Montanan Sees the Next Big Sky Thing for Skiers

For now, the ski trails on the Maclay Ranch are just freshly turned bands of brown earth. But they are the beginnings of what Tom Maclay hopes will someday be a world-class resort rivaling Vail, Sun Valley and Lake Tahoe.

In Maclay’s vision for the mountains south of Missoula, skiing will extend beyond the 2,960-acre ranch where his great-grandfather settled in 1883. Maclay wants to put skiers on Lolo Peak in a national forest near the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, and market an extraordinary vertical drop of 5,342 feet.

Skiers -- possibly as many as 7,500 a day -- would descend north-facing slopes to the ranch and its alpine and Nordic skiing, 2,200 houses and condominiums, and a resort village. Golf, a hotel, conference and sports centers and access to excellent fly-fishing are part of the four-season Bitterroot Resort plan.

Critics worry about harm to public land and wildlife and about overloading this increasingly popular swath of Montana. They look to the U.S. Forest Service to deny Maclay what he wants. His project stands to be largely a real estate development, they say, exploiting public land to build market appeal.

“We are being ravaged by schemes to sacrifice ... our open lands, our rivers and streams to major developments,” said Stewart Brandborg, a former executive director of the Wilderness Society, who retired to his native Montana and remains active in environmental efforts.

“Are we going to let him extend the ski runs and all of the attendant facilities, the mechanization? Are we going to let him intrude on our wild, wildlife-rich lands?”

Says Maclay, “We know anything of this magnitude will have impacts.” He maintains they can be managed so Bitterroot Resort does not change this part of Montana for the worse. As for the criticism about developing real estate, he says it takes real estate sales to support a first-class resort.

His enterprise would follow several other major Montana getaways developed in recent years.

The Stock Farm development, with home sites, golf and dining down the highway from Maclay’s place, was established in part by investment tycoon Charles Schwab, a part-time Montanan.

The Big Sky Resort started in 1973 by the late newscaster Chet Huntley has a new neighbor, the exclusive Yellowstone Club. The golf and ski enclave requires that prospective members show net worth in the millions.

Nearby is the emerging Spanish Peaks resort, whose president, Peter Forsch, says “the Montana mystique” of big landscapes and great outdoor recreation is boosting property sales.

Then there is the Resort at Paws Up, a Las Vegas businessman’s posh venture east of Missoula, in the Blackfoot Valley. It made headlines with his move to trademark the phrase “The Last Best Place,” a moniker used widely to promote Montana and businesses operating here.

Talk of alpine skiing on Lolo Peak goes back to the late 1960s, when the Forest Service identified the mountain as “a national resource” for winter sports. Then, and again in the ‘80s, uncertainties about the adequacy of snowfall were among barriers to development. Maclay reintroduced the ski idea a couple of years ago, saying snow concerns could be resolved by making snow and using his family’s water rights to do it.

Opponents maintain that the resort would industrialize land next to the wilderness area that straddles the rugged Bitterroot Mountains, which form part of the Montana-Idaho border. Some not only want the existing wilderness to be shielded; they want a wilderness designation for Lolo Peak as well.

The resort controversy is before the Forest Service, which early this year found Maclay’s project incompatible with forest management plans. But the forest plans are being revised, with drafts due out this fall. After new plans are in place, Maclay anticipates seeking the permit necessary for a ski resort to operate on federal land. If he does not get the government’s approval, he said, he will develop a smaller resort on just his property.

Issues in the Forest Service’s resort evaluation included the possible effects on about 1,000 acres of national forestland designated for the study of rare alpine larch trees.

“The ball really is in the resort’s court, or Tom Maclay’s, to submit another plan that shows how it would be compatible,” said Sharon Sweeney, a Lolo National Forest spokeswoman. Action at other levels of government, including Missoula County’s approval to subdivide land, also would be required.

A former Missoula city-county planning board member who has navigated many a land-use debate, Maclay has assembled a squadron of resort planners, architects, trail designers, market researchers and other experts to help advance his project. Bitterroot Resort’s chief operating officer is Jim Gill, former general manager of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort in Wyoming.

“We’ve been looking around and seeing how other people are doing things -- what works, what mistakes not to make,” said Maclay, an avid skier.

Besides having what he calls “the natural elements,” his resort would have access to Missoula.

About 12 miles up U.S. 93, the university town of about 60,000 residents has the airport where Bitterroot Resort vans would pick up clients. Maclay sees in Missoula a local client base and a resort labor pool, along with amenities for his guests from far away.

The open-space debate is legitimate and gaining momentum, he said, as the Bitterroot Valley surges. Scenery, outdoor recreation, cultural appeal and -- by Montana standards -- a relatively mild climate all make the valley one of the state’s growth leaders. Better to guide some of that growth with a well-planned development such as Bitterroot Resort than to let it happen in haphazard increments, Maclay said.

“We cherish the open space as much as anybody, but we know growth is coming,” he said. “We’ve got a growing community, and a need for recreation.” He said the resort stands to satisfy a market not served adequately by several ski areas already operating in western Montana, and would provide economic development.

Maclay contends Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness access would be enhanced as ski lifts put people closer to the backcountry. He advocates a wilderness designation for 7,000 acres west and south of Lantern Ridge, next to Lolo Peak.

Retired Forest Service administrator Bill Worf of Missoula, a founding member of Wilderness Watch, said the Selway-Bitterroot was “being loved to death” and that parts of it would benefit from less public use.

Brandborg calls the resort “a travesty.”

“Do we want to substitute what we’ve got in the Bitterroot Valley for the artificiality of a skiing village that makes us like Aspen and Vail, which people deplore, except the superrich who descend on these places?” he said.

Maclay plans to give a foretaste this winter of what he hopes to offer. He will invite people to ride snow machines up the ranch slopes, then ski down some of the new runs.

“People will enjoy being here for many reasons,” he said.