Ski Area Decision in Hands of U.S. Forest Service Chief

The top official of the U.S. Forest Service has decided to intervene directly in a dispute over a proposed $50-million ski area at Mammoth Lakes, giving the project’s developers fresh hope of being able to start final planning early in 1992.

Forest Service chief F. Dale Robertson is expected to decide by Jan. 11 whether more environmental studies are required before Dempsey Construction Corp. can begin a master development plan for the Snowcreek ski area, service officials said Thursday.

Snowcreek would be located in the Sherwin Bowl area just south of the town of Mammoth Lakes and next to Dempsey’s existing Snowcreek housing development and golf course. The lifts and ski runs would be on land leased from the Forest Service. The base lodge and related facilities would be on private land.

If Robertson ruled in Dempsey’s favor, and there were no other delays, construction could begin in 1993 and the area might be open for skiing in the winter of 1993-94, Dempsey Vice President James Ognisty said Thursday.

“We regard it as a positive sign,” Ognisty said of Robertson’s decision to review the Snowcreek case himself.

The concept for the ski area was approved Oct. 1 by Dennis Martin, supervisor of the Inyo National Forest, after two decades of federal study and the writing of an environmental impact statement. But Friends of Inyo, an environmental coalition, and the California Department of Fish and Game appealed Martin’s decision to the regional forester’s office in San Francisco.

On Nov. 21, Deputy Regional Forester Joyce T. Muraoka granted the appeal, sending the matter back to Inyo National Forest headquarters in Bishop for further study. More data was requested on the impact of the ski area on migrating deer herds, on the area’s water supply and on fisheries in the region.

Snowcreek officials, surprised by the setback, went to Forest Service headquarters in Washington to seek a veto of the San Francisco ruling.

“We’ve spent 10 years and over $1 million on environmental studies,” Ognisty said. “To have the approval from the Inyo National Forest supervisor overturned at this stage, we don’t quite understand how the process can permit that.”

Ognisty argued that the additional environmental studies ordered by the San Francisco office cannot be conducted until the final planning process gets under way. Such studies would depend on the location of chair lifts, lift towers and other facilities, which will be part of the final planning process, Ognisty said.

Ognisty said Dempsey already has agreed to 40 measures to mitigate the area’s potential effect on migrating deer herds, including suspension of Snowcreek operations during migration periods and improvement of winter deer range some distance from Mammoth Lakes.

The San Francisco office also had asked for additional data on skier demand for a new area, to be located just a few miles from the sprawling Mammoth Mountain Ski Area.

Ognisty said studies already had documented the need for additional facilities, including overcrowding of Mammoth Mountain and the popular ski areas in Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties. More than 90% of Mammoth’s customers come from Southern California.

“Sherwin would be a complement to Mammoth,” Ognisty said. “Mammoth has more groomed, wide-open skiing. We would have more trail or glade skiing. The difficulty level would be a little higher than Mammoth.”