all the difference in the world.”

Harvey was one of more than 100 skiers, snowboarders and environmental advocates who attended a public meeting Thursday night to air their opinions and hear information on the proposed ski area expansion, part of the parks commission’s new master facilities plan for Mount Spokane State Park. The commission will vote March 8 on whether to continue to explore the expansion.

While skiers like Harvey are excited at the prospect of hitting new slopes, the expansion of the ski area into pristine forest on the mountain’s backside is expected to be fraught with controversy.

“No matter which way we go we’ll have people who are really upset or really excited,” said Daniel Farber, project manager for the master facilities plan. “There’s just huge interest.”

Environmental concerns will likely be the biggest hurdle for the ski expansion plan, Farber said. The forested backside of Mount Spokane has never been logged, creating a unique wilderness area and a haven for wildlife.

According to some who attended the meeting, cutting down that virgin forest to create a few new ski runs is not worth it.

“I’ve hiked back there, and this is an area that is completely untouched,” said Holly Weiler, 28, a teacher and member of the Mount Spokane State Advisory Committee. “There are so few areas like this that I think it should be kept intact.”

Cris Currie, president of Friends of Mount Spokane and chairman of the Mount Spokane State Park Advisory Committee, said he had yet to make up his mind. “It’s a good proposal,” Currie said of the plan. “Now we’ll have to see whether it’s worth it – not just economically but ecologically.”

Most of the recent ski area expansion in the region has been into second-growth and even third-growth forests, Currie said. That the forest in question was pristine made the expansion a more difficult call.

“Which is not to say you can’t expand,” he said. “It could be expanded in a way that’s maximally environmentally cautious. But the more careful you are the more money it costs, and the temptation is to cut corners.”

Several different proposals for the ski area were brought forward at the meeting. The plan most likely to be carried forward would build a single lift to the backside of the mountain and open up about 400 acres of new terrain out of more than 800 acres of forest.

“From what we’ve seen we can develop and still mitigate most concerns,” said Brad McQuarrie, general manager of the Mt. Spokane resort. However, he said, the approval process would not be easy and more studying of the environmental impacts was necessary.

For Bill Skaer, 50, a member of the mountain’s all-volunteer ski patrol, if the proposal passes it will be worth the wait. “The terrain is great,” he said. “It would just be a great experience.”

Plus, he added, “We have people going back there all the time anyway.”