Lund. With all due respect not sure how you can agree with him given that his radio interview was very short on specifics and long on anecdotal evidence, conjecture, heresay, all those things that someone trying to push an agenda that has no legs likes to use and Mike Wiegle is a master at that. One cannot blame him entirely as he is not a sledder and even one snowmobile track is a slap in the face to a wealthy heli skier paying top dollar to ski pristine powder. It is our job as sledders to hold his feet to the fire when he starts spreading unsupported bs on public radio. In the Valemount, Blue River SRMP there are a number of things that determine where one can and cannot snowmobile. Firstly there are the managed areas such as Chappel Creek, Allen Creek and the like where snowmobling is allowed and the area is managed with groomed trails, trail fees and then like. There are also the designated areas that are not managed such as Oasis. The areas where one cannot snowmobile are the certain specific areas designated for other uses such as heli-sking, ski touring, cat skiing, etc. and of course there are the caribou closure areas. Some of these areas closed for other uses are seasonal and some are year round but that still leaves a considerable area where one can snowmobile without restriction but is not within a managed area. Howard Creek below the headwaters, Canoe Mountain and Manateau come to mind but there are certainly many more such as the popular areas around Blue River which are not managed but do allow snowmobiling because there are no other use restrictions and no caribou closures. One must remember that none of these areas are restricted to the Mike Wiegle Operation as they can basically heli-ski everywhere without restriction, within managed and non managed designated snowmobile areas such as Chappel Creek, Clemina Creek, Oasis, etc., within caribou closure areas and of course within the specific zones that are set aside for them that sledders cannot use. If one overlaid all the areas where you are not prohibited from snowmobiling onto the map of the Mike Wiegle Heli-skiing runs you would see a considerable area where there is overlap. His runs overlap all of Oasis, parts of Clemina Creek all of Chappel Creek and certianly overlap a lot of the non designated areas that are not restricted. Mike did not get into any specifics on the radio but I would bet that a considerable number of the snowmobile tracks he complained about had as much right to be there as his ski tracks did. I am not stupid enough to belive that no one is dropping off the west side of Chappel into the caribou closure area or no one is dropping into Dixon between December and the end of April but from what I have seen it is not common and is certainly not large groups tracking out entire restricted areas so his spiel about hillsides with so many snowmobile tracks back and forth that they were creating a danger to heli skiers indicates to me he is either full of s**t or he was skiing in an area where snowmobiles are allowed. I would further suspect the number of snowmobile tracks he crosses that are in areas where absolutely no snowmobiles are allowed are few and far between and are certainly sparse enough they can be avoided. The fact that he is not giving specifics (i.e. In ?? days of skiing solely in areas where no snowmobiles are allowed we encountered snowmobile tracks on ?? of those days and on ?? days there were injuries to ?? of the skiers who were injured as a result of hitting set up illegal snowmobile tracks). Given where his interest lie and given the generalities in his interview I am prone to disagree with him.
There is no way im reading all of that Roy... But I'm sure its very smart. And good point.