If Aspen Mountain Powder Tours were to close its operation in the wake of an open motorized designation - something Powder Tours managers now say is a distinct possibility - could another organization or individual then pack down the winter-only roads on the east side of Richmond Ridge?
That's no small consideration, given that those winter-only roads created by Powder Tours make it possible to use a snowmobile to tow skiers back up the hill.
The irony is that while snowmobile skiers tend to loathe Powder Tours' hold on most of the terrain on the east side of the ridge, it's the roads maintained by Powder Tours that make using a snowmobile for a few laps through the powder possible in the first place.
Unless, say some snowmobile skiers, Powder Tours goes away and they get their own snowcats to maintain the roads.
Cindy Houben, Pitkin County's community development director, said the county could probably live with another entity than Powder Tours' carving out winter roads back there. The county allows snowcats to travel on "packed" over-the-snow winter roads, but it doesn't want people to "plow" or "groom" the roads.
"If someone was packing it down out there with their machines, that is not something that we stop in Rural and Remote," Houben said. "It is just like people accessing their Rural and Remote cabins today: Some of them have snowcats. We're not going to say they can't do that."
However, Powder Tours managers say today that increased snowmobile use on its roads on the east side of the ridge often create washboards that need to be smoothed out periodically with a grooming cat from the adjacent Aspen Mountain ski area.
"It's a bit of a gray area," Houben said.
The issue of "packing" versus "grooming" hasn't come up yet, as Powder Tours operations is grandfathered in under the Rural and Remote policies.
