I also want to take this time to state that we will keep the record open for 2 weeks if any of you still wish to make a statement.

Mr. SULLIVAN. I forgot to open this folder, sir, and I have a couple of other things that I wanted to introduce.

There was a letter from the Apple Valley News and they wanted to, if possible, have their editorial submitted for the file.

This is also the fact with the Valley Report in Apple Valley; and, also the editor of the Lucerne Valley Leader who submitted information; and, also a group of students from the Victor Valley Junior College; they have submitted a list and a petition of names to be added to your file.

Mr. BARING. In accordance with the way we have handled the other material, that will be included in the file.

Mr. SULLIVAN. Also, I have one other statement I would like to read on behalf of another gentleman who asked me to include it as part of my testimony.

Mr. BARING. Well, that statement, and I am looking at it, the statement of Mr. Sydney Kronenthal, director, division of parks and recreation, city of Culver City, Calif., will be made a part of the file. Mr. SULLIVAN. Thank you very much, sir.

Mr. BARING. I want to thank my colleagues who have given their own personal time to come here and assist with this hearing.

I also want to thank the press. I think their writeups have been most fair. I have followed them very closely during the last 3 days. I also want to thank the public for being so generous. It is a long period to sit here for 2 days; we have a very controversial bill; and Ĭ think you all should be thanked for your conduct and your coming here and giving us the benefit of your practical knowledge.

As I have stated, all of the statements submitted to the reporter, which statements have not been given on the record, will be incorporated into the record at this point as if read.

STATEMENT OF JOHN B. SURR, SECRETARY, EDELWEISS SKI CLUB SAN BERNARDINO, CALIF.

Mr. SURR. Edelweiss Ski Club and John B. Surr, individually, are probably more conversant with winter conditions on San Gorgonio than any other group. They feel that the public, both skiers and nonskiers, would lose much and gain little by permitting commercial ski development in the San Gorgonio Wilderness Area. There knowledge of the wilderness area and the reasons for their position appear below. Indentity of those making this statement and knowledge of the factors involved

As the committee will observe, many witnesses have had but brief acquaintance with the wilderness area, and have only seen one aspect of it. That is not the case with us.

Edelweiss Ski Club was born on Mount San Gorgonio. During a ski trip to that area in the winter of 1934-35, some 15 skiers decided to form the club. It has lasted ever since.

The members reside in various parts of southern California and run the gamut of occupations, including, among others, a machinist, a professional artist, a doctor, a professor, an engineer, and a public

utility employee. The club has remained small, varying in number from 14 to 20.

In each of the 30 years since its founding, club members have skied on Mount San Gorgonio and the surrounding mountains. The only known long-term record of snow conditions in this wilderness area appears in its logbook-admittedly somewhat lighthearted and sketchy-which was kept for many years at a crude shelter which the club maintained near the 10,000-foot elevation on Mount San Gor gonio.

John B. Surr, who joins in this statement, is the perennial secretary of Edelweiss Ski Club. Not only have I skied in the area each year for the last 30 years-I am now 59 years of age-but I have hiked extensively in the area each year since 1929, as well as having hunted and camped there.

For a number of years, he also owned section 3, township 1 south, range 1 east-588 acres-which includes the saddle at 10,000 feet elevation above Dollar Lake, and is the heart of the wilderness area.

So far as skiing experience is concerned, I have skied many of the major western resorts in California, Utah, Idaho, and Colorado since 1935, and am a life member of the Far West Ski Association, and have skied European resorts on two winter trips, as well as having been active in helping to organize a local ski resort-Snow Valley, Inc.some 20 years ago.

My residence in Redlands, Calif., and law office in San Bernardino have made access to Mount San Gorgonio possible on frequent occasions.

Questions to be answered

The values involved in the decision which Congress must make are not matters of dollars and cents, nor is there any common standard of measurement. Fair answers to the questions below should, however, help to resolve the problem in the best interest of the public.

