Change Is an Endurance Sport
25 Years of Winter Wildlands Alliance
By Carolyn Highland
WWA supporters holding protest signs at West Yellowstone National Park rally in 2004. Unceded Tséstho’e (Cheyenne), Cayuse, Umatilla, Walla Walla, and Shoshone-Bannock lands. Photo from WWA archives.
This write-up was originally featured in our Spring 2025 Trail Break issue.
Chuck Bohlke was out ski touring one Sunday afternoon in early April 2000, just north of Ketchum, ID, when he heard an explosion and saw a plume of black smoke. The next morning, another skier discovered the charred remains of what had once been a pair of cherished backcountry ski yurts, known as the Boulder Yurts. By the end of the day, the state fire marshal had visited the site and typed up a three-page report demonstrating the cause of the fire to be arson. “It was not really difficult,” he said.
The incident compounded an already highly- pressurized situation. Tensions between motorized and non-motorized winter users had been building for years. There were no official guidelines delineating where each user group could travel, and the turf wars had reached a boiling point. “In recent years, the tension between snowmobilers and skiers in the Wood River Valley has been a ‘three or four’,” said Bob Jonas, co-owner of the yurts. “Now it’s a 10.”
Back at the beginning of that same season, the Forest Supervisor for the Sawtooth National Recreation Area (SNRA) had given sledders and skiers an ultimatum: figure it out, come up with a zoning map that everyone could agree on by October 2001—or he would do it for them.
Skiers and snowmobilers worked together to rebuild the popular Boulder Yurt under the new “Snow Pact,” October 2000. Photo by Sarah Michael.
Meanwhile, in Colorado, agitation between user groups was also growing. With no winter travel plans in place, and with ever more capable machines, snowmobilers were able to go wherever they wanted, leaving little room for skiers in search of what was once a peaceful backcountry experience. Motorized users were well represented and able to lobby for their interests, while skiers had yet to organize. According to Ben Dodge, now Executive Director of the 10th Mountain Division Huts Association, altercations between snowmobilers and skiers out in the backcountry were commonplace. The Backcountry Skiers Alliance (later known as the Backcountry Snowsports Alliance and then the Backcountry Snowsports Initiative, or BSI) was formed as a way for human-powered users to advocate for their interests on a local level.
Around the same time, in California’s Sierra Nevada, members of the human-powered backcountry community were discovering groomed snowmobile tracks in areas that had previously been unmaintained—areas that were designated non-motorized in the summertime. Upon further investigation, they discovered that the state of California, through the Forest Service, was funding motorized winter recreation using money from the gas tax—money that was intended for highway construction and maintenance— but without any public input.
Popular winter recreation areas like Mt. Rose Meadows in the Tahoe Basin were frequently overrun with snowmobiles, making it difficult and unpleasant to cross-country ski, snowshoe, and backcountry ski in easily-accessed frontcountry areas. “I was getting very fed up with being in the Sierra and just not being able to have any peace and quiet anywhere we went,” says Gail Ferrell, who would go on to become a founding board member of Winter Wildlands Alliance.
What was clear in mountainous regions across the West was that there was no clear plan for non-resort winter recreation on public lands, resulting in widespread user conflict. Land managers had detailed use plans for summer recreation, but when it came to on-snow recreation outside of Wilderness areas, it was a free-for-all. And while groups of committed advocates were getting to work on a regional level, there was no national voice for human-powered winter recreationists—Nordic and backcountry skiers, snowshoers and the like—that could hold land managers to account for smart over-snow travel planning that would minimize conflicts.
Snowmobile tracks in nonmotorized zone. Photo by Jeff Erodes, Snowlands Network.
Photo from WWA archives.
Back in Idaho, while no one was ever charged or proven guilty of arson, suspicion and distrust hung heavy in the valley. Nevertheless, an ad hoc collaborative group dubbed the Winter Recreation Coalition, made up of 5 members each from the Nordic & Backcountry Skiers Alliance of Idaho (NAB) and the Sawtooth Snowmobile Club, continued to work toward an agreement that would reduce conflicts and hopefully satisfy the Forest Supervisor. After nine months of difficult meetings, and with the help of a professional mediator, they managed to draft a map outlining separate motorized and nonmotorized zones for 215,000 acres of winter recreation in the Pioneer, Boulder, and Smoky Mountains.
Snowmobilers also agreed to a voluntary closure of powder slopes near three other backcountry ski huts, and even pitched in to help rebuild the Boulder Yurts. Idaho U.S. Senator Mike Crapo awarded the ten members of the Winter Recreation Coalition the “Spirit of Idaho Award,” noting that “they created a collaborative solution to a perplexing problem. Both user groups and our forest are the beneficiaries of the Coalition’s outstanding work.” (The agreement is still active to this day—although a new generation of motorized users are now pushing to once again reduce the amount of protected non-motorized terrain.)
“The success of the Winter Recreation Coalition in solving our conflicts in the Wood River Valley motivated me. I wanted to work with other states to create a national organization.”
