Mt. A expansion on hold

Eager Mount Ashland skiers and snowboarders will have to wait at least one more season before making turns in a proposed expansion area.

At its annual membership dinner Thursday night, the Mt. Ashland Association announced it will hold off on any work on a proposed ski area expansion until May 1, 2007.

With an opinion from a federal judge still absent in a lawsuit that challenged the U.S. Forest Service's approval of the project, ski area managers decided to focus on the upcoming ski season rather than put more energy into the politically-charged struggle to expand.

"The weather's changing," Mt. Ashland Ski Area General Manager Kim Clark said. "Everything's starting to look more like winter."

Clark said the Mt. Ashland Association decided if there was no decision by the Nov. 1, it would postpone any expansion activity until next year. He said the Mt. Ashland Association now hopes to have the first phase of the expansion in place for the 2007-2008 ski season.

An expansion to the small, local ski area has been pending for more than a decade. After the Forest Service approved an expansion in 2004 to build two new chair lifts, 200 new parking spaces and 16 new ski runs, environmentalists challenged the record of decision on the basis that the expansion would affect the McDonald Peak Roadless Area, destroy crucial habitat and cause erosion in the Middle Branch of the East Fork of Ashland Creek (which flows into the City's water supply).

Although U.S. District Court Judge Owen M. Panner ruled in favor of the Forest Service and Mt. Ashland Association in September, he did not issue an opinion explaining his reasons behind the motion.

Plaintiffs in the recent lawsuit have said they will appeal the case to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. This week, an attorney for the Rogue Group Sierra Club — one of three groups that filed suit against the Forest Service — filed a preliminary injunction request to halt any logging in the proposed expansion area.

The first $3.7 million phase of the expansion would clear runs in a 71-acre area at the top of the City of Ashland's municipal watershed, build a new chair lift and parking and add an interim lodge and warming hut.

Tom Dimitre, chair of the Rogue Group Sierra Club, said the news was relieving, but it could mean a more drawn-out process.

"We are pleased that there will be no cutting this year," he said. "We will continue to work to ensure that cutting of trees in the Middle Branch never takes place."

Staff writer Alan Panebaker can be reached at 482-3456 x 227 or apanebaker@dailytidings.com.