There may be other criteria which should be applied, too, but certainly answers are needed to these questions:

1. If the wilderness area is opened to commercial ski development, is it possible later to reverse the decision, should it prove to have been unwise?

Contrariwise, if the legislation for commercial skiing is now turned down, could commercial skiing later be allowed, if it is then shown to be desirable?

2. Is it good legislative practice to bypass the administrative machinery of the Wilderness Act for deciding upon exclusions from wilderness areas?

3. How great is the need for this wilderness area now? Will that need increase or decrease?

4. Is the suggested commercial ski development compatible with wilderness use?

5. To what extent is this wilderness area unique? To what extent should the commercial ski development be unique?

6. How broad a segment of the public is served by a wilderness area-by a commercial ski area?

7. Can the excluded area be replaced satisfactorily with other land?

8. What effect would a ski resort on San Gorgonio have on skiing itself?

The answers

1. Reversibility.-No elaboration is needed to answer this.

If roads, ski lifts, and related facilities are built, they will never be unbuilt, but, from their nature, will last almost indefinitely.

If the proposed special legislation is rejected, however, the Wilderness Act provides for periodic reconsideration of status, and Congress could, if it chose, authorize commercial ski development at a later time.

Authorizing commercial ski lifts in the wilderness area would be irreversible-rejection of them could be reversed at a later time. 2. Bypassing the Wilderness Act.-If Congress wants a Pandora's box of troubles to open, here it is.

The Wilderness Act carefully sets up the procedure for administrative consideration and recommendation as to changes in wilderness areas, and for legislative consideration of such changes.

The proposal to exclude part of the San Gorgonio wilderness area by direct congressional action is the first attempt to avoid the exclusion procedures set up just last year in the Wilderness Act.

The conclusion is clear. Rejecting direct congressional action would tend to channel future proposals for exclusion through the established administrative process. The exclusion from wilderness by direct legislation which you are considering would be a precedent for all such matters to be dumped in the lap of Congress.

3. The present and future need for the San Gorgonio wilderness area. No denial of the need for San Gorgonio as a wilderness area has yet been heard, and it would be a presumptuous person who would suggest that the need does not exist.

The basic facts relied on to show the need for a commercial ski area demonstrate the essentialness of wilderness-but more so. A southern California population of more than 8 million today looks to San Gorgonio as the only wilderness area high enough to avoid fire closure and to provide meadows, streams, and springs for the camper, hiker, picnicker, or naturalist.

That San Gorgonio has the highest rate of use per square mile of any wilderness area in the United States shows that it is among the most needed. If any wilderness area should exist, this should.

In a brief 15 years, it is estimated that southern California's population will be over 16 million. Due to the arid climate, southern California is virtually devoid of natural greenery below 4,500 feet elevation.

Manifestly, in the future, the San Gorgonio wilderness area will be a more necessary refuse from the "asphalt jungle" which will then stretch from the mountains to the sea, than it has ever been before. As smog increases, the clear air of the heights and the brilliance of the stars at night become more and more necessary to mental balance and satisfaction in living. Each added traffic jam on the freeway gives new value to the naturalness of San Gorgonio.

4. Compatibility of wilderness and commercial ski development.— Perhaps the question answers itself. Could even a 5-year-old child

imagine that he was in the wilderness while father was parking the car in the parking lot, while the child was riding uphill on a ski lift, or even while he was hearing or seeing automobiles come up the road or passengers come up the ski lift?

Yet, this is a point which has been stressed with apparent seriousness by those who would supplant nature with ski lifts.

Getting down to essential details, the proposed legislation, in section 1 calls for this selection of excluded area:

The area which he so sets aside shall be that which he finds most suitable for family winter recreational use and for the development and installation of facilities necessary therefor * * *.

This selection must be made where it will be best for the downhill skiers regardless of what it does to other uses of the land.

If this be compatible, Heaven preserve us from incompatibility. To be specific, this would require cutting out of the wildernessthe very heart of it-that is, the slopes from Dry Lake to the ridge of San Gorgonio, including the Big Draw, the Little Draw, and possibly the Dollar Lake region.

