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Save Our Canyons and the ski resorts soon will be sitting at the same table, hashing out the details about what the future of skiing looks like in the central Wasatch Mountains.

They've never actually done that before.

"That's the only way it's going to work," said Ski Utah Executive Director Nathan Rafferty after a task force was established Monday by the Mountain Accord process to address the key issues revolving around skiing in the Wasatch, namely:

• One Wasatch, the ski industry's proposal to interconnect the seven ski areas in Salt Lake and Summit counties with additional lifts.

• Ski area boundaries, especially when there's interest in confining future development in the Cottonwood canyons to areas around the existing resorts and the potential to broaden those bases with land exchanges that would remove private holdings elsewhere in the mountains.

• Seeing how these ideas relate to various canyon transportation proposals being considered through the Mountain Accord, an effort by government agencies and other groups vitally interested in the central Wasatch Mountains to develop a comprehensive plan for their future.

The first phase of this multi-year effort is nearing its goal: To come up with a preferred combination of transportation, recreation, environmental and economic development projects that could be scrutinized in an expansive environmental impact study by a federal agency, most likely the Federal Transit Administration.

That federal agency also probably will end up being a big source of money to accomplish everything that will need to be done in the expansive, triangular study area, which has Salt Lake City International Airport at one point, Park City at another and the top of Little Cottonwood Canyon at the third.

"The epicenter is the top of these canyons," Rafferty said. And even if the resort owns a large part of that, they recognize as community stewards that it's imperative for them to have a broad base of support.

"The ski resorts are not just going to move ahead without some kind of overall agreement," Rafferty said. "And it's great Carl is going to be there, too. Any kind of grand bargain is going to stem from what happens in that group."

He was referring to Carl Fisher, executive director of Save Our Canyons, who was equally enthusiastic about being part of the task force, an equal partner at the table with officials from Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County, the U.S. Forest Service and the town of Alta. The ski industry will have two representatives, one from Big Cottonwood Canyon, one from Little Cottonwood.

"Most exciting," was Fisher's description of the prospects "of working to resolve a controversy brewing for 30 to 40 years. Let's identify what a [ski resort] buildout scenario would look like."

He concurred that the Mountain Accord's inclusive approach is critical to going forward with an "integrated plan" and precludes the ski resorts or anyone else from implementing a plan independently. Fisher also believes this scenario opens the way for talks about obtaining additional federal designations, such as more wilderness.

The task force is supposed to make a recommendation on ski-related scenarios in February, a week before the Mountain Accord executive committee's regular monthly meeting.

That will not be in time for the next round of public meetings on the issue. The Mountain Accord's consulting staff had hoped to present more information to the public in early December. But that looks more likely to happen in January after the executive committee receives additional information that describes everything Mountain Accord has considered, what won't be part of a proposed preferred alternative and why.

Those details will be helpful when the time comes for a full-blown EIS to be produced, advised Linda Gehrke, the Federal Transit Administration's regional director in Denver.

"If you try to go too fast," she warned, "you might have to go backwards two years. We don't want to do that."

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