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Legislative boundaries sound boring. Get about two sentences in talking about them, and most people’s eyes will glaze over. Hey, you. Wake up, please. See what I mean? That dull veneer is kind of the point because it keeps people from paying attention to something that matters a lot: representation in government. As happens every 10 years, legislative districts were redrawn in late 2021. Summit County was split between four State House districts (4, 23, 59 and 68) and two State Senate districts (3 and 20). The County was also split into two Congressional Districts at the federal level (the first and third). Summit County residents of all stripes should be miffed as the community’s influence will likely be diminished.
“It’s certainly worse than before, but we’ve been gerrymandered for 10 years in Summit County,” says Summit County Democratic Party Chair Katy Owens. “It just represents a further effort to dilute the voice of Summit County voters.” Owens’ counterpart, Summit County Republican Party Vice-chair (acting as temporary chair) Karen Ballash did not respond to requests for comment.
Without question, winners and losers emerge after each round of redistricting. However, in this instance, it seems the will of a majority of Utah voters was deliberately subverted and Summit County is in the crosshairs of the skewed redistricting effort. A statewide ballot initiative in 2018 passed by 7,000 votes asking for the creation of a non-partisan commission to draw political boundaries. In drawing the new boundaries, the Utah Legislature completely ignored the recommendations and maps created by the independent commission.
“The commission was very open and transparent, taking feedback from public meetings and posting maps during the process,” Owens says. “The legislature dropped their map on a Friday night at 11 p.m. and voted for it on a Monday without any public input. It was clearly drawn as incumbent protection.”
So, what does redistricting mean for representation? It’s difficult to pin down exactly, but Summit County appears to be in a representative black hole. “We don’t have a single representative who lives here in Summit County despite how populous the county is and how influential it is to the state’s economy,” Owens says. “But some people do argue that we have numerous people in the legislature who could advocate for the county and a single representative may not have much bargaining power,” she concedes.
For the next decade, Summit County will be represented in small slices. Time will tell how the community will be impacted, but in the meantime, it’s difficult to argue with voters who feel slighted.
The Federal Split
Voters in Park City are now part of the third congressional district for the first time since the 1990 census. Unincorporated Park City voters including residents of Snyderville, Jeremy Ranch, Pinebrook and Summit Park remain in the first district, splitting what has been a relatively cohesive voting bloc in two. Leaders of both political parties have long held the county would hold more influence if included in a single district.
We fear change.” The elegant simplicity of the quote, attributed to renowned political theorist Garth Algar of Wayne’s World, is unmatched among analysis by most observers of modern civilization. In Park City this may seem an odd thesis to apply on the heels of an election in which voters chose to clean house of incumbent officials, but the change in names atop municipal government doesn’t necessarily portend change in the community. Voters may have chosen stasis as a unifying theory.
To quickly recap the 2021 municipal election in Park City, Mayor Andy Beerman, the one-term incumbent, was soundly defeated by two-term councilmember Nann Worel. In the race for two council seats, two political newcomers, Tana Toly and Jeremy Rubell, won seats filling one vacancy and ousting Councilor Tim Henny, who was seeking a third term. The newly elected officials each bring unique qualifications and perspective to the job, Worel as an experienced official, Toly as fifth generation Parkite who co-owns the oldest family run business on Main Street (Red Banjo Pizza) and Rubell as a relative newcomer with “global business experience,” for what that’s worth. But good luck discerning details on what any of these new officials are actually planning to do.
Campaign discourse was derailed by bickering about the Black Lives Matter painted on Main Street in the summer of 2020, impassioned conversation surrounding “toxic” soil storage that strained credulity, and endless allusions to the relative transparency and opacity of processes championed by candidates. It was all a little light on the details.
Voters, however, delivered a clear message, stomping the brakes on change. Issues are manifold: increased traffic, skyrocketing housing costs, employment shortages and imminent development. Voters don’t like any of those things, but in ousting officials who were aggressively pursuing solutions which were, let’s say, inconsistently popular, they might just be putting the blinders on.
The genie is out of the bottle. Development rights were secured decades ago. Transit and traffic problems can’t be fixed without enormous cost and impact to certain residential areas where people won’t be happy about it. Real estate prices aren’t going to self-correct, but affordable housing is tough to come by when people don’t want it nearby. Parkites want a return to or a preservation of some version of the mountain town that is unlikely to persist if it ever existed in the first place. It’s time to get proactive, but if all every election cycle offers is a retreat, we’re merely kicking the can. Good luck, newly elected officials.
Summit County Opens Wallet for Open Spaces
Summit County voters overwhelmingly supported, by more than a two-to-one margin, a proposal for $50 million to protect open space on the east side of the county in the Kamas Valley and Weber River corridor. It’s another in a long string of decisions by county residents to accept additional tax burden in the hopes of curtailing development wherever possible.
The 2022 Utah Legislative Session begins Jan. 18, and, for 45 days, lawmakers will swarm capitol hill and buzz around, debating issues that matter and, inevitably, a few issues that do not. While there isn’t a script to the session, once you’ve seen enough of them, patterns start to emerge. There are big-issue bills that return, in some form or another, year after year, but never seem to see the polish of the Governor’s desk. There are non-issue bills that we hope to never see or hear from again, but they insist on coming back from the dead. There are bills that emerge that have more to do with the national discourse than anything actually going on in the Beehive State. But, in the end, where legislators decide to put the money during the budget approval process shows what their priorities really are.
