Pursuit Attractions and Hospitality, Inc.

You can find resources, uh, for the public comment period on our website at wildcumberland.org.

In an example of the range of ways that inventoried roadless acres could be impacted by the Forest Service's intent to rescind the roadless rule, Pursuit Attractions and Hospitality has revived a proposal to build an aerial one hundred person tram service installation on the Flathead National Forest, reaching from the small town of Hungry Horse to the top of Columbia Mountain.

All of this is just outside of Glacier National Park.

This is a proposal rejected a few years ago by the forest as being incompatible with their current management plan, with the top of Columbia Mountain being a designated roadless area and set aside for primitive and semi-primitive recreation.

Pursuit's plans also call for building a cafe on top of the mountain.

We caught up with Peter Metcalf from the Glacier Two Medicine Alliance on why this is an unnecessary development and why the risks are too great.

It's unfortunate that, um, Pursuit's proposing this because there's already, uh, an opportunity for people to ride, um, a, a chairlift or a gondola to the top of a nearby mountain at, uh, Big Mountain at Whitefish Mountain Resort and get incredible views of the Flathead Valley and Glacier National Park.

So this doesn't, um, add a new recreational experience, but it takes away and degrade, uh, existing recreational experiences and degrades, uh, wildlife habitat security and will have, um, significant implications both for the ecology of the wild swans, for the recreational experiences, for wildlife movement between the Swan Range and down across the valley into the, um, uh, Whitefish range, um, and probably for public safety as well, um, both with road transportation and just putting people who are less familiar or equipped with backcountry travel into a backcountry environment this way.

Felony assault on a peace officer is punishable by between two and ten years behind bars and a fifty thousand dollar fine.

The Forest Service will go through a screening process to determine whether a proposed tramway up Columbia Mountain by Pursuit Glacier Park Collection will move forward, according to Flathead National Forest Supervisor Anthony Botello.

The ninety-one acres in Hungry Horse where the proposed tramway's base would be located is classified as six C under the twenty eighteen Flathead National Forest Plan, which calls for high-intensity vegetative management with motorized use.

The land at the northwest shoulder of Columbia Mountain where the tram would stop is classified as five B, which is backcountry motorized use year-round, but only to designated routes and areas.