The Village at Wolf Creek will be located just below the Continental Divide; the village would be built at the base of the peak above Alverta Reservoir. Photos courtesy Colorado Wild.
Wolf Creek Pass is not the highest, snowiest or steepest crossing of the Continental Divide, but it has a reputation. Located in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains, near the New Mexico border, it’s a place of uncommon wildness. To the southeast, a government agent killed the state’s last native wolf in 1943. Directly south, there is evidence of residual grizzly bear populations. And a few miles north, wildlife biologists have released Canada lynx into what they say is one of the least roaded areas in Colorado.
Highway 160 crosses Wolf Creek Pass, elevation 10,850 feet, and connects two national parks, Great Sand Dunes and Mesa Verde. It’s a corridor of knotty–pine cabins, executive ranches with elaborate stone–and–wrought–iron gateways and the sort of emerald meadows that are found on calendars—in the summer months.
But here, along the nation’s spine, winter can be nasty. Trying to plunge through these mountains in December 1848, explorer John Charles Fremont lost ten men and 100 mules to an unusually savage winter. Even an ordinary winter can be challenging. Avalanches are common, particularly on the west side, sometimes blocking the highway for days at a time.
The prodigious snow is a badge of honor at Wolf Creek Ski Area, adjacent to the pass. The ski area boasts 465 inches annually, tops among Colorado’s twenty–six ski resorts. But despite being one of the state’s oldest ski areas, with rope tows installed by local ranchers before World War II, the facility lacks most of the niceties that have become standard at larger (and mostly newer) resorts: facial tissues in the lift lines, heated walkways, smooth–as–carpet groomed trails. There isn’t even any base–area lodging. If you want to ski at Wolf Creek, it’s a 20– to 45–minute drive—assuming avalanches aren’t thundering—from a nearby town.
As far back as 1973, when the ski area installed its first lift, the owners figured a base–area lodge of some sort was needed to draw customers. The ski area’s master plan projected an on–mountain capacity of 8,000 skiers, making it a large resort even by Colorado standards. At the time, the baby boom generation was producing double–digit growth in the ski business, though at Wolf Creek Ski Area the growth was slower. The location—five hours from both Denver and Albuquerque—deterred all but the hardiest day–trippers. More visitors, the owners figured, might be enticed with base–area lodging. So in 1986, they favored a swap with the U.S. Forest Service in which 287 acres of public land at the base of the ski lifts were exchanged for 1,600 acres of isolated private in–holdings on the Rio Grande National Forest.
The now–private land at the base of the Wolf Creek Ski Area has become disputed turf. Targeted for 2,172 condominiums, hotel rooms and single–family houses in a $1 billion project called the Village at Wolf Creek, it has become the nexus of a flurry of lawsuits, protests and allegations of malfeasance. Such disputes are common in the fast–growing West as attractive sites are flooded with development plans carving out nests of paradise—often right next to public lands. But the circumstances here are extreme: the location is higher, the landscape more pure and the climate more difficult. The development being proposed is not an expansion of an existing population, but a new city concentrated in a small acreage. Rarely are the developers so wealthy, and rare, too, are the allegations of improper influence peddling—in this case extending to the central power corridors of Congress and the Bush administration.
THE PLAYERS
The deep pocket for this project is seventy–nine–year–old Billy Joe “Red” McCombs. In 2006, Forbes reported McCombs’s total worth at $1.3 billion. A law–school dropout, he amassed one fortune in car dealerships and another in radio and television media. He also made a tidy profit when he sold the Minnesota Vikings football team, one of several major–league sports teams he has owned. He’s also been generous, giving $50 million to a business school, $30 million toward cancer research and, according to an Internet campaign contribution tracker called Newsmeat, $524,000 toward federal political campaigns. He strongly favors Republicans.
The front man for the project is Bob Honts. A former city manager in Texas, he was later elected county commissioner. In 1983 he pleaded guilty to misusing government property for private business. Since then, he’s been in the land development business full time. Now sixty–six, he comes across in newspaper stories as folksy in the big–chested way that brings to mind the lyrics of singer–songwriter Kinky Friedman: “Just my luck that God’s a Texan, one big son–bitchin’ Anglo–Saxon.”
McCombs and another partner funded the 1986 exchange that put the public land at Wolf Creek into private hands. The exchange was not particularly controversial. A local ranger initially denied the swap, but two weeks later, superiors in Washington, D.C., overruled his decision. The exchange was attended by a contract that mandated no industrial facilities, storage of hazardous materials, or other uses deemed incompatible with the national forest or the ski area.
All available evidence suggests that the ski area owners, members of the Pitcher family, were satisfied with the exchange and with construction plans for the new resort village. A detailed proposal for the nearly 2,200 units was submitted to officials in Mineral County, apparently with the family’s endorsement. But little happened through the 1980s. Ski industry growth slowed and the resort market soured, with condominium prices plunging 50 percent and sometimes even worse. Nobody was rushing to build.
