http://www.lonepeaklookout.com/news/article_b7ce24e4-189c-11e2-8cf4-001a4bcf887a.html
"So as soon as the snow melted this spring the glading work began. Miller loaded his chainsaw and excavator onto the truck and hit Middle Road -- the winding access ski run that on some days took an hour to traverse before reaching the remote Bavarian Forest. Then up until September, the crew worked diligently selecting and cutting down appropriate trees, taking into account skiing opportunities, forest health, fire prevention and even appearance.
"The Bavarian Forest is one of the best areas of Big Sky Resort," Miller said. "But it gets tight in some places. We just wanted to make it easier to turn, so we took out some beetle kill. But we left the really big dead ones that are aesthetically pleasing -- dead but pretty."
Concerned tree skiers take heed: it's not as if the Big Sky Fire Prevention crew was out there clearing groomed runs in the middle of the forest.
"We made runs better," Miller said. "It's still backcountry, black diamond, forest skiing. There are still a lot of skiable areas untouched. In gladed areas, you can just make more turns." "
Clearing groomed runs in the middle of the forest is exactly whats been done.
Earlier this fall me and a couple buddies took a hike out to the maintanence shack (new this past year), only to find 3 separate 12' swaths cut right through Bavaria. On top of that, there was tons of piles of cut logs everywhere. Huge ones. (lets hope theyre burning these right now)
I wanted to cry. I swore vengence upon the man who made it happen. I mean, one of the roads leads straight to the front door of the shack for peats sake! Who wants gapers intruding on our enjoyment? No one.
Yes, I understand the need to get rid of some dead trees. (Well, actually I say leave them lie, but whatever) But this wasn't 'Glading the trees', this was cutting fool-proof new runs in the middle of a 'glade'.
It's too late to do anything about this now anyway. I just wanted to brace you guys for the devastation.
Big sky needs to stop glading out all the great runs, or they'll no longer have great runs. It says on there that they also gladed Marb country (again) and Medi trees. Scary.
