A gondola up to Little Cottonwood makes more sense

I drove up to Little Cottonwood Canyon the other day. On the list of state treasures, I would place Little Cottonwood a cut above Zion National Park and on par with Delicate Arch. It should be on the license plates. In a way, I guess so.

Again, I am biased. I have a personal connection to the canyon that dates back almost to when the American Indians owned it.

My grandfather, Adolph, a Swedish immigrant who changed his name from Bengtsson to Benson, settled in Sandy and at one point had a stake in Alta Gladstone Mining Co., located in the Gad Valley where is located now Snowbird. I still have the share certificates to prove it.

In the 1860s, my great-grandfather, Salomon Despain, owned a 320-acre property at the mouth of the canyon near the current location of La Caille restaurant. He built and operated a shingle mill. My mother, Beryl, was born and raised in Granite.

In more modern times, I learned to ski on the so-called Never Sweat slope in the Albion basin in Alta. I still remember my brother Gordy flying over the crest of a hill he should never have tried to fly over. I had some of the worst sunburns of my life on the Wildcat lift for weekend sunbathing that I could show off at Jordan High on Monday, and I almost froze to death more than once on the lift from Germania, with my friend Doug Berry and I saying every swear word we knew trying to get lightning to hit us and warm us up. We were teenagers.

I was an employee of Snowbird the day the station opened in December 1971. I was on Christmas vacation at college and got a job parking cars. It snowed on Christmas Day that year and an avalanche closed the road, cornering me and everyone else in the resort, as well as 2 feet of fresh powder – and I didn’t bring my skis.

Hiked Lone Peak, climbed to the top of the Pfeifferhorn, hiked the Temple Quarry trail, did the Snowbird Hill Climb several times on my bike. My brother Dee won the women’s division of the one year race. He stepped onto the podium after his name was called out and informed them that he was not a woman. The race director, in a hurry, looked at him and said, “Are you sure? Just one of the countless good memories I have of Little Cottonwood Canyon.

And is there a more scenic canyon somewhere? It’s like the Creator said, “OK, look at this. This is the Brad Pitt of the glacier-shaped canyons, with huge granite walls serving as sentries to the eternal home of the greatest snow on Earth. There is nothing fishy about it.

Kristin Murphy, Deseret News

All of this is an introduction to the canyon’s ever-growing popularity, the crowds that throng it, especially on powder days in the winter, and the decision the state faces as to what to do about it. this subject.

So far, two courses of action have gained ground: the first, widening the road and providing more bus services. Second, build a gondola that connects the mouth of the canyon to Snowbird and Alta.

In round numbers, the road widening and the gondola have an advertised price of around $ 500 million. (A train through the bottom of the canyon – as it was in the days of the Alta Gladstone mine – would cost over $ 1 billion. So that doesn’t seem like an option.)

The debate between road and cable car seems to me to be an easy call. A gondola makes a lot more sense. I don’t understand why someone would vote to widen the road and increase traffic, which is the initial problem. Not only is there still a dead end and limited parking at the top, but this plan essentially gives in to global warming and air pollution, at least until everyone stops driving gasoline vehicles. . And is there anything uglier or more intrusive in a canyon than the causeway?

A year after Salt Lake won the 2002 Olympic bid, I covered some meetings of the International Olympic Committee in Switzerland and visited the Jungfraujoch region. Another time, after covering the 1992 Olympic Games in Albertville, I returned home via Zermatt, the Swiss village at the foot of the Matterhorn. I was impressed by the ski lifts and the Jungfrau cog railway system which allow you to travel from ski resort to ski resort over a distance of several kilometers, without the need for a car. In Zermatt, I was surprised to learn that they don’t allow cars at all. There are a few e-taxis, but apart from construction machinery, gasoline vehicles are verboten. The reasoning is elementary: who, in their right mind, wants pollution to obscure the view of the Matterhorn?

Both were examples of doing things outside of normal conventions when solving an issue involving iconic mountains. A gondola that would carry up to 4,000 people an hour to the top of Little Cottonwood Canyon would require 20 lift rides that mar the pristine beauty of the forest, that’s right, but it’s no different from ski lift tours of the resorts and it beats the canyon road alternative mimicking Highway 405 during rush hour. I also think a gondola would prove to be a huge tourist draw in the summer.

The base gondola terminal, as proposed, would be built on an empty plot northeast of La Caille restaurant in Sandy. Great-grandfather Despain’s former playground. He lived before cars, before skiing for that matter, but like his offspring, he loved the canyon next to which he lived. I’m sure he would vote for the gondola as well.

Kristin Murphy, Deseret News