I’m smashed in the back seat of an SUV with a pear farmer, a lawyer, an eighty–five–year–old environmental activist and a ski industry muckraker. It’s an odd mix—especially when I learn the farmer is the son of the environmental activist, the lawyer isn’t billing, and the muckraker once wrote stylish resort reviews for a leading ski magazine. We’re out on a Sunday morning to see the hillside where Mount Hood Meadows Development Corporation, Oregon’s largest ski company, is planning to build a destination resort, 450 vacation homes, a shopping village and an eighteen–hole golf course.

The hillside abuts a small ski area called Cooper Spur, on the boundary of the Mount Hood National Forest, and sits close to a roadless area. As home sites go, the planned resort couldn’t be better located. Nestled below the north face of snowcapped Mount Hood, it offers views of the Hood River Valley and, in the distance, the Columbia River and its scenic gorge. In addition to this parcel, Mount Hood Meadows has purchased tiny Cooper Spur Ski Area. The company wants to expand it in conjunction with building the adjacent resort.

“Look at this beautiful valley!” blurts Kate McCarthy, the activist, from the back seat. “The mountain is going to be out!”

In the Pacific Northwest, mountains are “out” from behind the clouds only every so often.

Though the resort site lies outside the national forest, it’s within an alpine and subalpine ecosystem that environmentalists say is too fragile to withstand more development. Environmental groups have formed a coalition, run by the lawyer in the car, that includes fruit farmers in the Hood River Valley and the city government of Hood River. In their fight to stop the resort plan, they’re also criticizing the U.S. Forest Service for allowing Mount Hood Meadows several expansions within its permit area on the national forest over the years. They contend the Forest Service is blatantly overlooking the potential environmental impact both inside and outside the national forest.

The still–unfolding story of Cooper Spur is a bellwether for other small resorts that operate on national forests. When small resorts are purchased and expanded within their permit area, impacts ripple down–mountain. Forest Service budget cuts have made things worse: winter snow rangers were once assigned to each ski area to do environmental oversight; now one or two are assigned to an entire national forest.

On Mount Hood and mountains across the country, ski resorts operate on national forests under a decades–old system of permits. Most ski resorts’ special–use permits are forty–year agreements with the Forest Service. Mount Hood hosts five relatively small ski resorts, more than any other mountain in North America.

In 2001-02, the Forest Service collected $1,174,157 in permit fees from Mount Hood ski resorts, an amount that pales in comparison to fees collected from ski resorts on national forests in Colorado and Utah.

Permit fees vary each year. The Forest Service takes a small percentage, between 1.5 percent and 4 percent, of the gross revenue of ticket sales on Forest Service land. Restaurant revenue, retail sales and lodging fees are not part of the Forest Service’s permit fee equation. The percentage is calculated on a sliding scale: the more money the resort makes, the more money the Forest Service collects.

But the formula means little without knowing how much a resort is bringing in—proprietary information that most ski resorts refuse to share.

Mike Heilman, winter sports supervisor for the Pacific Northwest Region, says that nationally, the Forest Service collects about $20 million from ski resorts each year. The fees are not a one–to–one payback for oversight of the ski industry. Heilman says the money is sent to the Treasury and goes into the general fund.

Critics say the ski industry is getting a sweet deal out of the permit arrangement, essentially leasing public land for very little money. Critics also say that whatever the dollar amount might be, the Forest Service compromises itself when it charges fees based on resort revenue. It’s no surprise, they say, that environmental regulation doesn’t take place and that expansions, like the one at Cooper Spur, are easily granted. Though master plan approval is required for new resorts to get a permit on Forest Service land and an environmental impact statement is required for any later skiing–related expansion, none is required for expansions on adjacent land, even if the development is directly related to the ski resort.

Heilman understands some of the critics’ frustration with the Forest Service and ski area expansions but thinks that focusing on the money is a convenient way to make the Forest Service a scapegoat for recreation development in and around national forests.

“Twenty years ago, the ski industry wasn’t as environmentally sensitive as it could have been,” he says. “We were developing a lot of new areas in the 1960s and 1970s, [but] to dredge up things that happened in 1977 doesn’t give [the ski resorts] any credit for what they have done and what they’re attempting to do.”

He contends that ski resorts have environmental policies in place, in part driven by public pressure, and points out that most ski areas are not large operations, but small businesses struggling to make a profit in a seasonal industry. Critics assert otherwise: ski resorts are just getting bigger and bigger, and small resorts are simply being gobbled up by the larger ones.

“I think some of the groups would like the Forest Service to come out in opposition to it,” he says, referring to the Cooper Spur expansion and the nearby planned resort. “On what grounds?”