Maybe This Year Will Be Different
At the top of the “for real, we mean it this year” list is an issue that many Utahns say they care more about than any other: air quality.
“Sometimes it takes a few years for good legislation to pass,” says Steve Erickson, a lobbyist and policy guy for a swath of non-profit organizations that deal with housing and homelessness, poverty, the environment and water conservation. “We’d really like to see some major effort in improving air quality in the legislature. That’s just not been happening.”
But 2022 could be the year! Sen. Kirk Cullimore (R-Sandy) already announced legislation that could cut emissions in Utah by 50% by 2030. What they’re calling Prosperity 2030 would create a program to help low-income Utahns afford to buy cleaner vehicles and make it more expensive to register high-polluting cars. The legislation would also make businesses do their part to clean the air by implementing a cap-and-trade system that would set a limit on emissions but let companies buy the ability to pollute more from companies that are polluting less than the state limit. That might be a hard sell to some lawmakers, but it likely won’t be the only piece of air quality legislation on the hill this year.
Follow the Money
You might have noticed that, like the bad air, Utah’s affordable housing crisis hasn’t solved itself, either. Every year, affordable housing advocates push for the legislature to invest more money in new housing. And in previous years, the legislature has ignored those requests or invested less than what advocates say is actually needed. This year (or maybe next), advocates are hoping to get some of the unused federal COVID funds earmarked for affordable housing projects.
In fact, there’s a lot of unclaimed money sitting around this session. In addition to unspent federal relief money, Utah has a lot of extra revenue to spend going into the 2022 legislative session, and everyone wants a piece of it. One idea floated out there is an old favorite—tax cuts. But some want to put a twist on the old idea. “From the low-income advocacy side, rather than a flat tax cut that benefits wealthy people more than the middle class, we would like to see an end to the sales tax on food,” says Erickson.
Another place some of that money could go? Education. Advocates are always asking the legislature to increase the weighted pupil unit (how they calculate public education funding), of which Utah has some of the lowest per-pupil spending of any state in the union.
Another persistent problem for the state is that pesky drought. We’ve already seen a deluge of water use proposals and presentations leading up to the general session, and expect that to persist as well. There is more than one way to deal with a drought, but Erickson has reservations about how some of the money allocated to water might be used. “There’s $100 million set aside for water purposes that has not been designated,” he says. “There’s a concern that money might go to back the Lake Powell Pipeline, or Bear River Development, rather than water conservation efforts.”
Back From the Dead
Last year, we saw a wave of anti-transgender legislation that particularly targeted gender dysphoria treatments for minors and trans student athletes. The discussion emerged again in committee hearings prior to the general session, and we could see the corresponding bills rise from their graves. On the other side of the transgender-related discussion, an attempt to make uniform the process to change the gender marker on legal identification could also make a comeback.
Wait…what?
This legislative session, expect Critical Race Theory (something that isn’t taught in Utah public school curriculum) to lead to discussions about school curriculum transparency legislation. Meanwhile, Utah educators will continue to fight for a living wage for teachers. As election security is a hot topic nationally right now, we’re definitely going to see attempts to change the way we cast our votes, including vote by mail, although that is something that Utah does very well, compared to most states.
Even though legislative sessions start to blend together after a while, there are topics that come up for discussion that could change the quality of and how we live our lives.
The thing that might set this year apart is ordinary citizens showing up on the hill and letting their voices be heard at public hearings, even if it is only to say, “here we go again.”
An avalanche accident in the Millcreek Canyon backcountry on Feb. 6, 2021 shook the Utah ski community to its core. Thousands of words devoted to the details, causes and aftermath of the accident have already been written, but endless stories about the people involved remain untold. This is but a single one of those stories, honoring the memory of those lost and seeking to chart a path forward.
Photo by Alessio Soggetti
Chris Gmitro shot awake at midnight. An idea took root in his head, the kind that brings sudden lucidity even at the end of a REM cycle. Three hours remained until the alarm was set to kick off what was to be a massive day in the mountains, but the iron was hot. It was late March 2019.
Quietly, Chris got out of bed and began to pack a climbing kit—ropes, cams, nuts and carabiners—alongside the backcountry ski gear already lined out. An hour later, he woke his partner Sarah Moughamian to consider the amended plan. It was a ladies’ choice day, and Sarah had laid out an ambitious itinerary that ticked off all three skiable aspects of Lone Peak, the towering 11,260-foot monument southeast of Salt Lake City. Chris wanted to add a fourth slope. The Center Thumb, a stout 550-foot alpine climb on a west aspect that would complete the Compass Rose. Or, they could sleep for an additional two hours. Without a moment’s hesitation, Sarah was up.
Still hours from sunrise, Chris and Sarah left their car and began to climb. Every step upward yielded that snowy squeak underfoot that’s always louder in the predawn cold, part of the oddly rhythmic symphony that accompanies ski touring. The pair moved in tandem on skis up the flanks towards the Northeast Couloir where they would bootpack—laboriously stepping into snow—towards the summit of the mountain where they had first met in 2016.
