Save Our Canyons vocal about Wasatch

Save Our Canyons and the National Forest Service have a love-hate relationship. They work together to rebuild trails, but Save Our Canyons also has a lawsuit against the Forest Service.

"We can be a real nuisance," said SOC President Gale Dick.

Meet Save Our Canyons, a local, nonprofit organization focused on protecting the Wasatch Mountains above Salt Lake City. It is about 1,000 members strong. It gives written and vocal input to the Forest Service, volunteers to do work on trails, picks up trash on the side of a canyon road and occasionally takes the Forest Service or some other organization to court.

SOC currently has a lawsuit asking the Forest Service to take a harder look at whether helicopters carrying skiers should be allowed to operate in the mountains near Salt Lake City.

SOC is concerned about the impact the helicopters and the explosives used by the helicopter-ski companies for avalanches has on wildlife and other people who are hiking or skiing in the backcountry, Dick said.

Without pro bono work done by lawyers, it would be impossible to bring the lawsuits, Dick said.

Still, the organization racked up $35,000 in legal fees fighting Salt Lake County to keep a road out of the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon. SOC lost that battle.

Lawsuits are often what put SOC in the limelight, but it has only launched a handful of lawsuits over the years, said SOC trustee Alexis Kelner. It isn't the first course of action.

Members try to influence the Forest Service through submitting written comments and attending public meetings, he said, because the Forest Service makes many of the decisions affecting the canyons.

Federal agencies like the Forest Service often ignore the advice of citizens like the members of SOC, Dick said, and that leads to lawsuits.

"I don't envy Forest Service personnel at all," Dick said. "They've got people like us and other organizations yammering on one side. They've got Congress and individual senators yammering at them. They've got an industry demanding that they do thus."

Sometimes SOC can't stand what the Forest Service does, and the Forest Service probably feels the same way about SOC sometimes, Dick said.

But when it comes to volunteer work, SOC has a close relationship with the Forest Service, SOC volunteer coordinator Gayle Parry said.

During the past year, SOC volunteers have come out for four weekends to work on four different trails: the Mill B North and Mill D North trails in Big Cottonwood Canyon, Catherine Pass near Alta and the Lake Mary Trail at Brighton.

The Lake Mary Trail, which reopened Sept. 29 after being closed for three years, was in large part funded by a $2,500 grant that SOC received from REI, Parry said.