“Oh, look at the mountain now! Isn’t that magnificent?”

It’s Kate McCarthy again, from the back seat. We round a bend in the road. McCarthy gasps, then slaps her legs with both hands.

Snowcapped Mount Hood, in full view, literally sparkles as the morning sun illuminates the peak.

The conversation soon turns to the Forest Service as we climb an old dirt road on the ski company’s newly acquired resort land. The road is covered by snow, and the tires slide a bit beneath us. We finally come to a halt at the top of a hill where some of the resort view homes are planned. The land slopes sharply.

Whether Mount Hood is out or not, McCarthy adores the mountain. At 85, McCarthy, fit and feisty, lives in an old farmhouse where the firs and pines of the forest meet the fields of the agricultural valley below. She hikes all over the mountain every summer, often leaving others half her age struggling to keep pace. She knows the mountain’s hidden valleys and trails. In her younger days, McCarthy’s skiing was so good that she was invited to try out for the U.S. Olympic ski team. She declined but never stopped skiing. She maintains that she isn’t anti–recreation, just that enough is enough on Mount Hood.

“They’re so happy to help the developers,” says her son, farmer Mike McCarthy, referring to local Forest Service officials. “They’re nice people, but they don’t seem to have an environmental ethic. When they start standing up for the land or the mountain, they get moved out.”

By “moved out,” he means out of the agency altogether. The perception of many longtime residents here is that the Hood River Ranger District is a revolving door. No one stays long enough to be a good land steward or to look out for locals’ interests.

We make it back to the paved road and continue up–mountain, to Cooper Spur. When we arrive, the sole chairlift isn’t working, nor is the rope tow. There’s barely enough snow to cover the slope. We see only two cars: in one, a group of cross–country skiers; in the other, backcountry hikers. The little ski area, many complain, is at too low an elevation for downhill skiing. Environmentalists are using the lack of snow in their argument against the expansion. They’re also citing four recent timber sales on the Mount Hood National Forest, located and timed, the anti–resort activists say, suspiciously close to when rumor turned to reality about a planned destination resort.

Several phone calls to the general manager of Mount Hood Meadows Ski Resort went unreturned. Maps of the planned resort have not been fully released to the public, though lawyers for the opposition revealed they had one, but were legally bound not to show it to anyone. In recent months, Mount Hood Meadows began holding small, invitation–only talks about the resort plan.

These presentations have infuriated the environmental coalition fighting the planned resort near Cooper Spur. They contend such semiclosed meetings sweep public opinion under the carpet.

Alex Brown, grassroots coordinator for the Oregon Natural Resources Council, attended one of the meetings. He understands the mistrust and thinks that the Forest Service is exacerbating it. His organization’s requests for a summary or notes from recent meetings between the Forest Service mangers and Mount Hood Meadows have produced nothing.

“They have positioned themselves with the public as if they’re working behind closed doors with Mount Hood Meadows,” he said.

Whether the agency is working behind closed doors or not, it’s no secret that the Forest Service is collaborating with the ski industry. An informal partnership can be traced to early permit agreements in the 1930s as ski resorts were built on national forests, and the relationship became more formalized over the years. Hal Clifford, the ski industry muckraker, wrote Downhill Slide: Why the Corporate Ski Industry Is Bad for Skiing, Ski Towns, and the Environment in 2002, a Sierra Club Books release now in its second printing. In the book, Clifford cites an agreement cemented in 1994 between the Forest Service and the National Winter Sports Partnership. One of the first steps following that agreement was a 1996 Forest Service commitment of $500,000 to the partnership. Over the years, the money has been spent on press kits, booklets and movies to promote skiing to children and young teens.

In addition, a memorandum of understanding between the National Ski Areas Association and the Forest Service, drawn up in 1996, was recently renewed and expanded. The document was drafted by Geraldine Link, the director of public policy for the association, and Ed Ryberg, the National Winter Sports Partnership coordinator for the Forest Service, and was signed by Michael Berry, president of the National Ski Areas Association, Mark Rey, undersecretary of agriculture and Dale Bosworth, chief of the Forest Service.

The stated purposes of the agreement include “recognition of the value of developed recreation,” “the importance of public/private partnerships in providing recreational facilities,” “multiple–use national forest management,” “sustainable communities,” “viable local economies” and “ecosystem health.”

The memorandum of understanding also recognizes that the association represents nearly all the ski areas permitted to operate on national forests and that the Forest Service will partner with the association’s Sustainable Slopes Program, an effort to promote environmental stewardship among resort operators. An addition to the memorandum of understanding includes a commitment to increase participation in alpine sports, particularly among beginners.