Sarah rapelling high on an alpine wall. A typical ski day for Chris and Sarah often involved diverse and technical mountaineering skills. Photo courtesy Chris Gmitro
It was summer then. Chris descended alone through the forested trails after climbing the granite walls of the Lone Peak Cirque. He’d come to Utah in 2006 after college in Flagstaff, camping in church parking lots and doing generally whatever he could to facilitate climbing and skiing. Sarah climbed the same trail that day on her way to scale those same looming towers. Raised in a small town, Idaho City, she hadn’t let a stint in Virginia for college or a bona fide professional job as a market analyst derail a life shaped by the mountains.
“I was immediately intimidated. Didn’t even make eye contact,” Chris says. “When I turned to look, she was already looking my way and smiling. That was it.” A few days later Sarah came into The Gear Room, the outdoor shop Chris opened with his brother Kevin in 2014. She was there to buy some gear, but it was as much pretense for an introduction as anything. You can get cams in a lot of places in the valley.
Three years later, the pair expertly dissected the terrain on Lone Peak, following the sun. First was soft cold snow on the direct East Face. Then, perfect corn snow on the South Face as it warmed. The ski kit was left on top, replaced by a climbing kit for the west-facing Center Thumb. Finally, back on skis, they exited north into Big Willow. It was a 15-hour push with ruthless efficiency hewn from hundreds of days in the mountains together. Details were second nature, turning what would for most be a staggeringly large objective covering more than 10,000 vertical feet into just another day. The Lone Peak 4X4, as Chris and Sarah coined it, was a distillation of the process and ambition at the center of their lives together. One adventure of many, with a mountain at its core.
Feb. 6, 2021, was a different type of day. No middle-of-the-night packing sessions breathtakingly early starts or lofty tick lists. This day was to be just a casual backcountry ski tour alongside friends. It was a special occasion only in that Chris and Sarah rarely skied with others.
The couple had strikingly compatible goals and they outmatched casual invites. Some of their objectives were enormous—The Evolution Traverse in the Sierras and the WURL, a 36-mile, 18,000-vertical-foot ridge linkup in the Wasatch, for example—and frankly out of reach for most. Even an “average” day—which, for these two, was considered a mere training day—was itself outside most people’s comfort zone. Written in Sarah’s journals from before she’d met Chris were three lifetime mountaineering objectives. Two of them, The Cirque of the Unclimbables in Canada’s Northwest Territories and Cassin Ridge on Denali, were also in Chris’ top three most sought-after objectives. This couple had very high aspirations.
Still, the idea of a more relaxed day in the mountains was refreshing. Joining Sarah and Chris that Saturday were Louis, Thomas and Steve. (Editor’s note: To respect the privacy of people involved, we will use primarily first names, as contemporaneous reports did.) Louis, a regular at the Gear Room, had been working at the shop for about a year and a half. A remarkably fit cyclist with a relentlessly energetic personality, he had long, curly hair, pulled over a buzzed side of his head. He wore a pink spandex suit for the ski tour. “He didn’t need your attention, but he commanded it,” Chris says.
Thomas, a frequent ski partner of Louis, had ski mountaineering race experience and was a prototypically fit and strong athlete. Steve had come through the Gear Room a year earlier. A strong climber with California roots and plenty of experience in Joshua Tree, this was one of his first backcountry ski tours. Chris recalls, “He held great value for the mountains. We’d helped him with his kit in the shop, and I wanted to fill the void as a mentor for him.”
The couple had strikingly compatible goals, and they outmatched casual invites.
The day’s objective was Wilson Glade, a northeast-facing slope that descends into Millcreek Canyon from Wilson Peak just shy of 10,000 feet. The group began around 7 a.m. from the Butler Fork trailhead in Big Cottonwood Canyon. Using climbing skins, they moved methodically up the steep-sided, pine-rimmed gulley toward a ridge between Soldier Peak and Wilson. The weather was mild and partly clear, and two storms that week had dropped 21 inches of snow at nearby Solitude Mountain Resort. Amid a lackluster winter, skiing conditions were finally optimal. Avalanche conditions, as they had been for much of the season, were anything but.
The skin track to the summit ridge meanders through a tightly packed, south-facing aspen forest. It’s a pleasant and still atmosphere, below the saddle separating the two canyons. Replete with views and a notable absence of sound, it was the ideal environment for backcountry skiers to feel at peace, in their element, hidden from the scale of nature. Not until nearly reaching Wilson’s summit, 3,000 feet above the car, do the more imposing aspects of the mountains emerge.
The Wilson Chutes. Perfect, nearly symmetrical barrels running almost eastward from the peak. With mid to upper 30-degree slopes blanketed by wind deposited snow, the Wilson Chutes are what powder dreams are made of. They’re also obvious avalanche terrain, devoid of vegetation often with cornices at the top and recent debris at the bottom. Today, they held an ominous sign. Natural avalanches had stripped the snow to the ground, leaving barren rocky scars in their wake. Uninviting, and a clear reflection of the day’s forecasted avalanche hazard, which the Utah Avalanche Center (UAC) rated as high for persistent slab avalanches on all terrain above 9,500 feet on the eastern half of the compass.
