Issues and Alerts

ACCESS WYOMING Update
Kim Raap, Trails Work Consulting
While winter will soon be upon us, access work for snowmobiling in Wyoming has been on-going throughout the summer and fall. The following is an update on some the current initiatives affecting snowmobiling being addressed through the ACCESS WYOMING program:
Snowy Range Scenic By-Way Corridor Management Plan: The Snowy Range Scenic By-Way is Highway 130 which crosses the Snowy Range between Centennial and Ryan Park. Buried within this Corridor Management Plan is a proposal to create a new snowmobile parking area in the Green Rock area on the east side of the Range. This is good news and has been several years in the making. The draft management plan included two alternative locations for this new parking area: (1) behind the Snowy Range Ski Area and (2) above the switchbacks just above the existing parking area and Snowy Mountain Lodge.
I did a site visit to these two proposed locations with the Forest Service and Brad Hill from the State Trails Program in late June, and then prepared comments for WSSA on these proposals. The proposed site behind the ski area is totally unacceptable: it is difficult to access and would require the public trailering through the ski area’s maintenance yard, is too far removed and a much lower elevation than the existing parking at Green Rock, and the Barber Lake Road which would need to be used for the access route has stretches which would tend to bare off due to south facing exposure. This site would also require a lot of tree removal to make it large enough to accommodate existing use. Therefore WSSA did not support this proposed location.
The second proposed site would offer lots of parking space in a large meadow near the top of the switchbacks. However, we expressed concerns in our comments about vehicles pulling trailers being able to negotiate the switchbacks, as well as being able to keep the access road open given the frequent strong winds and heavy snowfall in this area. This site is also located at the edge of an Inventoried Roadless Area, meaning that special exemptions would be required from the Secretary of Agriculture before a parking area could be built.
Given the poor location of site #1 at the ski area and the concerns with site #2 above the switchbacks, WSSA requested that a third location also be considered in this planning process. This alternate location is just above the existing parking, on the north side of the road across from Snowy Mountain Lodge, and was a site recommended by the Snowy Range winter task force several years ago. We feel this site would be better suited since it would provide a large tiered parking area while being easier to access than the site above the switchbacks. This planning process will take several months (or longer) to move forward, so we’ll continue to monitor it closely to try to get the best parking improvement possible from this Scenic By-Way project.
Forest Planning: Both the Shoshone and Bridger-Teton National Forest have been working on updating their Forest Management Plans over the past two to three years, although these planning processes keep getting interrupted by court decisions which have twice thrown out the national Forest Service Planning Rules. As a result of the most recent Planning Rule limbo, the Bridger-Teton has suspended their plan revision process and will concentrate on making some amendments to their existing Forest Plan as things get sorted out. On the other hand, the Shoshone forest is going ahead with their forest plan revision – but under their old 1982 national Planning Rule (since it is too old to be challenged in court by the environmental groups who have challenged all the newer planning rules). While the Shoshone is back at work on the plan revision, the next round of public meetings and opportunities for input most likely will not occur until the end of winter. We’ll continue to monitor both of these planning processes closely and keep you updated.
Togwotee Pass: The Winter Wildlands Alliance (WWA), a national organization that promotes “quiet use” (cross-country skiing), orchestrated a “Togwotee Winter Stakeholders Meeting’ in Dubois on September 29 to discuss ‘managing winter recreation on Togwotee Pass.’ What this amounted to was WWA and the Togwotee Pass Backcountry Alliance proposing to have snowmobilers ‘voluntarily’ give up three areas totaling about 5 square miles/3,300 acres so they could have backcountry ski areas designated which would be closed to snowmobiles. Their three proposed areas they wanted us to ‘voluntarily give up’ include all of Two Ocean Mountain and the East Angle Mountain and Breccia/Brooks Lake areas on the north side of the highway. There were about 20 pro-snowmobile and 5 pro-skier people in attendance. We made it abundantly clear that WSSA and local snowmobilers will not agree to close these areas to snowmobiling. While we hopefully beat this effort back for the short-term, we will need to closely watch their continued efforts as both the Shoshone and Bridger-Teton forest plan revisions move forward in the future..

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