How the Methow Valley become a world-class lodging and trails hub

By Sam Demas

With fabulous ski terrain and a great climate, Winthrop, WA on the east slope of the North Cascades, became a mecca for winter sports enthusiasts in the 1970’s.   Attracted by the consistent snow cover, great climate, and stunning natural beauty, young people began to move into the area. So did people representing big alpine ski resorts, with ambitions to create a destination alpine ski resort and to profit from an attendant real estate boom.   One could view the modern history of the Methow Valley as a tale of big alpine ski interests vs. environmentalists, with x-country ski enthusiasts, or “soft path” recreationists, as the “middle-path” saviors. While that’s part of it, it oversimplifies the story by painting a black and white picture of conflict and reaction. Instead, it seems that the values and visions of Methow Valley residents — old and new — gradually cohered and prevailed through a parallel effort to create a recreation hub and economic driver without turning Methow Valley into another Aspen.

The unique feature is that this story is centered around the community-based, non-profit development of the largest cross-country trail system (120 miles of groomed trails) in the USA. Key features of the story include the trail system’s cultivation of a close relationship with a great hut system, and a robust set of business and community partnerships providing a range of cultural, lodging and other tourism services and attractions.

This historical sketch is a companion piece to an operational profile of two components of the Valley’s success story – The Methow Valley Trail System and the Rendezvous Huts, and a history of the Rendezvous Huts. There is a much more detailed and nuanced tale to be told than fits the scope and time of hut2hut.info. And there are many people far better qualified to tell it. Apologies in advance for my doubtlessly leaving out important people, themes and events. This piece is offered as notes towards a fuller history that richly deserves to be told. A concise history of the Methow Valley Trails is available on their web site.

The purpose of this piece is to bring the story of the Methow Valley to an audience specifically interested in shelter systems for long-distance human powered travel. Many of these folks are also interested in the development of community partnerships revolving around trails, lodging, environmental protection, and sustainable economic development.

The Aspen Ski Corporation proposed a ski resort in 1974, and a group called Early Winters resort proposed one in 1984. These would have drawn thousands of skiers daily and built thousands of condos. Local opposition coalesced in two community organizations: the Methow Valley Citizens Council and the Friends of Methow. They employed a variety of legal and advocacy strategies to ultimately stop these development proposals (Aspen Corporation shifted its interest to creating Whistler Ski Resort in B.C.). Meanwhile, a dedicated group of locals worked to develop a community trails system. In a series of articles in November 1994 High Country News, Ken Olsen framed the situation as:

While developers and government officials spent two decades and millions of dollars trying to turn this valley into a destination downhill ski resort, residents quietly built and maintained a world-class cross country skiing area…..[according to Maggie Coon] “Instead of looking at grandiose projects to solve the economic woes of the valley, lets look at what’s special in the Methow and build on that.”

The non-profit Methow Family Sport Club was established in 1977, and changed its name to Methow Valley Ski Touring Association (MVSTA) in 1980. The idea was to provide the community with access to groomed ski. Don Portman, founder of the cross-country ski program was one of the earliest proponents of the trail system and served on the board for over 30 years. In 1981 Jay Lucas was hired as the first Executive Director and served in that position for 30 years, figuring out how to run it as a successful non-profit enterprise. Creating the trail system took several decades and involved hard and creative work by many people. Among the names that came up repeatedly in my discussions with locals about MVSTA history are: Portman and Lucas, John Hayes, Joy Schwab, John Sunderland, Dick Roberts, Larry Tobiska, and Ardis Bynum. There are doubtless many more people I haven’t even heard about in my brief research on the topic.

Don Portman is credited with the original idea of connecting three independent ski center trail systems (Sun Mountain Lodge, Rendezvous Huts, and Mazama Trails/N. Cascades Base Camp) with the Winthrop’s MVSTA community trail to form one big trail system all the way up the valley floor. A profile of Don in the Winter 2014/15 Methow Trails magazine tells his story as a trail blazer. [He is the first to say that it was a community effort in which many were involved. This tendency to generously share the credit is true of most of the people I spoke with.] The owners and operators of these three independent ski center trails were key cooperators. This includes the Haub family, owners of Sun Mountain Lodge, which provided early support by vouching for the MVSTA in support of crucial bank loans and the owners of the Rendezvous Huts. From the beginning the Rendezvous Hut System was seen as a unique amenity that attracted a special breed of backcountry skiers.

Jay Lucas and his wife in the early days

Connecting these trails into one coherent system took 18 years and involved a great deal of diplomacy and legwork in securing permissions and permits from the landholders. Over half the land required Forest Service permits and the rest required securing permissions from private land owners. You can link to the story by Kristen Smith of how John Hayes, Joy Schwab, and John Sunderland worked for years to accomplish this is told in an article in the Winter 2015/16 Methow Trails magazine called John Hayes Trailblazer Article. This remarkable effort ensured essential legal protection for the trail and preservation of the natural state of the trail corridor. The significant monetary value of these permissions also provided a financial asset that could be used to leverage matching funds from granting agencies.

Another key component in creating the trail system and a recreation hub was garnering county support. Don recounts a somewhat humorous juncture in which the Forest Service, the County and the band of people working to implement their vision suddenly realized that to secure county and state support the county needed a county recreation plan. Jim Greg of the Forest Service helpfully gave them a copy of the Summit County recreation plan, which they used as a template to develop their own recreation plan for Okanagan County. This opened the door for support from a variety of directions, such as: qualification for Washington State IAC grants (the predecessor of Recreation and Conservation grants?), county assistance with a key bridge project, changes in the county zoning codes that provided incentives for land owners to grant trail permissions, and, eventually, eligibility for a portion (40% of 2%) of the county hotel/motel tax.

MVSTA gradually evolved into a tourist promotion entity providing brochures, trail maps, events, and marketing efforts that benefit many businesses in the area. Today, the trail itself is now a county park. Both the city of Winthrop and the county are strong supporters of MVSTA and its vision of Methow Valley as a recreation hub.

This strong local support is based in part on demonstrated economic benefits to the community and the region. MVSTA has been very smart and systematic in grounding its advocacy work in a series of skillful economic impact statements over the years. The 2015 report “Economic Impacts of Methow Trails” , for example, documents a variety of direct and indirect economic impacts. See the eight page Executive Summary for more detail on these and other compelling data:

• Nearly $6.7 million dollars in direct expenditures by trail users.
• Trail user expenditures average $1,793 per trip
• Trail spending is heavily concentrated in service sector areas such as lodging, restaurant/food/grocery, and purchase/rental of sporting goods.
• Perceptions on the part of 74% of the business community that they are highly or somewhat dependent on visitors, and 51% report that the number of visitors coming to valley to take advantage of the trail system is increasing.
• Revenue generation for area businesses, by group, was highest for “Nature Enthusiasts, Wildlife Viewers and Birders, Hikers and Trial Runners, and Cyclists”.
• The trail network plays into respondents’ real estate buying decisions.

James DeSalvo, current Executive Director of Methow Valley Trails

But the Methow Valley Trail is more than an economic development engine. It is a labor of love created and sustained by many residents of the Valley. This includes members of the MVT, people who purchase trail passes, logging companies who built skidding roads to trail specifications, artists and poets who create work to celebrate and grace the trails, local businesses, clubs and organizations, government officials, and many more. Altogether, MVT is an admirable community effort that reflects and promotes the values of a community that lives in a beautiful part of the world and wants to both share its natural bounty and preserve it.