Wilson Glade is avalanche terrain—generally understood to be any terrain 30-degrees or greater in steepness—within the high-danger parameters regarding aspect, elevation and slope angle on Feb. 6. But backcountry skiing is rarely a cut-and-dried affair, with much of the activity taking place on the margins of safety. Wilson Glade is a place where sliding scales of risk tolerance and probabilities frequently overlap. It’s avalanche terrain to be certain, but compared to surrounding areas it appears almost innocuous. Below a steep, short headwall of pine is an open meadow. It touches the 30-degree threshold, but only just, and for only a couple hundred vertical feet. Large avalanches here are comparatively rare, and all these factors can contribute to a false sense of security.
I, myself, have frequented Wilson Glade on days when considerable avalanche risk was forecast thinking, as the group on Feb. 6 did, if there were any slides they would be pockety and manageable through a combination of careful terrain choice and travel protocol. I say this without judgment and acknowledge a baked-in complacency around certain terrain and behaviors that have permeated parts of the backcountry community. Denial is the religion of the insecure.
37 people died in avalanches in the United States during the 2020-21 season according to data compiled by the UAC. Seven of those deaths occurred in Utah. These numbers are simultaneously astonishing and pedestrian. We humans have a strange relationship with risk assessment. A single shark attack fatality and a handful of encounters off the coast of Cape Cod since 2012 have people scrambling from the waves like characters in Jaws. Meanwhile, hundreds of people are killed and thousands are injured annually on Utah roadways, but there isn’t much panic-driven discourse surrounding people driving on snowy mountain roads.
Backcountry skiing is caught somewhere in the middle, more dangerous than great whites, less so than cars. But the risks are gaining wider attention. Last year was among the most dangerous on record for backcountry users, but not by a stunning margin. There were 34 fatalities in both 2007 and 2010. Still, anecdotal judgments about the cause of accidents abound. It’s new, inexperienced users because of the pandemic. It’s overcrowding on the safer slopes because of the sport’s popularity, pressuring people to push boundaries. It’s social media hype and available information on the internet getting people in over their heads. And on it goes.
Every avalanche accident is a result of cascading factors. Yes, the aforementioned concerns do contribute to some incidents. But the numbers suggest on a per-user-day basis, backcountry skiing is likely becoming safer, not more dangerous. Backcountry travel numbers are difficult to accurately count, but total UAC contacts (page views, forecast hotline calls, mobile app sessions and forecast emails delivered) peaked at around 2.25 million in 2007 and reached nearly 4.75 million in 2021. Though vague on specifics, this indicates a huge influx of backcountry users with only a mild uptick in total accidents during a year with a particularly complicated snowpack.
Sarah enjoying the granite of Little Cottonwood Canyon in summer. Photo courtesy Chris Gmitro
“A common theme across the west last season was early snow in November followed by sustained dry periods in December, almost the entire month,” says UAC forecaster Nikki Champion. “In the Wasatch, that created faceted grains and a weak persistent layer all over the range. In Utah, it’s common to deal with faceted grains on north-facing aspects, but we’re less familiar with seeing a persistent weak layer that lasts for so long. Storms weren’t deep enough to bury the weak layer and cause it to go dormant until almost the end of the season, a problem that plagued the entire west.”
Persistent weak layers are named for a reason, they persist. Faceted snow grains, which create an unstable layer, can form quickly, in hours to days, but they take a long time, sometimes months, to heal. Because facets often exist deep in the snowpack, they are widely distributed across terrain beneath thick slabs of snow. When avalanches occur on failures in persistent weak layers, the slides are often deep, well connected across entire slopes and very dangerous. Such avalanches are also less predictable than avalanches that occur in new snow, creating an ever-present threat that lasts throughout a season.
“Last year’s persistent weak layer led to issues with decision making,” Champion says. “There was user fatigue and forecasting fatigue communicating the same problem from day to day. When people are avoiding the persistent weak layer and aren’t getting negative feedback, complacency builds and it’s more difficult to respect how dangerous it still is. There’s a large range of outcomes with snowpack structure and stability, and as weather patterns change, we need to become more comfortable with them in the Wasatch.”
In Wilson Glade, Chris, Sarah, Louis, Thomas and Steve were greeted with cold powder. One by one, they made arcing turns down the open meadow for several hundred feet before a few more turns where the slope angle lessened and the trees got tighter. Afterward, they put skins on and climbed back up, spacing out one at a time to cross the steepest, most exposed portion of the slope. The skin track on the slope’s east side was commonly used and their travel protocol was sound for many days in Wilson Glade when persistent slab danger is lower. Upon reaching the ridge after the second lap, Steve decided he would rest up top while the other four took a final lap. The four skiers dropped in once more, scrawling the last of the 14 tracks they made on the slope before beginning to ascend as they had twice already.
Meanwhile, a second group of skiers was heading up to ski Wilson Glade. Stephanie, Nate and Ethan started from Millcreek Canyon around 8:30 a.m. They skinned up the plowed road until reaching the Alexander Basin trailhead, where they headed southeast towards Wilson Glade. Nate and Ethan, slightly ahead of Stephanie, waited near the bottom of Wilson Glade to regroup and discuss travel and conditions before entering steeper terrain. Unbeknownst to them, Chris and Sarah’s group was ascending just above. They, likewise, were unaware of the group below.