Then, in 1996, activity at Wolf Creek picked up. Honts, who had been associated with McCombs in various real estate developments, arrived on the scene. “[McCombs] called me in on this in 1996,” said Honts in an interview with the Pueblo Chieftain in 2005. “He told me, ‘We have a big ol’ sleeping dog and I want you to make that dog hunt.’” Honts, who declined an interview for this story, soon had the dog, or at least the Village at Wolf Creek, moving through the development review process. He got a sign–off from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which found a net loss of one lynx as a result of the development. He got approval from Mineral County, despite objections from other jurisdictions that expect to bear the brunt of impacts without the benefit of increased tax revenues. And, certainly not least, he got approval from the Forest Service for two access roads to the project.
But since then the McCombs–Honts project has hit some snags. The turning point was in 1999 when a environmental group called Colorado Wild brokered a deal with the Forest Service and the ski area. Colorado Wild dropped its opposition to a new ski lift into the site of the proposed village, but was assured an environmental impact statement would be completed before the agency would allow any new access roads to the site. Whatever else happened remains a mystery, but the ski area and the developers, once partners, started getting testy with one another. So did people in nearby towns. Few of them saw much good coming from the project.
ON THE MOUNTAIN
On a Saturday in October, with clouds closing in at 10,300 feet, Davey Pitcher hustles hard at the Wolf Creek Ski Area. The announced opening is in three weeks, and he’s still putting in a new $3.2 million lift. Pitcher’s not just barking orders—that’s not how they do it at Wolf Creek. He hops into the operator’s seat of a yellow crane and hoists construction materials onto a flatbed. At Wolf Creek, that’s what the mountain manager does. And yes, he says later, he’s also the president and CEO.
Pitcher, forty–four, is the son of Kingsbury Pitcher, and the great–grandson of Otto Mears. For people with white skin, the antecedents don’t go back much further in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains. An orphaned immigrant from Russia, Mears arrived in Colorado after the Civil War and, because of the toll roads and railroads he built for the booming mining industry, became known as the Pathfinder of the San Juans. The title earned him a stained–glass window at the State Capitol.
Kingsbury Pitcher, Mears’s grandson, lived in Aspen during the 1950s ski boom, and developed what is now called Ski Apache, near Ruidoso, New Mexico. Later, in 1976, he bought the struggling Wolf Creek Ski Area. He was among the first to allow snowboards, and is known as a common–sense, get–your–hands–dirty type of guy.
That description fits his son, too. After knocking around the construction field after high school, Davey Pitcher arrived at Wolf Creek ten years ago. The hallway to his office is decorated with wide skis, sporting free–heel bindings—the kind needed to make the graceful, knee–bending telemark turn favored by backcountry purists. Inside his office, on a blue canvas chair, sits a red hard hat. A tool belt lies on the floor. Beside his desk is a shiny Snap–on tool chest. On the far end of the room, underneath a picture of a lion, is a long, well–used couch. And he has keys, dozens of them.
His hair is spiked in a Gen X metrosexual style, but the coif isn’t from mousse, it’s from working outside. Munching on a sandwich, Pitcher explains that he arrives at work most days at 6 a.m., but sometimes at 3 a.m. if slopes need grooming or avalanche control is required. The business runs lean but profitably, according to knowledgeable sources, with a better margin than many destination resorts. Employee wages are high for the ski industry and the turnover rate is low. The point of the business, says Pitcher, is to provide uphill transportation at an affordable price. Season pass prices have not increased for eight to ten years. Youngsters can ski for almost nothing—or, he adds, for free, should the need be proven.
Our interview ends abruptly when I broach the issue of pending lawsuits. Looking uncomfortable, Pitcher answers the question, then rises from his chair as if stung by a piss–ant. “This interview is over,” he says. “I didn’t like that last question.” Nodding outside to where the rain is now pouring on an assistant, he adds, “And besides, I feel bad about him being there waiting for me in the rain.”
SMALL ROAD, POWERFUL INTERESTS
What soured the relationship between the Pitchers and the McCombs–Honts team, resulting in the current suits and countersuits, is not entirely clear. Pitcher believes the site is not right for as much development as has been proposed. At one point, the story from the Pitchers was that they had favored only 200 housing units, but that goes against historical record. Company spokeswoman Michele Ames confirms the Pitchers support construction of 2,000 housing units—but only with “appropriate planning,” she says. “However, the developer’s current plans are not practical, and the ski area was not consulted on these plans.” The developer, she adds, has refused the ski area’s overtures to discuss various possibilities.
Roads have become the pivotal issue. If a city about a third the size of Vail is to be built on this small inholding, it needs a connection to Highway 160. The only existing access to this future city is a graveled Forest Service road that, because of snow, is only open during summer. Federal law mandates road access to inholdings, but not necessarily the kind of road the owner might want. The government, for example, might have said that the developers would have to manage with the existing road. But for a new road to be approved, the Forest Service needs to assess the environmental impacts.
