We Need Trails

December 7, 2006

Mammoth sent 20 citizens on the ballyhooed "Peer Resort Tour" and came back with a single, overriding revelation: "We need more trails."

Forgive me when I say "Well, duh."

There was more than just trails, though. After traipsing around the West, the members of the group also seem to think that the only way Mammoth is going to get all the stuff it wants is to start "thinking outside the box" in terms of financing.

Double duh.

And another thing: government entities such as towns, counties, Forest Services and so on, need to be on the same page and work together.

Triple duh.

I'm not sure that anybody exactly needed to go on a tour of Park City, Telluride, Aspen, Jackson Hole and Whistler to come up with this, but it sounds like an OK trip, and what's done is done, and they did.

On Wednesday, Dec. 6, in advance of the regular Town Council meeting, many members of the tour group gathered to discuss the tour, and I just happened to bop in when Councilmember Neil McCarroll suggested that Mammoth somehow lean on Arnold Schwarzenegger and get him to create a "resort zone" for Mammoth.

With state funds, Mammoth would build what it wants, then kick back money to the state when it starts rolling in.

After all, Neil said, governments do that in Mexico and Canada.

Something tells me that it'd be easier if Mammoth simply seceded from California and the Union and got annexed by our friendly neighbors to the north. O Canada, and all that.

Bill Sauser's big takeaway was how well government entitites work together on a single plan and vision, then added of our own situation, "We don't play well together in our sandbox. In these other places, they all work together."

But back to trails.

Elizabeth Tenney, who has always advocated trails, said, "I don't think we can overemphasize the importance of a trail system. It pulls the whole community together. The trail systems we saw were phenomenal."

Back to Neil.

Afterward, he said he was serious about the "resort zone" idea, and that he really, honestly, legitimately didn't fully understand the importance of trails in mountain resort towns until now.

"With the trail systems in Jackson, Whistler and Park City, people use trails as a transit system. This came as a complete shock to me."

Um, OK. Whatever.

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