WINTER SPORTS 125 



to get the crowds to the snow country. "Snow buses" and "snow planes" 

 are more recent developments operating to some extent in both the East 

 and West. 



Most winter sports parties come to the mountain, and part way up the 

 mountain, in their own cars. This calls for keeping roads up the mountain 

 open, whatever the weather; for sizable parking places, cleared of snow 

 accumulations, somewhere near the pleasure slopes and heights; and for 

 further measures of crowd convenience and sanitation. 



The push of late years to extend and maintain national-forest and State 

 highways for year-round use has been a major influence in extending winter 

 sports. Foresters selecting winter-sports areas give preference to places 

 that can be reached over roads that are plowed for other purposes. Where 

 this can be done, there is no greatly increased cost of maintenance. But the 

 pressure of demand by winter sportsmen is sometimes such that roads 

 never before kept open all winter are now snow-plowed regularly, and resi- 

 dent families who used to be snowed in most of the winter now can run down 

 into town whenever they please — thanks to the winter sportsmen. 



Another development that follows the penetration of active Americans 

 to mountain playgrounds, over sanded and plowed roads, is a following 

 throng of motorists, some spectators, others just motoring — driving up the 

 mountain and down again in winter, as they do in summer, just to be 

 more or less out of doors and moving. Motoring promises, on some such 

 forests, to become in point of participating persons, the leading winter 

 sport there, just as now it is generally the leading summer forest sport. 



As the fall winds sharpen on many a forested mountain, the forest guards 

 set border markers, stakes 20 feet high or higher, to mark the winding 

 shoulders of tortuous mountain roads. These stakes serve to guide the 

 tractors that push the snow plows or bulldozers as the snows fall, drift, 

 and deepen, all winter long. Occasionally a marker is covered entirely, 

 but 20 feet is generally tall enough to stand above the snow and guide 

 the plows. By such means the highway to beautiful Timberline Lodge, for 

 instance, a Forest Service resort on the Mount Hood National Forest in 

 Oregon, is kept open for winter sportsmen, their followers, and the local 

 people, all winter long. The construction and year-round maintenance 



