Quick, splash some cold water on peak ski area plan

0 Comments | Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Feb 24, 2008 | by BARRY NOREEN

A Boulder entrepreneur's plan to build a ski area on the west slope of Pikes Peak is going to run into rough sledding, and it should.

Substantive environmental questions are being raised already, even before developer John Ball has submitted anything to the U.S. Forest Service, which must approve road improvements across federal land. Based on the history of the failed Pikes Peak ski area, the viability of another ski operation there seems dubious.

Ball's plan is to start small, but the resort ultimately could grow to include a 300-room hotel, 350 condominiums and 33 ski runs. The amenities at the base of the hill would be on a 320-acre parcel of private land Ball says he will buy.

In a memo he sent to The Gazette, Ball tellingly described it as "the Resort at Pikes Peak real estate opportunity." It outlines "350 second-home skiin, ski-out luxury condominiums valued near $1 million each."

Sounds like a big deal. These days, a ski resort must succeed as a real estate deal or it won't succeed at all. The big money at Beaver Creek was not made by selling lift tickets.

The Pikes Peak ski area closed in the early 1990s. There wasn't enough snowfall; the small number of ski runs hurt the cachet of the place.

After the area shut down, some buildings and debris remained. It took tens of thousands of dollars and almost 20 years for the Forest Service to reclaim the area -- at taxpayers' expense.

Environmentalists are circling the wagons over Ball's plan.

"I'm skeptical about some aspects of it," said Jim Lockhart, spokesman for the Pikes Peak chapter of the Sierra Club. "You'd be putting a large number of people in an area that currently has no facilities or services. Just the infrastructure alone will take a lot of consideration."

Lockhart also questioned whether snowmaking would be part of Ball's vision and if so, where the water would come from. The dryingup of mountain streams from snowmaking has been a problem elsewhere.

Lockhart pointed out the ski area would impact the Ring the Peak Trail, a project close to the hearts of several hiking groups.

The Forest Service won't tip its hand. Brent Botts, district ranger for the Pikes Peak Ranger District, said, "We don't have a proposal from anybody on the ski area so we wouldn't comment on something we didn't have."

Historically, the Forest Service has adored Colorado ski areas, but it shouldn't be so quick to embrace this one.

The agency's track record as a steward of Pikes Peak is dismal. In addition to the Pikes Peak ski area debacle, it didn't stop Colorado Springs from causing considerable damage to the mountain from the Pikes Peak Highway. It took a Sierra Club lawsuit to force the city to do the right thing. Like forests everywhere, the Pikes Peak forest has had little in the way of management.

Now officials at the agency have a chance to form a measured response from the beginning, and avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.

Contact Barry Noreen at 636-0363 ornoreen@gazette.com. He appears every

other Friday on KOAA's Comcast

Channel 9 at 4 p.m.