That’s when the mountain, suddenly, roared to terrible life. An avalanche 1,000 feet wide, between 3- and 4-feet deep, tore from the slope. It’s impossible to know exactly what triggered the slide. Chris lunged for a tree, miraculously holding on as the snow engulfed and swept past him. The very ground beneath his feet was gone, leaving him clinging to the tree above the bed surface as the torrent came to rest. Steve, on the ridge above, was safe. The other six skiers were buried, and it was silent once again.
A rescue, equal parts heroic and tragic, unfolded. Chris dropped from the tree and turned his avalanche transceiver to search as Steve skied down to assist. Chris acquired a signal, struck a person with his probe and with the help of Steve dug out the victim who was unconscious but breathing. It was Nate, who they neither recognized nor knew was on the slope. A stranger to them. Chris made a call to 911. It was 11:40 a.m., roughly 10 minutes after the avalanche. Just feet away, Chris and Steve had located and began to uncover another skier. Nate had regained consciousness and assisted in shoveling. It was Ethan, another member of Nate’s downslope group. Ethan was unconscious but breathing.
Chris acquired another transceiver signal and the three rescuers located Sarah about 150 feet away. She was not breathing and didn’t have a pulse. Chris began CPR on Sarah while Steve and Nate continued searching for victims, finding Louis just downhill. He was not breathing and didn’t have a pulse. At this point, Chris ceased resuscitation efforts and rejoined the search for victims. The group located and uncovered Thomas, and then 100 feet downhill, Stephanie. Neither was breathing nor had a pulse. By 1:40 p.m., rescue personnel were lowered onto the scene via helicopter, after which Chris, Steve, Nate and Ethan were taken from the area in a Life Flight air ambulance. Four people, Sarah Moughamian, 29, Louis Holian, 26, Thomas Steinbrecher, 23, and Stephanie Hopkins, 23, had lost their lives.
The remarkable rescue effort by the surviving skiers had saved two lives. Nobody could have achieved a better outcome under such circumstances.
The aftermath of the avalanche in Wilson Glade. The crown of the avalanche shown in the photo is nearly four feet deep in places. The slide broke nearly 1,000 feet wide and ran more than 400 vertical feet. The failure occurred on a persistent weak layer of faceted grains near the ground. Photo by Bruce Tremper
Spend enough time in the mountains, and it’s likely you’ll be touched by tragedy. It’s a cruel bargain. Between our conversations, last fall, a friend of Chris and a pillar of the climbing community, Mason Boos, was killed while climbing in Little Cottonwood Canyon. A loose block of granite had fallen. It was a callously random and blameless accident. Mason was 25.
Chris speaks with a poised self-awareness about life in the mountains. Utterly sincere without a trace of glibness. He has a clear-eyed understanding not only of what hindsight says about the accident that changed his life but also of the inherent paradoxes that bring people to the places where life and death can intersect.
“There are entire books and professions devoted to understanding risk, but there are no great answers,” Chris says. “We talked about our expectations and how dangerous our lifestyle could be. It’s a beautiful gift to have had those conversations with Sarah. We can rationalize our mortality, but there’s a finality I didn’t appreciate. Inherently we knew what could happen, but we never thought it would. Otherwise, why would we do it? The answer is always a dead end.”
Concrete details are evident. A persistent weak layer of faceted snow formed during cold, dry periods in December. At some point on Feb. 6, a large, though not unprecedented, avalanche for Wilson Glade was initiated on that layer, 90 cm deep, while seven skiers were in exposed terrain, and four people were killed. A preventable tragedy with lessons to learn for every honest observer. Yet, intellectual exercise can take us only so far.
Each person involved was a wonderful soul full of hope, ambition, flaws and promise. That’s what the community lost. Promise and innocence. Diagram, analyze and rationalize all you want, the only certainty is perfection isn’t possible and we will end up here again. Call it passion, desire, a sense of identity or something else entirely, but there’s a magnetism that pulls towards a mortal line. An abstract combination of randomness and fallibility determines which side oif that line any day can land on.
In the fall, Chris was rehabbing an ACL injury sustained while skiing a month after the accident. He had no plans to give up skiing and climbing. Steve, likewise, remains embedded in the mountain community, working part-time at the Gear Room.
As Chris reflects, he returns again to that day in 2019, a moment of tandem purpose and dreams liberated from the tragedy of Feb. 6, 2021. Atop Lone Peak, Chris and Sarah shivered, huddling in their warmest layers waiting for the sunrise to wash the summit in pink light. The first climb of the day was over. The reward, indefinable but endlessly imaginable, is still ahead. It is a brief respite from endless motion. Little to do but wait and find peace in thinking of nothing particular at all. “Sarah never wanted notoriety or recognition,” Chris says. “She found such joy in the purity of pursuit and the process. The most amazing stories are the ones that are never heard.”
What we’re debating here is the very foundation of this community. It’s the literal ground we’re standing on—like the actual dirt. Seriously. Even the dirt in Park City is fraught with contradiction, caught between a bygone silver mining era and the eternal transformation into a worldwide destination resort for outdoor enthusiasts, art aficionados, indie movie darlings, cuisine Instagrammers and whomever else we can market the community to. That mining part left a legacy of environmental contamination—tailings laced with lead, arsenic and the like—which is quite literally resurfacing as the development boom races ahead in its myriad of incarnations. The questions at hand are, one, what we do with those soils and, two, who’s responsible for them. Thus far, Park City hasn’t dug up any easy answers.