-Sarah Michael: local activist, skier, and coalition member.
By the beginning of the summer, she had joined forces with activists in Colorado and California and drawn up Articles of Incorporation. Thus was born Winter Wildlands Alliance (WWA), the national voice for human-powered winter recreation.
Winter Recreation Coalition map for Sawtooth National Forest, zones established collaboratively in 2000, still in effect today. Unceded Shoshone-Bannock, Cayuse, Umatilla and Walla Walla lands. Map by Evelyn B. Phillips.
In 2001, through fundraising and grants from private foundations, WWA was able to hire an executive director, establish an office in Boise, and get to work. Sally Grimes, formerly vice president of the American Hiking Society, took the helm for the first few years, and then passed the torch to Mark Menlove in 2004. As former communications director for Park City Ski Area, and former president of Ski Utah, Menlove had grown increasingly conflicted about unchecked commercial development in the Wasatch and what he called a “growth-for-growth’s sake mentality.”
Leading WWA gave him the opportunity to fight for balance between resort skiing and the undeveloped backcountry experience, as well as to work for real solutions to the conflicts between skiers and snowmobilers all across the west.
In 2004, WWA and supporters staged a President’s Day Weekend rally and protest at the West Yellowstone National Park gate. They wore costumes and held signs to bring attention to the ever-increasing amount of unmanaged snowmobile traffic in the park, the noise and air pollution it created, and the way it displaced quiet recreation. More than 100 people stood peacefully in the smog and subzero temperatures, chanting and holding signs as 2-stroke snowmobiles roared by.
The protesters drew national attention. And as WWA consistently showed up across the country to advocate for the protection of non-motorized experiences, the organization quickly gained a reputation as anti-snowmobile. Menlove knew that in order to be effective, he’d have to manage the public’s perception of what WWA was all about. He did this by making personal connections with leaders in the snowmobile community, rather than leaving a lack of familiarity to create an us-versus-them environment.
By 2004, air pollution and noise had become unsustainable from the West Entrance to Yellowstone National. Photos from WWA archives.
Over the next ten years, Menlove collaborated with Randy Roberson, operator of a large snowmobile tour company, to create a winter use plan for Yellowstone, eventually finalized in 2013. “I learned so much from Randy about the perspectives of snowmobilers,” Menlove says.
Reaching across the aisle didn’t stop there. Back in Boise, Menlove saw an anti-Winter Wildlands Alliance poster up at a convenience store from an organization called Sled Warriors, led by a woman named Sandra Mitchell. Rather than vilifying her, Menlove reached out and asked if he could buy her a beer and talk about the issues. They did, and formed a positive working relationship that lasted throughout Menlove’s tenure at WWA.
“We have a lot more common ground than people want to admit.”
-Mark Menlove
Through humanizing motorized users and making connections within that community, “We gradually made headway. I think what WWA is doing now with the Ski Kind initiative and focusing on common ground and positive components has come a long way.”
WWA, circa 2005. Old Faithful Snow Lodge, Yellowstone National Park. Photo from WWA archives.
In 2005, the Forest Service published its Travel Management Rule, which requires thoughtful designation of areas and routes in National Forests in order to minimize impacts to natural resources and wildlife, and to minimize conflicts between users. The rule left the winter side of that planning optional, however, and this was where having a national organization like WWA made all the difference. In 2013, after years of advocacy and meetings and petitions led to zero action on the winter front, WWA and its allies finally took the Forest Service to court. The court agreed with WWA and required the Forest Service to include winter and over-snow vehicle (OSV) use in its travel management planning.
WWA Policy Director Hilary Eisen, who started in 2014, says the lawsuit was a huge win for the organization, and for quiet recreation in general, creating a real opportunity to bring balance to the backcountry. But there’s still a long way to go. “There’s eighty-four National Forests that have enough snow for this kind of planning to be required. And so far, only three have finished travel planning. So even though it’s been ten years, we’ve barely scratched the surface.”
“The reality is, this is the longest marathon you can do. You can’t sprint.”
-Gail Ferrell
While much of the work surrounding winter travel planning—the issue that sparked the foundation of Winter Wildlands Alliance 25 years ago—still remains to be done, optimism and energy within the organization persist. Eisen feels confident about WWA’s role going forward: “I think it’s really exciting to be looking at what comes next. Because it’s not one of those things where someday all 84 national forests will have winter travel plans, all conflicts and challenges will be resolved, and Winter Wildlands Alliance will cease to exist. There’s always work to be done.”
CAROLYN HIGHLAND @c_highland is a teacher and writer living in Anchorage, Alaska. Her work has appeared in Outside, Backcountry, the Ski Journal, SKI, and Trails Magazine, among others. Her book, Out Here: Wisdom from the Wilderness was released by Rocky Mountain Books in 2020. In her free time, you’ll find her backcountry skiing, trail running, mountain biking, and backpacking.