“It recognizes a growth initiative,” says Link. “We’re just asking the agency to be more open–minded and, I guess, more aggressive in satisfying the customer.”

The customer, or consumer culture, is a key theme of Clifford’s talk to residents of Hood River. A few hours after our morning drive, Clifford is speaking to a small crowd at a Hood River theater. He begins the talk by reading from Downhill Slide. In the book, he likens destination ski resorts to “landlocked cruise ships.” Clifford promotes an environmentalist agenda, and in Hood River, at least, it appears he has a supportive audience. One man in the audience wears a “Save the Spur! No Destination Resort” bumper sticker on the back of his fleece vest.

Clifford’s chapter on the Forest Service is a critique of sorts, entitled “Smokey the Bear, the Ski Industry’s Best Friend.” He describes what the activist groups on Mount Hood have already discovered: the Forest Service seemingly has no intention of denying ski area expansions or joining opposition coalitions. Clifford said that if he had known about the Cooper Spur situation when he was writing his book, he would have included it.

“Vail is an interesting case study in what can happen,” says Clifford. “The town of Vail is now ten miles long and a mile wide.”

If Clifford is frightening this audience into thinking Hood River could turn into another Vail, the group isn’t showing it yet. Clifford says that many people in the West maintain a “boom mindset,” believing that development should have no limits because it will bring jobs into town. Muffled conversation erupts in the crowd about a planned casino and a Wal–Mart. It’s clear their anger is about more than Cooper Spur and Mount Hood Meadows’ planned luxury resort. It’s about development and consumer culture in general.

As timber harvesting declines on national forests, Clifford says, the Forest Service is making up the lost revenue in recreation fees. Clifford asserts that ski area development in and around national forests is as simple, and as complicated, as money. Perhaps not surprising, some of the closest relationships between ski area management and the Forest Service exist in Colorado. In his book, Clifford writes that Colorado hosts 20 percent of the skiing days in the United States. It’s also where the nation’s three largest ski corporations operate. Those companies hold special–use permits on tens of thousands of acres in Colorado’s national forests. Because they are public corporations, Clifford was able to use their annual reports and Security and Exchange Commission data to calculate how much—or how little, depending on perspective—the big resorts pay in permit fees.

Clifford writes:

“The Forest Service has been reluctant, at times even truculent, about seeing what appears obvious to many industry observers and ski–town residents: ski–area expansion fosters base–area development and off–mountain impacts … Yet some Forest Service offices seem to turn a willfully blind eye to the connections … Although the Forest Service presents itself as a steward of the public lands, the truth is that it is no longer capable of acting as one. The agency has been badly compromised in its ability to regulate the ski industry because it is formally in partnership with that industry.”

A few weeks after our drive to the resort site, I met again with McCarthy, this time near downtown Portland. That morning she’d driven over the north side of Mount Hood and down its southern flank to attend a private meeting with Gary Larson, the Mount Hood National Forest supervisor. She joined a small group of opponents of Mount Hood Meadows’ resort plan.

She brought her book, 277 dog–eared pages of letters, photographs, maps and other materials documenting environmental problems on Mount Hood. It’s bursting from a large three–ring binder with a handwritten table of contents. Some of the materials are fifty years old. Most everything relates in some way to Mount Hood Meadows.

“I’m a skier,” she says. “I’m not against skiing, but I’m against this mindless destruction of the land beyond what you need.”

McCarthy reads aloud passages that she’s highlighted from recreation associations that have joined the opposition.

“It just isn’t a bunch of crazy environmentalists,” she says. “What we believe is enough is enough on Mount Hood. Snowshoers and cross–country skiers like it the way it is.”

She flips through newspaper articles. One is from 1966, when Mount Hood Meadows made a bid for its first ski lift. Next she finds a Forest Service report from 1969; in it a Forest Service official questioned whether a permit should be granted at all.

Her words become more impassioned as she revisits the documents.

“The Forest Service can shut down the permit, but they don’t want to make any waves.”

We look at pages of eight–by–ten photographs that McCarthy took while hiking. They show erosion from heavy equipment; logs and gravel in streambeds; paved–over meadows; debris left by ski lift construction. She thinks the Forest Service does little on–the–ground monitoring. Traditional rangering doesn’t exist, she says. She remembers taking the forest supervisor on a hike in the summer of 1976. According to McCarthy, he was shocked by what he saw.

Not everything in her book is negative, however: McCarthy points out a document from 1989 that shows the regional forester reversed a Mount Hood Meadows proposal for a destination resort that would have included two hotels and stores. Since then, however, the Forest Service has allowed several expansions within the permit area.

I asked her which, the Forest Service or the ski resorts, irks her most.

“They make a point of being in partnership, so I can’t blame one more than the other.”