Summer business is booming at mountain resorts across the country, and the Forest Service is sculpting regulations to guide development of summer amenities in their mountains. Vail’s Epic Discovery plan is helping to shape those regulations, as the Forest Service seeks to evaluate the proposal, while most other areas are taking a wait-and-see approach.

The Ski Area Recreational Opportunity Enhancement Act aims to foster year-round resort economies by encouraging warm-weather fun such as canopy tours, ziplines and ropes courses, mountain bike parks and hiking trails, disc golf courses and outdoor event venues. It was passed in November 2011, but the Forest Service has yet to finalize the rules that will guide implementation.

The Forest Service is as eager as resorts to bolster summer visitation to federal lands. “We are very positive about this act for a number of reasons, with community stability and viability of the ski areas as one of them. But another big one ... is the track record of ski areas bringing in novice users and orienting them to be outdoors and teaching them safety and skills,” says Jim Bedwell, the Forest Service director of recreation, lands, and minerals for the Rocky Mountain region. “The more we can bring that in, helping people better understand the great outdoors, the better; that is something we would certainly hope to be reflecting to the resorts.”

Vail is leading the charge for resort summer development with a plan that could evolve into the Forest Service model for U.S. ski areas. The ink on the new bill was still drying when Vail Resorts announced grand plans for sweeping summer play on its flagship hill. Vail Mountain’s $25 million “Epic Discovery” plan—the first proposal under the recreational enhancement act—incorporates environmental education and interpretive centers with zipping and dangling through forest canopies, riding an Alpine coaster and cruising mountain bike trails. The company hopes to mirror Vail’s summer development at its Breckenridge, Beaver Creek, Keystone, Heavenly and Northstar resorts, and released just such a plan for Breck in late March. Construction in Breck could begin as early as 2015.

The company this summer has slated $25 million for kicking off initial warm-weather projects across all its ski areas as part of its largest-ever 2013 capital investment plan of $130 million to $140 million. Vail Resorts chief Rob Katz says the company’s investment in winter upgrades will likely peak this year as it turns toward summer expansion.

In the next few years, Vail Resorts expects to invest up to $100 million in summer activities. This year’s initial round of projects will focus on developing around heavily trafficked areas already approved for intensive summer activity. But for the bulk of its investment, the new Act will guide development.


Setting the Rules
And the rulemaking has begun. In December 2012, Bedwell issued interim guidelines for foresters fielding summertime plans from resorts, and he stayed squarely on the path outlined in the legislation. While he encouraged approval for activities specifically listed in the legislation—disc golf, ziplines, ropes courses—his guidelines said not to approve development commonly found in urban settings, like swimming pools, water parks and tennis courts. He advised against expansions, noting that permit boundary growth should be driven by snowsports only.

Bedwell said summer projects should be vetted through public Master Development Plan approvals, just like winter projects, before launching federal environmental review.

Overall, he advised that projects adhere to the agency’s mission for providing nature-based recreation, and fit with existing levels of development in surrounding areas. “Ensure that the summer and four-season facilities promote appreciation of the environment and the natural world—understanding that adventure, thrills, and discovery may be primary considerations,” Bedwell wrote in the interim guidelines.

That means forest supervisors can approve projects like ziplines and ropes courses spinning from heavily-trafficked summer destinations like Vail’s Adventure Ridge through “categorical exclusions” that don’t require deep federal study. But projects in areas that don’t see much summer traffic—like the proposed ziplines in Vail’s Game Creek Bowl, or the proposed “forest flyer” Alpine coaster on Vail’s frontside—will require more intensive federal review under the National Environmental Policy Act.


The Vail Precedent
Don Dressler, the winter sports administrator for the White River National Forest, was keenly aware his work with Vail would be under the national spotlight. So he created a unique zoning process for analyzing Vail’s project, which was proposed in the mountain’s Master Development Plan a year before the new Act was approved.

Dressler calls it a “zoning spectrum” that establishes specific winter-use-only areas, high-intensity zones, and areas set aside for public events. Dressler says the zoning concept allows the Forest Service to weigh projects both independently and together as a larger whole, as well as guides proposals into matching surrounding development.

Dressler is working with Vail and Forest Service landscape architects in designing platforms and anchors for ropes courses and ziplines around Adventure Ridge, and expects the work could carry into zipline development in coming years. “That work helps make sure these things fit on the landscape. In all these things our interest is to tie it all together for one consistent look,” Dressler says.

Vail’s future plans are preliminary, and are undergoing NEPA’s most comprehensive Environmental Impact Statement review. Even though Washington has expedited summer development, the new legislation does not trump environmental stewardship, Dressler points out. “We are not trying to paint ourselves into a decision space. We are trying to basically throw the doors open and consider all the effects,” he says, noting that EIS review allows the Forest Service “to consider a whole range of alternatives.”

Local forest rangers and supervisors have leeway when it comes to approving summer development. Site-specific flexibility has seen the Forest Service and Vail weave educational components and architectural consistency into summer plans.

“This is a trend we have been experiencing for a long time,” says Dressler, “and the resort tool is just one more amenity for these guests. It gets them outside and it connects people to their land and gets them to experience their national forest.”

Vail, too, feels the attention of resorts across the country as it treads new territory. “We certainly feel like ... it’s our responsibility to try and craft something that both meets the technical requirements of the bill, but is also inspirational to our guests,” Katz says.


Waiting in the Wings
For all the interest in expanding summer ops at winter resorts, there’s hardly a deluge of proposals. Aside from Vail, “a couple zipline proposals,” says Bedwell. “But, we know people are eager to move ahead because they want to expand their business model.”

They won’t have to wait too long. This spring the Forest Service will publish potential directives in the Federal Register that will ultimately guide regional foresters as they study summer resort development plans. It’s likely that the experience the Forest Service has with the Vail project will influence the eventual rules. The public will have an opportunity to review and comment on them, too, and the agency could deliver revised manuals for resort development to local rangers as soon as the end of this year. At that point, proposals should start to flow more freely.