The munching march of pine beetles through Colorado’s ski country could lower the timberline by a few thousand feet in the coming decades and change the nature of skiing in the nation’s skiingest state.
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The devastating infestation of bark beetles in Colorado’s central Rockies is promising sweeping mutations in Colorado’s ski landscape. Initially, the race to gird threatened stands of conifer against the ravaging rice-sized insects will improve the skiing, with thinning and deadfall removal opening once impenetrable glades.
But when the full impact of the predicted 70 percent to 90 percent or higher mortality rate is realized in the next two decades, skiers could be grinding through nothing but wind-scoured, sun-baked snow, avoiding massive swaths of closed terrain where new trees are growing while keeping a keen eye peeled for tumbling timber succumbing to the slightest of breezes.
“It’s going to be an emotional roller coaster in a way … but it’s a naturally occurring event, all the different phases of infestation,” said Mike Ricketts, who, as winter sports administrator for the Winter Park ski area in the Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest, is on the front line of the state’s most decimating battle with the hungry beetles. “You kind of have to look at it in the long term: This is what happens at any ski area. Trees eventually fall down and you clear them out and you have a new place to ski. Then new saplings come up and that terrain gets locked off and a new area opens up somewhere else.
“In the short term, though, trees will be going away and that may impact wind patterns and the surface of the snow, which could make grooming more important and then costs go up. For people who live here, it is draining. I see the frustration growing.”
While many resorts have greenscaped their operations with wind power and other environmentally friendly approaches designed to stem the snow- melting, industry-crippling threat of global warming, there is little that can be done to stop the beetles.
The one hope is a prolonged period of fiercely cold temperatures. But with Mother Nature seemingly intent on some diversity and change on her densely forested central Rocky Mountain slopes, it’s not likely she will change her mind and kill off nature’s little loggers. Even if she does, trees have a life cycle, and the death knell is ringing for most lodgepoles in Colorado’s ski country.
Dramatic changes ahead
From Steamboat Springs to Winter Park, over Ute Pass onto Summit County’s Keystone and Breckenridge and west onto the slopes of the Vail Valley’s Vail and Beaver Creek, the red-and-dead trail of beetle kill is growing. With some of those hills lacking much diversity in tree types, the pending changes will be dramatic.
“Tree skiing will be a totally new thing with the pine beetle,” said John Kappus, a longtime Mary Jane skier who lost 70 trees on his acre of property above Fraser this summer. “It will be a different experience for sure. When you ride through (the Fraser Valley) in the summer, there’s a sawdust pile under every tree. It seems like we will lose a great deal, if not all, of the forest.”
For the lower-elevation hills, like Vail, and the hills largely blanketed with lodgepole, like Keystone, the pending decimation will change their appearance and skiing forever. The best strategy is two-pronged: Fight the onslaught in the most highly valued areas like ski areas and prepare for the next generation of woodland, with a goal of “never again.”
But frustration on the part of resort operators grows as they find the strict requirement of the National Environmental Policy Act limiting their ability and agility in the war against the bark beetles.
“The same permitting process necessary to remove a dead or beetle-infested tree is the same we need to go through to clear an entire trail,” said Chuck Tolton, mountain operations chief at Keystone. “It’s silly. I love NEPA, but NEPA doesn’t make a lot of sense when we are dealing with what the Forest Service itself calls an epidemic.”
“Follow those beetles”
On the fight side, public health and safety is paramount. So forest managers are clearing trees in the beetle path that could die and topple onto lifts, homes and skiers on ski runs. They are removing existing beetle kill and deadfall to douse the threat of wildfire. But each removal increases the chance of blowdown deeper in the forest, as islands of trees with shallow roots systems are suddenly susceptible to mountain gusts.
Clearing threatened and dead timber not only opens the forest canopy for growth of more diverse tree life like aspens and strengthens neighboring trees by lessening competition for groundwater, it opens up more potentially skiable terrain.
The key, like any powderhound knows, is being in the right place at the right time. New terrain could shutter as quickly as it opened when new saplings start basking in the sunlight finally reaching the forest floor.
“First and foremost, our mission is to protect the forest, and consider wildlife values as well as those of public health and safety, and that includes fire,” said Don Dressler, a Forest Service snow ranger and avid skier based in Minturn. “In general, there is a movement to treat these affected areas for the next generation of forest. While our goal is not necessarily to improve skiing, sometimes that is a byproduct of what we do.”
A few miles south of Vail, beetles are marching through lodgepole on Battle Mountain, where Florida developer Bobby Ginn is planning a $1 billion luxury ski resort and community of 1,400 homes. Crews have been battling the bugs for 18 months, falling stricken trees and wrapping diseased lodgepoles in plastic to desiccate the beetles. The bugs are meandering and munching down Battle Mountain’s flanks, where ski runs could soon follow.
“Assuming entitlement, it would only make sense to follow those beetles,” said Ginn spokesman Cliff Thompson. “Their work will certainly be taken into consideration when it comes time to clear runs. The pine beetles have not consulted with our ski course designers, but they are not really hurting us either.”
Staff writer Jason Blevins can be reached at 303-954-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com.
