It seems there is huge demand for hiking trails that clearly fit within the Park's mission and would also be in spirit with the "outdoor recreation capitol" gig promoted in the advertising. The issue of maintaining road access to the high country should also be addressed in an area-wide recreation plan.

Most of the existing hiking and biking trails are volunteer built, either decades ago or recent. That is a distinct option with this gondola thing, likely the prefered option.

And more to the point, this would be dealing with the man, not sticking it to him,

ghost: But if you have even a single rational neuron in your brain, you'd be willing to agree that if the solution to world peace was to remove a bit of parkland and give it to a developer, you'd do it in a heartbeat. So the question, for all but the blindly religious, is: "Is removing park land justified in this case?"

Me: These are the sorts of questions that philosophers and writers have been agonizing over since humans became self-aware. They're not likely to be answered here.

It's two sides of the same coin, isn't it? And no one is 'right', the compromisers or the uncompromising. Which is why we have government and laws, to allow informed, reasonably impartial decisions, in which all those with an interest in the outcome at least have a reasonable opportunity to be heard. And why maybe, just maybe, as part of the process someone ought to have at least posed the question, even if rhetorically: "Should we be considering removing land from parks, and from these parks in particular, at all?"

If the solution to global warming was discovered under the Chief, we'd mine it - right Anders?

"If I were to present to you irrefutable proof coming from an expert of your choice that global warming was indeed happening and it was caused by man, and it is in our best interest to mitigate against it, would you change your mind?"