III. SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT

While this is in fact a complex matter, it involves essentially two issues. The first is that the Forest Service improperly treated Snowbird's master development plan - that proposes, inter alia, the construction of a giant building on the top of the highly visible Hidden Peak and to develop the relatively untouched Mineral Basin with chairlifts and ski runs - as two, unconnected projects. Some of what makes these projects connected is; 1) the fact that need for the Hidden Peak complex, and specifically its location on Hidden Peak, is justified by the development in Mineral Basin, 2) the Forest Service secretly deeded public forest lands to Snowbird that were crucial to the construction of the Mineral Basin chairlifts, 3) skiers using Mineral Basin will ski on Forest Service lands, 4) avalanche control for Mineral Basin will occur on public lands and 5) all Mineral Basin skier services are accessed via and totally dependant on Forest Service lands.

Second, in analyzing and approving the Mineral Basin land exchange and the huge Hidden Peak structure that will visually tarnish much of the mountainscape of the National Forests, the Forest Service failed in its statutory and regulatory obligations. Specifically, the Forest Service made its relevant decisions before informing itself of the alternatives to and environmental impacts of these proposals and before facilitating meaningful public participation in the information gathering and decision making process. The scope of the agency's deficiencies range from the issuance of a decision so vague that it undermines the notion of making a public decision to its refusal to consider a full range of alternatives to the proposed Hidden Peak structure even though many reasonable unexamined alternatives existed, including one that Snowbird admitted it could live with.