Building new things first requires digging holes in the ground, and Park City is doing a lot of both. The proposed Arts and Culture District, for example, will unearth endless piles of soil needing to go somewhere. Because the soils are contaminated it can’t just be haphazardly dumped. Carbon-based life doesn’t get along great with mining-era contaminants.
Currently, every truckload of contaminated soil from Park City is taken down to a contaminated soils repository in Tooele, a solution which is expensive and laced with ethical quandaries about offloading inconvenience on another community. City officials sought another solution: to build a repository on municipal acreage alongside S.R. 248, which would be more cost effective. The city previously used a repository in Richardson Flat, but it has been closed since 2010.
The concept, with both its flaws and virtues, never got off the launch pad. An overwhelming flood of negative community pushback thrust the issue to the forefront of public consciousness. It was called a toxic waste dump and a community hazard. Even if those proclamations are vague and hyperbolic, some concern is valid. “Utah has weak fugitive dust regulation, which means there are insufficient controls to keep contaminants from being airborne,” says Scott Williams, Executive Director of HEAL Utah. “It’s more well-regulated when transporting materials off site, but the process hasn’t been well publicized or transparent enough.” City officials say disinformation created the charged atmosphere, which ultimately led every mayoral and city council candidate in the 2021 election to abandon the solution they’d designed. Councilors Max Doilney, Steve Joyce and Tim Henney all asserted deep politicization of misinformation derailed honest assessment. Incumbent Mayor Andy Beerman and challenger Nann Worel both stated the need to respect the desires of the community, while noting the issue wouldn’t evaporate under the status quo.
For now, Park City keeps on trucking…dirt to Tooele. But the larger issue won’t stay buried.
The Waste Repository That Wasn’t
The planned contaminated soils repository was to hold 140,000 cubic yards of material. That’s enough for 15 years storage, after which it was to be capped and turned into open space for recreation. Construction was estimated to cost $2.7 million but recoup multiples of that initial investment over the course of its lifetime.
If the skull and crossbones weren’t ominous enough, the all caps “YOU CAN DIE” was meant to be. The warning—printed on the orange gate separating avalanche-controlled terrain within Park City Mountain boundaries from uncontrolled backcountry terrain on adjacent forest service land—is a blunt statement about the hazards of skiing and snowboarding in the backcountry, especially for those without the requisite knowledge and equipment. The appeal of untracked powder leads many, heedless of caution, to head out anyway, and, after two fatal avalanches just weeks apart in January 2021, Park City indefinitely closed backcountry access gates at the resort. The popular gate atop the Ninety-Nine 90 Express chairlift remains permanently closed, though the gate atop the Peak 5 chair will reopen.
The move irked some backcountry skiers and riders who had long used the resort’s chairs to chase untracked powder just beyond the ropes. Others felt the move was warranted, as throngs of unprepared people having easy access to avalanche terrain—in full view of and just steps from the chairlift—seemed a recipe for disaster.
“We have made the decision to reopen the resort exit on Peak 5 for backcountry access, and to permanently close the exit at the top of Ninety-Nine 90. While both exits access the same area, the Peak 5 exit requires more hike-to effort, preparation and intention to reach the terrain,” Park City Mountain COO Mike Goar said in a prepared statement released in August.
The issue came to a head during a particularly tragic avalanche season in Utah that saw six skiers and snowboarders killed, including two along the Park City ridgeline after exiting the Ninety-Nine 90 gate. The snowpack’s persistent instability was cited as a cause, but, even in years without compounding stability issues, accidents happen. There have been nine fatalities along the Park City ridgeline since 2000, and ease of access is almost certainly a contributing factor. Significant avalanche paths are mere steps away from the top of the Ninety-Nine 90 chair. Many lead directly back into the resort, doubling down on the convenience. From Peak 5, accessing the ridgeline requires using specialized climbing skins, or a superhuman appetite for nightmarish postholing up hundreds of vertical feet of snow.
“The Peak 5 gate encourages more responsible use both because of the increased effort it requires and the lack of a visual from the gate itself to the terrain it accesses,” says Chris Tolli, a longtime backcountry skier who frequents the Park City ridgeline. The change isn’t a panacea, however. “There’s still a lot of avalanche terrain people can get themselves into quickly,” warns a Park City ski patroller who spoke about the topic on condition of anonymity. “Often all it takes is seeing someone go through the gate and people will get excited to follow.”
Backcountry skiing and riding carry inherent risk, and eliminating every accident is impossible. But if moving the gate could mitigate some accidents while enabling people to access national forest land like they have for decades, it’s worth a try.
Just writing a personal note about my recent application to rent the apartment you have available. It would be perfect for me and my boyfriend! We’re “outdoorsy” types who moved here because my marketing job in San Francisco says I can live anywhere now and who can afford to live there? Not me and Seamus that’s for sure. Yes, I did notice that the stove doesn’t work but that’s OK, Seamus totally has a camp stove because we just love camping and feel like living in your one-bedroom shack for $2,300 a month would feel a lot like camping every day! We love the wildlife living in the attic although we’re new to Utah so we weren’t sure if those were birds or baby raccoons scuttling around up there. Either way, we’re looking forward to adopting more fur (or feather) babies!
