In February 2020, the USFS issued a Notice of Proposed Action for MMSA to expand Woolly’s Adventure Summit tube park. It would affect unspoiled forest terrain and add a lot of infrastructure for two coasters. There is little infrastructure at Woolly’s now and it takes up only one-third of the area close to the road within the 55-acre special use permit (SUP). The rest of the forest is largely unspoiled. The office trailers at the entrance are portable trailers. The parking lot is dirt. Instead of adding more permanent features like a lodge, an expanded paved parking lot carved out of the hillside, excavating more of the hillside to expand and reorient the slide, adding roller coaster track, adding suspension lines and platforms for a zip coaster, adding a people loading station for the two coasters, Woolly’s could be removed or stay the same as it is now.
Woolly’s Adventure Summit could also be moved. State Route 203 could be a boundary: human activities on the south side, wildlife on the north side on the way up to the Main Lodge. One of the management approaches listed on page 56 of the 2019 Inyo National Forest Land Management Plan is to “Decommission recreation facilities when use no longer supports the activity, there is decreased use by the public, or the maintenance demands of the facility exceed the use of the facility.”
Coasters on Public Lands
Public lands support a lot of recreation across a broad spectrum of activities. Hiking, climbing, mountain biking, camping, and fishing are good fits in a natural setting because of they require little or no infrastructure. However, the coasters and ropes courses require a lot of infrastructure. Infrastructure mars the beauty of the natural surroundings, that so many people, visitors and residents value. While coasters are fun activities they do little to connect people to the natural surroundings. The speed and need to concentrate on hanging on prevents a rider from even taking in the view, let alone notice a chipmunk or hear a bird. The proposed coasters at Woolly’s are rides. The majority of visitors come from Southern California where there are many amusement parks with roller coaster rides. Coasters do not have to be here.
The Ridge Rider at Heavenly Lake Tahoe has a footprint and changes the natural feel of the forest. The infrastructure includes track, bridges, overpasses at the loops, protective caging/fencing, a loading station, and a checkpoint station. The Heavenly Epic Discovery FEIS/FEIR for an alpine coaster says the rails would usually be 3-6 feet above the ground and up to 15-20 feet above the ground in places. A 20-25 foot wide corridor would need to be cleared of vegetation for the track. A zip coaster has even more wires and lines running through the forest. A 12-20 foot swath of vegetation needs to be cleared for it. Just how many trees will need to be removed to put in this infrastructure at Woolly’s, a third or half? It is understood that the MMSA SUP area is a sacrifice area where human activities take precedence. However, the coasters would bring a busy and unnatural feel to the forest.
The mountain coaster track would run north-south through Woolly’s Adventure Summit from the north-west corner of the permit area down to the parking lot. The elevation high point of the coaster is where the slope of the dome becomes steeper and might be difficult for wildlife to go up and around. The coaster track might cut off wildlife that moves through the forest now above the existing Woolly’s tubing area. Tracks in the snow show that Chickorys live in the forest there and that bobcat and coyote pass through in winter. In spring, summer, and fall deer and bear probably pass through too. Well-placed wildlife cameras might show what wildlife uses the area. Will wildlife step through or over the track? Will there be a place for wildlife to pass under raised track? Will there be night lighting there?
The coaster tracks will also cut off a cross-country ski loop that starts at the Earthquake Fault parking lot, goes on the south side of Earthquake Dome, connects with the snowmobile Route C, passes through Woolly’s on the road above the tubing area back to the parking lot. The first part of that route is a historic blue diamond Nordic ski route. As an alternative to adding the coaster activities to Woolly’s, the blue diamond Nordic route could be extended to Woolly’s in winter and turned into walking trails connected to the town in summer.
The mountain coaster might be an activity with little repeat business. People ski, bike, and climb repetitively to get better at it as well as to have fun. Coasting requires little effort or skill and is something one does once for the experience or on occasion when their friends or grandchildren come to visit. The coasters are single-threaded activities and have a limited throughput of how many people can do them in a day. If it takes 5 minutes per person to coast to the bottom, that would be 12 people/hour or 96 people in an 8-hour day. It is unlikely people will be lined up to reach that potential. It will not come close to bringing in repeat business and revenue as skiing and mountain biking.
A decision is projected to be made in January 2021 with implementation planned for April 2021.
Update: The project was approved with little change on March 18, 2021. The two main changes are that MMSA will not lay pipe for snowmaking in the area where Sierra Marten were sighted during the denning season and they will monitor groundwater levels at the wells they plan to install. However, the mountain and zip coasters are coming to Mammoth. click on the Analysis tab.