Certainly, that portion of the wilderness would be best suited to the ordinary ski resort at which most customers are begging or lowintermediate skiers, and which requires the adjuncts of large parking

areas et cetera.

What would such a development do to wilderness use? Let us look at some of those who would be affected.

Hunters: Deer hunting would be eliminated all along the north side of Mount San Gorgonio east of South Fork (an area of more than 15 square miles) since San Bernardino County has habitually prohibited use of rifles for a considerable distance on either side of major highways (see ordnance No, 1247). Nor would game stay in proximity to a main road.

Hikers: No hike worthy of the name would be left on the north side of San Gorgonio except possibly the single overused trail from Poopout Hill via Dollar Lake to the summit of San Gorgonio. But, it would be asking almost too much of human nature to expect hikers to climb more than 3,500 feet of elevation in about 9 miles when they could get to the summit by road and chair lift, plus, perhaps, 1,000 feet of climb in 22 miles.

Campers: The 26 youth camps, plus Boy Scout troops, contribute the greatest number of overnight campers. The Dry Lake Basin, which is just beginning to be used heavily would be lost to them and others as a camping area. Campsites at South Fork, Meadows would be below the Dry Lake road and, thus, lose the remoteness which gives them appeal. Only Dollar Lake, of the campsites on the north side of San Gorgonio, would be left relatively unaffected, and it is so overcrowded as to be avoided by most "old hands.".

Naturalists: Since none of our group is a naturalist, we shall only suggest that manmade roads and other structures cannot fail to change conditions under which various fauna will persist. Certainly the big horn sheep of the area would leave if a road went to Dry Lake and ski lifts radiated from there.

People who want to get away from civilization: If it is not so already, this will be the most important group of all in years to come. Cities in the Eastern United States and in other parts of the world have fields, forests, and greenery nearby, southern California does not. San Gorgonio and other limited areas of high mountains must provide a release from man's works and cares for all of southern California, not just the portion nearby.

This is made plain by the people we have seen there; teenage boys from the Long Beach area, who had hitchhiked their way to San Gorgonio for spring vacation, and whose boots let in the snow and water they encountered while camping there, scientists from Cal-Tech in Pasadena, oceanographers from La Jolla, a German exchange student from Göttingen, Boy Scouts from many areas, and, in the summer of 1965, 90 underprivileged Los Angeles area children in one group, who were encountered near the summit of San Gorgonio with their JCA counselors.

For those who wish to find nature and escape manmade structures, it would be a contradiction in terms to say that roads and ski lifts were compatible with their use of the wilderness area.

5. Unique qualities. The wilderness area: The San Gorgonio Wilderness Area is small, as wildernesses go, but it is the best that southern California has or ever will have.

The only other area within 175 miles which is comparable in terrain or elevation is Mount San Jacinto, which has its eastern base at Palm Springs. But, San Jacinto has not been a wilderness area. On the contrary, a tramway already reaches the 8,500-foot elevation there, at which a restaurant and other facilities exist. Moves are afoot to develop a winter sport resort above the tramway, and will probably be consummated.

So, if the heart goes out of San Gorgonio, the rest may be expected to follow, and there will be no mountain wilderness area for 8 million or more people.

A San Gorgonio ski resort: How unique would it be?

On this subject there has been more misinformation broadcast than on almost any other.

The things that make a great ski resort, aside from facilities and a lengthy season, include these:

(a) Reliable snow for an extended season;

(b) Substantial differences in altitude between the tops and bottoms of major runs;

(c) Freedom from icy conditions.

To begin with, we believe that San Gorgonio would make a commercial success as a ski resort, assuming that public entities built, maintained and kept snow off a road to Dry Lake. This would follow from the populous nature of southern California, and from comparison with the dozen or more other ski resorts in the San Gabriel and San Bernardino Mountains, all of which suffer from the same latitude, the same storm patterns, somewhat lower elevation, and inferior terrain.