A public meeting will be held on December 8th at 6:00pm at the Sheldon Richins Building (the Summit County Library just off of the freeway at the Kimball Junction exit #224) to discuss WPG setting up a new heli base at the canyons. This meeting will allow for public comment, so if you have something to say, please show up.
At issue is the amount of noise and impact WPG will create, especially as they want to set up a heli base near homes and condos which will clearly be impacted by their arrival. It is not like some coffee shop or ice cream parlor is moving in next door, we’re talking jet fuel, explosives and lots and lots of noise. Hard to imagine property values will do anything but sink with all of that going on next door.
Should be a good one.
An interesting article on the effects of explosive-residue compounds from dropping bombs for control work.
Explosive-Reside Compounds Resulting From Snow Avalanche Control in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah
It was interesting to see that some of this data came from the Wasatch PowderBirds, although anything that was credited to them was listed as “unpub. data, 1999.” It’s almost like they didn’t want the public to know about it. Huh.
Some interesting highlights:
For example, the three ski areas of Alta, Snowbird, and Brighton, plus the Utah Department of Transportation, may use as many as 11,200 hand charges per year (Wasatch Powderbird Guides, unpub. data, 1999) for snow avalanche control in Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons (fig. 3). If each charge is assumed to weigh 2 pounds, this equates to about 22,400 pounds of explosive hand charges per year. In addition, 2,240 to 3,160 Avalauncher rounds and 626 to 958 military artillery rounds (explosive mass not specified) are used each year by the three ski areas and the Utah Department of Transportation for snow avalanche control in Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons (Wasatch Powderbird Guides, unpub. data, 1999). The other ski area in Big Cottonwood Canyon, Brighton, uses about 2,000 pounds of explosives per year for snow avalanche control (Michele Weidner, Cirrus Ecological Solutions consultant, written commun., 2001).
As part of their effort to calm public hatred for their noisy operation, the Wasatch Powderbird Guides are suppose to post information about where they will be operating the next day on their blog. The idea is that people can then plan accordingly and go to areas where they are not flying, both to avoid the noise and the inevitable backcountry conflict that arises when they land with 200′ of you in the middle of the mountains.
Much to our dismay, on Saturday, Jan 3rd, we were out touring in the Mt. Aire area when suddenly the WPG comes roaring into the drainage and lands on a peak that was not on their daily list of areas where they said they would be operating. From a touring standpoint, this is incredibly annoying as we had spent hours getting there. In the end, it turns out that the WPG was on a turf-marking mission where they land, send out a junior guide to rip a few branches off of trees, tie survey tape litter to them, plant them in the snow, then fly off. As soon as the next storm comes, the litter is buried and they repeat the process.
Letters of complaint were sent to both the WPG and the Forest Service, although they never acknowledged them, even to offer a simple apology. Typical WPG behavior.
In an effort to squeak through another ten years of hellish heliskiing in the Wasatch, the Forest Service has allowed for a very short comment period on their Scoping Document.
DON’T DELAY! Write them today and let them you how you feel about having the WPG bomb the Wasatch to bits until 2020!
Here are some writing notes from Bill Lockhart. Thanks Bill!
Through Dec. 19, written comment may be submitted to comments-intermtn-wasatch-cache-saltlake@fs.fed.us, or on paper (from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday) to Acting District Ranger Melissa Hearst, Salt Lake Ranger District, 6944 S. 3000 East, Salt Lake, UT 84121. The fax number is 801-733-2684