Clay Brandow, retired hydrologist
ABSTRACT
In the early 1980s, a study was launched by the Sequoia National Forest of a site for a new ski area in the southern Sierra Nevada on Slate Mountain (elevation 9,302 ft/2,835 m). The working tilted was Peppermint Mountain Resort (PMR), based on the study area, the Upper Peppermint Creek watershed (2100 acres/850 hectares), tributary to the Kern River. The objective of the study was to inform a Federal Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS). The significant portion of the study concerned snow and snowpack, including: potential seasonal opening dates, water, supply, and hydrometeorlogic conditions for snowmaking, creek flow, groundwater availability, and potential avalanche hazards. This narrative reflects on the experiences and observations of a young hydrologist, a member of the four-person ID team. Topics include: 1) interesting people encountered, including Avalanche Expert Ed LaChapelle, Kern River Water-Master Chuck Williams, Blaster/Jack-of-all-trades Virgil Dunlap, and ID-Team Leader/Land Use Planner Julie Allen,2) fun and often challenging, all-season fieldwork, particularly the snow measurement and stream gaging,3) potential utility of the now “orphaned data’’, collected in the pre-digital age, to researchers working in the Sierra Nevada, today, and4) Epilogue.
INTERESTING PEOPLE
Edward R. ‘Ed” LaChapelle (1926-2007) was an avalanche expert of some renown. As luck would have it, Ed had a standing service contract with Forest Service. Team Leader, Julie Allen, was able to arrange for Professor LaChapelle to come down for a few days and ski the mountain with me, and check on the avalanche path mapping work I had done, and make his own map, report and recommendations. Ed had recently transitioned from professor of atmospheric sciences and geophysics to emeritus status. Professor Emeritus LaChapplle worked extensively avalanche path identification and safety.
We had planned to get a helicopter ride to the top of Slate Mountain (elevation 9,302 ft), but when Ed arrived in Porterville, California, the weather had closed in. So Ed and I drove up to end of California Highway 190 at the Western Divide and booked a room at the Ponderosa Lodge. From there we accessed the mountain on backcountry skis via the unplowed Western Divide Highway (County Road 107). This was an enjoyable learning experience for me.
Ed filed his brief report with maps, entitled “Avalanche Problems in the Proposed Peppermint Creek Ski Area”, on February 10,1983. Ed identified and mapped two primary areas of concern. One was inside study, but tributary to the Tule River (listed as Indian Bowl and Quaker Face). I missed this one. The second was immediately south of the study area, and potentially affected road access from the south on Western Divide Highway (listed as Horsetail Slides.) I was able to draw Ed’s attention to this area, and he included it in his report. A small area inside the study and potentially affecting what become the various proposed alternatives was identified (listed as Freezeout Cirque). Overall Ed was not enthusiastic about this proposed ski area, saying it might appeal to a few Angelenos (LaChapelle 1984).
Chuck Williams (1929-2022) remains the longest serving Kern River Watermaster. Chuck was old school civil engineer and a graduate of Stanford. He was known by associates as a great story teller. He was an affable fellow, but truth be known, I was a little intimidated by him.
Because of a recent court decision, there was cloud over Forest Reservation (National Forest) water rights for purposes other than for which the Reservations were originally established, such as recreational ski areas. So it became incumbent upon me to meet with the Kern River Watermaster to discuss diversions of water from Peppermint Creek (tributary to the Kern River) for the purposes of snowmaking and domestic resort use.
Chuck took me to lunch at his favorite all-you-can eat buffet in Bakersfield, California, to discuss the needs of the project. Chuck respectfully listened to this very young Forest Service hydrologist explain the situation. Then, sensing my worry, Chuck smiled and put his arm on my shoulder, and said. “Clay, my boy, there are are very few problems reasonable men can’t solve with money.” This was my introduction to the world of Kern River water-politics, also known as “The Law of the River.”
Virgil Dunlap (1926-2012), a child of the Depression, was one of those fearless, highly and widely skilled, jack of all trades, of which most Forest Service Districts used to have at least one. Virgil’s skills in blasting, welding and concrete work, and his his large and well-stocked boneyard, were critical in helping me to install two stream gaging stations, plus a site for measuring snowfall, precipitation, temperature and relative humidity.
Here is one funny story among many. We were rushing to install the lower gaging station on Peppermint Creek, below the confluence with Holby Creek before winter snows cutoff access. Virgil look at my back-of-the envelope design and said, “Sure I can build that.” He set a charge to blast out a footing for the left wing wall. Then we walked up slope, reeling two wires, and squatted behind a large pine tree. After Virgil connected the wires to the detonator, I questioned whether we were back far enough. He told me not worry, yelled , and pushed the plunger. There was a large blast, and then a fluttering sound, which got louder rapidly. And then thud, a volleyball-size piece of granite hit the pine we were crouched behind on the blast side of the tree 20-feet above our heads. In shock, I looked at Virgil. He grinned at me and said, “That’s why we hide behind a tree.”
When Virgil retired, he was able to win the public auction for his beloved boneyard, and trucked it home on his personal flatbed, grinning ear-to-ear. Loosing guys like Virgil, his skills and boneyard, is a lose I don’t think the Forest service has ever recovered from.
Julie Allen is a Planner, ID-team Leader for this project and had a long career with the Sequoia National Forest. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley, and a master at organizing large planning projects like PMR-EIS. Her core ID-Team (Inter-Disciplinary Team) consisted herself as team leader, Engineer Darrel Cherry, Landscape Architect James Heinle, and Hydrologist Clay Brandow. James was the only one experienced with ski area design and planning, having worked on Steamboat Springs in Colorado. At 31, I was the youngest member of the ID-Team and very happy to have been picked.
