Whitefish Mountain Resort in Whitefish Montana has become the latest ski resort to limit uphill traffic on skins. Press release.

Resistance is mounting... Facebook group and http://www.uphilltraffic.org

If you're impacted, please get involved to see if we can work with the resort to implement common sense guidelines to manage uphill traffic.

--Kowski out

Hate to say it, but this decision sounds relatively reasonable. Granted you're losing the evening skiing opportunity, but it's a classic case of a couple of idiots ruining it for everyone. In our litigious society, I can't blame WMR or the USFS:

This season, resort staff have reported several near-miss incidents with winch cats [...] [recently] a grooming operator watched an after-hours hiker ski beneath his winch cable, encountering aggressive resistance when the skier was asked to vacate the area for his safety...

"Our grooming operators are constantly worried that they're going to inadvertently injure or kill someone who makes a bad decision out there..."

Sounds like someone's going to lose their head, literally.

The policy [...] will restrict uphill traffic [...] to a single route on the mountain, as well as limiting the hours[...]. Uphill traffic will be allowed on the route during ski season from 6:30 a.m. until the resort closes... [and] between 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. for the first 14 days after ski season ends, with no active restrictions outside those hours and dates.

This policy is a heck of a lot better then other policies I'm aware of, including Bridger Bowl's which prohibits all uphill traffic all the time within the ski area boundary. I'd kill to have a designated route at Bridger for early morning runs (or even mid-morning), but that will probably never happen. So, IMO, enjoy what you have, it could be a lot worse.


[And yes, I understand the argument against restricting human-powered public activities on public land, but there's plenty of precedent for this when the common public good it at stake (municipal water supplies, temporary fire closures, wildlife area closures)]

What's interesting is that most of the uphillers agree that some restrictions need to be implemented. The biggest concern is losing the evenings.

The way it went down was bad too...basically no notice, just a press release one day.

They tried to do this too at Mt. Bachelor. The amount of resistance was overwhelming, and they retreated with creating a uphill corridor for us skinnin' types.

Keep up the pressure on these ski resorts that operate with permits from the USFS! It's OUR land, and in reality they should have no reason to kick someone out.