Heli-Skiing Outfit Files Lawsuit Against Trump Administration for Permitting a Competitor Access to their Powder

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Alaska, some of the best skiing in the world. Credit: Trevormorrowtravel

A remote stretch of Alaska mountains across Cook Inlet from Anchorage has become the center of a court fight between a heli-skiing company and the Trump administration, reports the Anchorage Daily News.

The company, Tordrillo Mountain Lodge, is accusing federal land managers of jeopardizing clientsโ€™ safety by issuing a permit to a competitor without proper review.

At issue are the peaks, ridges and valleys of the Tordrillo and Neacola mountains, which have long doubled as playgrounds for some of Alaskaโ€™s most daring adventurers and which until recently, attracted little traffic, mostly experienced skiers and climbers who would fly the 90 or so miles from Anchorage in single-engine planes equipped with skis or floats.

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Tordrillo Heli-skiing. Credit: TGR

But the mountains have become increasingly popular with Alaskaโ€™s growing heli-skiing industry, in which helicopter pilots drop customers at the top of untouched slopes, then pick them up at the bottom.

The lodge, owned by a group that includes Olympic gold medal-winning downhill skier Tommy Moe, says the arrival of new users has increased risks of avalanches and helicopter collisions.

The suit also alleges that the action by the federal Bureau of Land Management has undermined the companyโ€™s business. In its legal filings, it says the government has allowed more skiers to access a โ€œfinite resourceโ€ โ€” fresh powder.

โ€œMy fear is that there will be a fourth, a fifth and a sixth permit and itโ€™s just going to ruin it all,โ€ said Mike Overcast, one of the lodgeโ€™s founders and a veteran of Alaskaโ€™s heli-skiing industry. โ€œThereโ€™s no other place that this kind of growth would be allowed in the U.S.โ€

Overcastโ€™s company sued the federal government in March with the help of a Colorado-based law firm that specializes in ski-related litigation. It asserted that the Bureau of Land Management, an agency of the Interior Department, violated the National Environmental Policy Act and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act.

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Tordrillo Mountain Lodge. Credit: Tordrillo Mountain Lodge

The lawsuit, according to observers, underscores the value of the stateโ€™s few remaining pristine areas for heli-skiing, which in other places, such as Thompson Pass, outside Valdez, have become increasingly crowded.

Officials at the U.S. Department of Justice, which is defending the BLM, declined to comment on the lawsuit. In its written response in court, government attorneys accused Tordrillo Mountain Lodge of using federal environmental laws in an attempt to โ€œbludgeon a competitor from the market.โ€


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