Julie was truly remarkable in her ability to organize and anticipate the the needs of the study, and publish the draft PMR-EIS in timely fashion. One of the early things Julie organized was tour of ski areas serving the Southern California market, including all their local ski areas and Mammoth.
The ski areas in Southern California, excluding Mammoth, are highly dependent on snowmaking. This was true even 40-years ago. Snowmaking requires a lot of capital investment, labor, energy, and water. But it works in Southern California., because they are so close to one of the largest metro-areas in the US, and can sell-out almost any day they have skiable snow. These field trips were a useful and fascinating education.
Some of the outside experts Julie hired included economic consultants, who looked at the potential economic viability of the project. I learned from them that ski area and golf courses often include a real estate development component, which helps the financials. This proposal did not include a real estate development. The other big issue is economies of scale: how big should the resort be in-terms of capacity, measured in SAOT (skiers at one time), to be financially viable. Indeed the alternatives listed in the draft PMR-EIS centered on various ski area sizes.
FUN & CHALLENGING WORK
Challenging and fun fieldwork is what attracted me to wild-land hydrology in first place, and this project provided plenty.
Designing, building and getting two stream gaging stations up and running in just a few months was one of the challenges. Also setting up a steel-tower to measure precipitation., and a site for measuring snowfall, both cumulative and storm-by-storm was accomplished in short order. As I mentioned previously, Virgil Dunlop’s skills and salvage materials were critical to this effort. I am not sure the Forest Service could move this fast today.
Air quality specialist, Trent Procter, needed assistance setting up monitoring at the base area (elevation 7,200 ft) and on the peak (elevation 9,302 ft). The primary focus at the base temperature and relative humidity to estimate conditions for snowmaking. Wind speeds were the primary focus on the summit. I recently reminisced with Trent about helicopter landings on the rocky and often snow capped peak, which we agreed were a little dicey. The pilot kept the rotors turning the the whole time we would work on the monitoring equipment.
What I most enjoyed though was skiing a circuit to measure snowpack and snowfall, service the two stream gaging stations, and collect water samples to establish baseline water quality for Peppermint Creek. Both stream gages used were now old-fashioned Leopold Stevens Stage Recorders, which recorded on paper. Collecting snowfall data using a snowboard, got me out of the office after each storm. And 1981-82 was big snow year in the Southern Sierra, and 1982-83 set records, broken recently in 2022-23. Both the 1983 and 2023 large snowmelt runoffs resulted in the reemergence of Tulare Lake.
One of the most difficult tasks was trying to predict future snow seasons for PMR. The nearby Quaking Aspen Snow Survey Course (#247) in the Tule River watershed was used, but the record was short and the data limited, particularly for the all important early season. Opening by the Christmas holiday was critical to the economic success of most California ski areas. Direct snowfall comparisons were made between the Quaking Aspen Course site and the proposed PMR base area. As mentioned, the study period included two heavy snowpack years in the Southern Sierra, only, and no low snowpack seasons. Of course in the the early 1980’s Climate Change was not a topic of concern and generally not considered in EISs.
POTENTIAL UTILITY of “ORPHANED DATA”
Studies like this one, whether the project is built or not, produce a lot of hydrometeorologic data over the the few years the study is in progress. Proper archiving of this data is problematic, creating what I call “orphaned data”. Sometimes this data sits in filling cabinets in a government office until the person who collected and stored the data moves or retires. If the person who collected the data doesn’t take a copy of the data with him or her, this data is at high risk of being discarded.
Because this data was collected in earlier decades, some of this data may be of utility to current researchers for comparative purposes. But there are several obstacles. First is knowing such data exists and its location. Second is meta-data is often lacking, severely limiting the utility of the data. However, if the the person who is archiving the data is working with the person who collected the data, there maybe a second chance to generate the necessary meta-data from oral interviews.
EPILOGUE
PMR was never built. It had been suggested as an alternative to the proximate, but previously ill-fated ski area proposal at Mineral King, a project of interest to Walt Disney. Disney died in 1966. Increasingly controversial, this project continued until 1978, when Congress removed Mineral King from the Sequoia National Forest, and annexed it to the Sequoia National Park.
Upper Peppermint Creek was selected as an alternative site. The PMR-EIS was published December 1985. Many comments were received. Response to public comment was 140 pages long. I left the Sequoia National Forest in October 1986, to go to work the California Cooperative Snow Survey, under a two-year inter-agency personnel agreement (IPA) between the California Department of Water Resources and the USDA Forest Service.
A series administrative appeals were filed with Forest Service by groups opposed to project. In a recent conversation with Julie Allen, I learned that the Forest Service quietly dropped the proposal in 1989, after receiving yet another appeal.
I have no regrets about working on this project, nor do I regret that the proposed ski area was never built. Two factors were unknown to us 40-years ago: 1) changes in the ski industry (The Economist(. 2024) (Dent, Mark. 2024) and 2) potential changed in the climate (Scott, D., & Steiger, R. 2024).
REFERENCES
Anonymous. Stoked: How monopoly and price discrimination are transforming skiing, The Economist, March 2-8, 2024, 20-21.
Dent, Mark. 2024. Powder and Profits: The economics of ski resorts.
https://thehustle.co/powder-and-profits-the-economics-of-ski-resorts
LaChapelle, Edward R., February 10,1983, Avalanche problems in the proposed Peppermint Creek Ski Area. Consultant’s report to Sequoia National Forest.
Scott, D., & Steiger, R. 2024. How climate change is damaging the US ski industry. Current Issues in Tourism, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/13683500.2024.2314700
USDA Forest Service, 1985, Peppermint Mountain Resort — Environmental Impact Statement.8
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