Next month I’m addressing 70 Forest Service Snow Rangers. I’m to contrast private ski areas around Big Sky with Bridger Bowl. The result illuminates fundamental transformations throughout the Intermountain West. I’ll discuss important cultural, economic, and environmental changes and identify conflicts.

Yellowstone Club

The Yellowstone Club is the second most exclusive community in Montana; only the Hutterite communes are more so.

I know Bridger Bowl quite well but not the Yellowstone Club. However, I’ve spent several hours on its website and interviewed people who’ve experienced it. All testify to the quality it offers members. I found this in the LA Times of December 31:

“The Yellowstone Club, a private, millionaires-only resort community.... [I]t’s the only private club in the U.S. with its own ski mountain and world-class golf course.”

The origins of the 13,400-acre Yellowstone Club arise from a federal land exchange. This marginal habitat was part of a trade for 164,000 ecologically sensitive acres adjacent to Yellowstone National Park. And while the YC will never satisfy purists, only 20 percent of its acres are slated for development. They promise the rest will remain wild.

In the ’60s, I logged in the area when Burlington Northern owned it. I find the change amazing. Cheap, low-grade timberland is now worth half a million dollars and more per acre. These prices tell us much about the evolution of the West’s economy and culture. Perhaps most extraordinary is the conversion of very low to extremely highly valued land. And I consider purchases better tests of sincerity than mere opinions unanchored by exchange.

Environmentalists correctly observed that once harvested, these sub-alpine forests would take over a century to recover. The ecology is simple. Trees like to grow where it’s warm, wet, and low. The BN land was high, dry, and cold. Land above 7,000 feet is only marginally productive of biomass.

When I worked that timber, we yarded logs with heavy machines, Cat D6s and Deere skidders with Grizzly chains all ’round. Loggers were rough, mining timber, not practicing the ecologically sensitive forestry required today.

I see evidence of this logging on the YC website. On their home page I notice clear cuts at the higher elevations, evidence of skid roads, and more verdant second growth lower. I would welcome an opportunity to return to this area in the summer.

Big Sky was just being hatched when I was logging. What is now YC land was available at disposal prices. While the biological productivity of the land has not changed, its economic value has exploded.

The conversion to high-value recreational land testifies to vision and entrepreneurship. And, the record suggests, to cutting corners and paying fines. (See www.montanariveraction.org.)

Bridger Bowl

Bridger, a community-owned, 501(c)(4) corporation, is celebrating its 50th anniversary. A volunteer board of directors runs this nonprofit ski area. The association owns 480 acres and holds a Forest Service Special Use Permit on 1,042 acres.

It began with one Poma lift and now has eight chairlifts and three base lodges, two of which are gorgeous timber-frame structures. (Tomorrow is the grand opening of the Saddle Peak Lodge.) But some locals feel Bridger is straying from its original mission of providing affordable skiing to all segments of the community. Our newest area, Moonlight Basin, is targeting this niche. For example, it offers free season passes to local honor role students in grades six to twelve, and kids 10 and under ski free.

Back to my (unpaid) assignment. In popular perception, “ridge hippies” and middle-class families dominate Bridger, while centi-millionaires and above exemplify Yellowstone. I know the former is true and the Yellowstone website implies the latter.

An economic anthropologist would be captivated by the contrast between these areas and alert to potential conflicts. Yellowstone members are securely insulated from outsiders. The Club, however, is not immune to ecological, geological, legal, and hydrographic reality checks.

Below Big Sky there are 36 irrigation canals with specifically deeded rights to the West Gallatin. For example, our most senior ranch water was secured in 1866. In Montana, these are strong claims.

I see compelling questions of general interest: How much water will flow uphill toward Big Sky money? How much will come down the Gallatin into these canals where it recharges groundwater and replenishes riparian areas? Stay tuned. There’s more.