In an effort to sidestep that review, Honts and McCombs sought the assistance of Texas Republicans Tom DeLay, then the House majority leader, and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson. Both sponsored appropriation bills to grant the development road access without environmental review, but those efforts were rebuffed by vigilant Colorado legislators. The developers then went through the environmental review process specified by the National Environmental Policy Act.
But critics say the review was inadequate. The developers asserted they could build and service the small city by using the existing summer–only road. Astonishingly, the Forest Service accepted this premise. In doing so, the agency made it the no–action alternative in the NEPA evaluation. In other words, the city became a fait accompli. And if the city became a foregone conclusion, the Forest Service did not have to fully evaluate the impacts of approving roads that created the city. The city, under the jargon of NEPA, became a cumulative impact, not a direct impact of the new road. In March, the Forest Service approved—and required—two roads to the new development.
Befuddled critics had already been crying foul. Colorado Wild, after exhaustive Freedom of Information Act requests, documented cases of the agency using paperwork prepared by the developers’ lawyers in what, at least to Colorado Wild, is tantamount to collusion. Another charge was levied in April by Ed Ryberg, who had recently retired as the Forest Service’s director of winter sports programs in the Rocky Mountains. He recounted involvement in the case by Dave Tenny, the deputy undersecretary of agriculture, in ways that benefited the developers. Rarely does a deputy undersecretary get involved in an easement, he noted.
Honts admitted to appealing to all levels of the Forest Service for aid—without relief, he claimed. Peter Clark, the supervisor of the Rio Grande National Forest, insisted that the decision was his and his alone. And Ryberg admitted it wasn’t the first time political appointees in Washington had pushed local Forest Service decision makers, despite their theoretical autonomy. Jim Lyons, undersecretary of agriculture in charge of the Forest Service during the Clinton administration, “was pretty active too,” says Ryberg. “He loved the ski industry — but he never got involved in specific projects. This administration has taken it to a whole new level.”
Mark Rey, Lyons’s successor as undersecretary, also figures in the story. Obtaining public records, the Denver Post in February reported a lobbying campaign and a pattern of campaign contributions to key Republicans by McCombs to get Rey, a long–time timber industry activist, appointed to the post of undersecretary. The effort, according to a letter from Honts obtained by the Post, “had an impact at exactly the right time.” Once Rey was in office, reported the Post, “Honts got access to him at key steps in the process of reviewing the Village at Wolf Creek proposal.” Defending his actions, Rey wrote a letter to the Post saying he had given access to people on both sides of the issue. And, according to the paper, the Pitcher family had contributed money to a legal firm that had been a generous donor to Colorado’s Salazar brothers: Ken, a U.S. senator, and John, a U.S. representative, who have both been highly critical of the development.
RISKY VENTURE
In addition to alleged short–circuitry in the federal review, and potential impacts on wetlands, wildlife and water quality, the Wolf Creek project has the earmarks of a questionable business proposition. Infrastructure problems abound. The site is near the top of a mountain and has little year–round water, so developers propose to store 42 million gallons in underground tanks. Power is another problem. Liquid natural gas is to be trucked to the site, then stored.
The elevation also poses health threats. People live at even higher altitudes in Colorado, but only after acclimatization. Visitors arriving from sea level must stop over at lower elevations or take the drug Diamox. Peter Hackett, one of the nation’s most knowledgeable physicians about the effects of thin air, cites a study of physicians who met several years ago at Breckenridge, which is slightly lower in elevation than Wolf Creek. Based on that study, 40 percent of visitors can expect to have a headache, not sleep well for a few nights and have a poor appetite. Rarer, but potentially deadly, are altitude–related pulmonary edema and cerebral edema. “I assume that medical facilities would be there,” says Hackett. “That would be quite important.”
In addition, the land surrounding Wolf Creek is in something of a hole, with splendid views of trees but not many high peaks. The nearest airport with regular air service is more than ninety minutes away. Currently, growth in skier numbers everywhere is no better than marginal. Harry Frampton, who directed Vail Associates when the company opened Beaver Creek in 1981, the last major ski resort built on federal land, sees difficulties ahead for Wolf Creek. Now a developer of base–area real estate at ski resorts in California, Utah and Colorado, he says the new development will take “extraordinarily deep pockets.”
Red McCombs is the 258th richest American, according to Forbes, and he has made few financial mistakes in his life. He’s also been lucky. In his forties he walked away from an alcohol dependency that, he discloses in his autobiography, might easily have killed him. But the San Juan Mountains have foiled others who had been both lucky and brave, not to mention smart. John Charles Fremont, in that disastrous expedition of 1848–49, had been without his regular guide, Kit Carson. Fremont didn’t make a habit of retreat, but that time he did. The only question, in retrospect, is why Fremont didn’t turn back sooner.