Forest Service seeks comments on summer projects
An upgrade to the White Pine trailhead, an addition to Solitude’s Last Chance grill and three projects at Alta Ski Area are among eight small permits being considered for approval by the U.S. Forest Service.
The Forest Service will accept public comment through June 16 on these projects, which the Salt Lake Ranger District has determined will not have sufficient impacts to warrant extensive environmental studies.
Scheduled for this summer and fall, the projects would:
• Replace the existing paved access trail from the White Pine parking lot to the Little Cottonwood Creek bridge, reducing sediment erosion into the creek. the new trail will be 75 feet west of the parking lot restroom. Workers also will upgrade about 400 feet of an existing service road to improve its drainage.
• Add 12,900 square feet of building to the south and west sides of Solitude Mountain Resort’s "Last Chance Mining Camp" restaurant. In the resort’s master plan, the expansion could have been up to 15,000 square feet. the addition will require relocation of a medical helicopter landing zone and 300 feet of a mountain access road.
• Allow the Utah Department of Transportation to install fiber optic and power conduits in a trench that will be cut into the shoulder of the highway from the mouth of big Cottonwood Canyon up to Solitude’s main entrance. the lines will feed into 18, 35-foot-tall poles that would support cameras to monitor canyon traffic and wireless communications for emergencies.
• Enable Questar Pipeline Co. to disturb four-tenths of an acre on Little Mountain, at the top of Emigration Canyon, to enlarge a fenced natural-gas transfer station so that it will be easier for the federal Department of Transportation to inspect the gas line.
• Consolidate into one 30-year permit all 13 permits that CenturyLink, formerly Qwest Communications, has for telecommunications lines that cross Forest Service properties in the Cottonwood canyons, mill Creek, Weber and Emigration canyons and along Guardsman Pass.
The projects at Alta would:
• move snow-making equipment from an underground vault near Devil’s Elbow ski run into a new shed that will be partly buried into a previously disturbed fill area.
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• Build an earthen ramp for the Little Grizzly conveyor lift near the ski school in Albion Basin, a move to reduce the amount of man-made snow needed to keep it functioning efficiently.
• Repair about 400 feet of sewer line between the mid-mountain Watson Shelter and Wildcat base area.
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