Developers pull ads overstating ski area

Developers of a gated ski-resort community have pulled advertising copy that said they could run ski lifts and snowcats as high as 12,000 feet onto national forest land designated as non-motorized.

"It sounded good," said Craig Burton, one of the players behind the redevelopment of the bankrupt Elk Meadows ski area near Beaver. "It only stayed on our Web site for a week."

Burton said he agreed to drop those claims after the U.S. Forest Service told him it wasn't possible to run lifts or snowcats up Mount Holly, a 12,000-foot peak that towers over the tiny ski area.

The description appeared as fact in a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal on Dec. 1 and still can be seen in an "eBrochure" at the Robb Report's vacationhomesmag. com.

Elk Meadows closed four years ago and left a set of chair lifts hanging in the air. It offered 1,400 vertical feet of skiing, a modest figure by U.S. standards. Burton said he wanted to add lifts for a 2,500-foot vertical drop.

That would put the new lifts on roadless national forest land.

The ad boasted that "extreme" snowcat skiing is also available, up to 12,000 feet above sea level.

"We don't know what they're talking about," said Terry Krasko, a ranger for the Beaver district of the Fishlake National Forest, who asked Burton to drop the advertising claims. "We don't have anybody permitted to do that."

The exclusive resort is still months away from approval by Beaver County planners and commissioners. But the Mount Holly advertisement suggests it's already been built and is open for the "2007" season — it wasn't clear if that meant this winter or next.

U.S. Olympic skier and gold medalist Ted Ligety "serves as director of skiing," the ad said.

Ligety is busy on the World Cup circuit this winter.

"We know they don't exist yet," Krasko said of the proposed $3.5 billion resort. "Everything is conceptual."

The Mount Holly Club Web site features scenic photographs of skiing that appear to have been taken in British Columbia's mountains, said Alec Hornstein, a former helicopter ski guide in Canada who runs backcountry ski tours out of Elk Meadows.

It shows a mountain setting for a Jack Nicklaus-commissioned golf course that doesn't exist yet at the Mount Holly Club. Hornstein said at Elk Meadow's elevation, nearly 10,000 feet, golfers would be lucky to get two months of cooperative weather a year.