On that, the application noted that pets are accepted with a $1,000 pet deposit. Our 1-year-old black lab puppy is so well-behaved (you have to meet him!) We wondered if you’d consider waiving that fee. We only mention it because the place is mainly bare wooden studs and exposed nails (which we love, very rustic), we’re not sure what little Arches (we named him after the national park!) could actually damage in there.
I did have a question about the wires hanging from the ceiling. Were those attached to fire alarms at some point? I only ask because of the open flames from our camp stove and my mom is worried. You know how moms are, right? Always with the advice. Don’t move to Utah with some guy you met on Tinder, blah blah blah stuff, like that.
You’ll notice that I’ve already Venmo-ed you for the first and last month’s rent, non-refundable cleaning deposit, application fee, credit check fee and background check fee. Also, please find attached a scan of my social security card, driver’s license and passport as well as this super cute picture of me and Seamus in the mountains—our true love. (Seamus was trying to teach me to ski, so he looks a little grouchy, but deep down he’s a sweetie!) We know you have a lot of interest and the rental market is very competitive but we hope you’ll consider our application (or put in a good word for us to the owners of the adorably renovated children’s playhouse across the street) so we can start our Utah adventure together! #utahisrad!
We’re in the final hours of Utah’s redistricting process. The process was already rushed this year, thanks to COVID and delays in getting 2020 census data, but the Utah State Legislature still has to vote on the new boundaries in time to have them in place by the beginning of 2022. One of the last chance Utah voters had to potentially impact what those boundaries look like was at a public hearing at the Utah State Capitol on Nov. 10, but the meeting was cancelled. So, what now? While this is about to get a little wonky, if you want your vote to count for as much as your neighbor’s in another district, this should matter to you. After the Legislature decides on new boundaries, we’re stuck with what we get for another 10 years.
This year—two groups engaged in simultaneous, but mostly separate, redistricting efforts. Both groups held public hearings and called on Utah citizens to draw and submit their ideas for possible boundary maps. Both groups made their own maps and met to decide which maps provide the best representation for Utah’s burgeoning population. But only one group has the authority on which potential boundary maps are put up to the legislature for final approval. In the end, the other group’s maps might not even get a vote.
So, why have two redistricting groups at all? Because a majority of Utah voters wanted it that way (by about 7,000 votes). Flashback to 2018. The group Better Boundaries put forth Proposition 4, which would create the Utah Independent Redistricting Commission to draw up electoral boundary maps and recommend them to the Legislature. The Legislature could then vote on whether to approve or reject those maps. The intention was that an independent commission would not be drawing the boundaries of their own districts, as legislators would, and, therefore would not have conflicts of interest or incentive to gerrymander. “It centers redistricting on voters versus centering it on politicians,” Better Boundaries executive director Katie Wright says of the independent commission. “Better Boundaries believes that voters should be choosing their politicians, not politicians choosing their voters.”
United States Congressional Districts in Utah since 2013. Red: District 1; Orange: District 2; Yellow: District 3; Green: District 4 Source: nationalmap.gov
When Is It Gerrymandering?
Gerrymandering is when district boundaries are drawn to favor one party, which has the effect of making elections less competitive and disenfranchising other voter groups. It can be almost impossible to prove when lines have been intentionally gerrymandered. While there is some debate over whether or not Utah boundaries are gerrymandered, in 2010, the GOP-controlled Legislature drew lines in such a way to break up Salt Lake County, a democratic stronghold, among three congressional districts.
But, here’s the thing. Lawmakers are still drawing maps of their own districts. After the proposition passed, lawmakers threatened to repeal the initiative altogether, so Better Boundaries came to the table to negotiate. The 2020 compromise, Senate Bill 200, rolls back some of the initiative’s original redistricting reforms passed by voters. It removes the requirement that the Legislature vote on the commission’s proposals and follow specific redistricting criteria and gets rid of the right of private citizen lawsuits if the Legislature approves maps different than the commission’s recommendations.
The Legislative Redistricting Committee is the other group that’s drawing possible electoral boundary maps, but the group of 20 lawmakers (15 Republicans and five Democrats) is not adhering to the same map-drawing standards as the Utah Independent Redistricting Commission pro by Better Boundaries.
The law outlines some redistricting standards. Like all states, Utah must comply with constitutional equal population requirements—just how equal in population districts have to be seems to vary state to state. In addition to this tenuous legal requirement, the self-imposed principles adopted by the Legislative Redistricting Committee include:
Districts must be contiguous and reasonably compact.
State legislative districts and state school board districts must have substantial equality of population among the various districts, with a deviation less than ±5.0%.
Congressional districts must be as nearly equal as practicable, with a deviation no greater than ±0.1%.
When drawing electoral districts, the independent commission considers population distribution as well as the three Cs: keeping cities and counties and communities of interest intact—these are localized communities that share economic and cultural interests (allowing voters with aligning interests to form an informal coalition). The commission also does not take into consideration political party data or where incumbents live (if a lawmaker gets drawn out of their current district, so be it). The Legislative Redistricting Committee’s criteria does not forbid including incumbent data, which, as Better Boundaries has pointed out, could be considered a conflict of interest. In theory, lawmakers could draw boundaries to make their own seats safer or to punish political opponents.
But, if that does happen, how do you prove it? And even if you can prove it, the only recourse is voters giving a damn and voting that representative out. Which could be made all the more difficult if their district’s boundaries have already been redrawn in that elected official’s favor. In order for any of this to work, it requires people to (again for emphasis) give a damn, get involved and hold their elected officials accountable. “Redistricting is an issue so fundamental to our democracy and how citizens interact with their government,” says Wright. “It is a lot. And it is very confusing, complex and a bit wonky, but redistricting determines with whom you’re united within your representation.”
On Monday, the Independent Redistricting Commission presented its recommended maps to the Legislative Redistricting Committee. Now the committee will choose which maps—from those drawn by the committee, the commission or the public—to recommend to the full Legislature. But the process has not been without drama. Some members of the Legislature have done a considerable amount of marking their territory when it comes to redistricting. Utah voters may have chosen to create the independent commission, but the opinion of some lawmakers seems to be that it doesn’t matter what the majority of voters wanted.
Better Boundaries believes that voters should be choosing their politicians, not politicians choosing their voters.
Katie Wright, Better Boundaries
When they presented the maps to the legislative committee, the independent commission detailed the process of how they arrived at their maps. Of course, this comes after its commissioner, Rob Bishop, abruptly resigned from the commission—in supposed opposition to its map drawing process—during one of its final meetings. He accused the committee of gerrymandering in favor of Democrats by being too “metro-centric.” Never mind the fact that most of Utah’s population lives in metro areas. Likely, what he’s really concerned about is any map where Salt Lake County residents have enough consolidated voting power in a single district to vote in a Democrat to congress.
“I share his [Bishop’s] frustrations with how the commission has conducted its business. His decision to step down at this point in the process is further evidence that the duly elected representatives of the people are best suited to redraw district boundaries,” said Utah House Speaker Brad Wilson in a statement immediately following Bishop’s resignation. It’s worth noting that Wilson is also the one who appointed Bishop as commissioner in the first place, so the grandstanding and political theater, meant to cast doubt on the commission, smells faintly of contrivance.
The legislative committee is set to select the final maps in an upcoming interim legislative session, sometime mid-November. Then the maps are approved by the full Legislature and go to the Governor for final approval by December. Even though the legislative committee has full discretion here, the independent commission’s maps could still serve a purpose. Voters can inspect how the commission’s recommended maps differ from what the legislature adopts, providing some level of transparency and, potentially, the opportunity to hold our representatives accountable.
The battle over Hideout’s annexation of Summit County open space in Richardson Flat still awaits resolution. It began way back in March 2020 when the Utah Legislature passed a short-lived law, H.B. 359, allowing a municipality to annex unincorporated land across county lines. The public—reviled by the secretive process surrounding a law clearly meant to serve a specific private interest—revolted, leading to the H.B. 359’s repeal, but not before Hideout’s council approved the annexation prior to the repeal taking effect. The council’s approval included a provision for a public vote, placing the annexation’s future in the hands of Hideout residents.
What’s this lawsuit all about?
Judge Brown’s ruling invalidated Hideout’s annexation on the grounds of a state code requiring new ordinances to be posted in public places or papers of record prior to becoming law. Hideout does not dispute the fact they failed to post the ordinance until after the deadline to do so had passed. The case will now head to an appellate court, which will determine whether the district court decision was just or a misapplication of the facts to state law.
The voters had their say on June 22, overwhelmingly approving the annexation by a two-to-one margin. Alas, the annexation was on. Or was it? On the very same day of the aforementioned vote, 4th District Court judge Jennifer Brown sided with Summit County in its lawsuit against Hideout, invalidating the annexation and damping anticipation of the long-awaited ballot count. Alas, the annexation was off. Or was it? The ruling is being appealed, meaning after more than a year of debate, grandstanding, finger pointing and general hand wringing, an ongoing court battle will ultimately decide the annexation’s fate.
Somehow society was able to weather a once-in-a-century pandemic with a mass vaccination program utilizing never-before-seen medical technology to neutralize the spread of a novel virus more quickly than we’ve been able to decide if a town with 358 eligible voters can annex open space next to a superfund site nobody wants to deal with. It’s Theatre of the Absurd. The end is the beginning, and time is a flat circle.
What’s really at stake? Ostensibly 350 acres of land destined for life as open space and low-density development if Summit County retains control or 600 homes and 100,000 square feet of business space including Hideout’s town hall and community center if courts decide the annexation is valid. Underneath it all, perhaps the fight represents the existential quandary for a community walking the knife’s edge between progress and chaos.
Is anything left to debate? The sordid process which brought us here was ill considered. The dichotomies of development vs. preservation and progress vs. stagnation have engulfed every corner of the community along the Wasatch Back. Yesterday’s Treasure Hill is today’s Hideout is tomorrow’s Highland Flats. This issue will be decided in a courtroom, far beyond the reach of the community’s voices. However it ends—if it ever does—one thing is certain: plenty of people will be unhappy about it.
