Guest opinion: Pursuit should can the Columbia Mountain tram

The Pursuit hospitality corporation has an important job: providing lodging and basic services to millions of visitors who come through Glacier National Park every year. They should keep focused on that task and quickly scrap their idea to build a tourist tram into the Swan Range.

Such a tram is utterly inappropriate for this wild landscape and not in keeping with the local vision for this priceless piece of public land.

Pursuit first floated the idea of building this tram to shuttle tourists from Hungry Horse to near timberline on Columbia Mountain back in 2022. The Forest Service rightly rejected the proposal, recognizing that it ran counter to their recently completed management plan for the area.

The company brass either have wax in their ears or their profit motive is overwhelming their sense of community goodwill. They are once again pushing a for a tram from Hungry Horse, across the South Fork of the Flathead River and 3,000 feet up Columbia Mountain. This time they have a highly polished public-relations campaign behind it.

Corporate spin notwithstanding, the idea is still a bad one. The wild Swan Range is the cherished backdrop to the Flathead Valley. These mountains provide places for afternoon walks, to hunt and fish or challenging trips into the backcountry on foot, horse, dirt bike, mountain bike or snowmobile. They are home to grizzly bears and lynx, elk and mule deer, mountain goats and moose. And despite its proximity to town, opportunities for solitude abound. The people of Northwest Montana have not asked for some conveyance to shuttle thousands of tourists to the fragile alpine.

It’s time for the people of Montana to send a clear message to Pursuit and the Flathead National Forest: Montanans do not want their public lands turned into Disneyland. There is no place for a tourist tram in the Swan Range.

Just as in 2022, the Pursuit’s proposed tram is every bit as incompatible with the Forest Plan and landscape as it was in 2022. The management plan, which was developed through extensive public participation, says that the high country of the Swan Range should pretty much be kept as it is. Current uses are to continue, including trails open to motorized dirt bikes, and areas of the mountain, including where the tram would be built, set aside for non-motorized recreation. This strikes a sensible balance for both people and the wild animals of the Swan Range. Shuttling thousands of visitors up Columbia Mountain (even in the dead of winter!) would upset this balance and change the mountain forever.

The proposal for a tram up the Swan Range is industrial tourism at its worst. It does not respect the customs, culture or ecosystem of the Flathead Valley or Swan Range. Instead, it merely seeks to exploit it for private profit. It is yet another example of a big, outside company pushing its vision of a “more is better” future upon our home.

Pursuit still has no local social license to pursue this project. The fact that they are pressing on speaks volumes about its corporate culture.

Pursuit tries to cloak its privateering proposal in the language of “access” for people who can’t or don’t want to walk up to see the views of the Flathead. Nonsense. People who want to see the views can today ride a chairlift to the top of Big Mountain or they can drive to the summit of Blacktail Mountain or to Logan Pass. Make no mistake that traditional access — such as dirt bikes and saddle horses — will not be compatible with a tram and its associated crowds. The sense of solitude that we enjoy in the wild Swans will be lost forever. 

We know from experience that development will not stop with the tram. Whitefish Mountain Resort started out as a mom-and-pop ski hill. Now it is a four-season resort complex with condos, restaurants, rollercoasters, zip lines, mountain biking on top of miles of ski terrain. Expect a similar future for the wild Swans if the tram gets built. 

The Forest Service mission is to think of the future, not just today. Once we open the door to industrial recreation in the Swan Range, the place will be changed forever and there will be no going back. 

This is not a complex debate. The Swan Range is magical and priceless as it is. Industrial tourism will only ruin it. 

Tell Pursuit to keep their hands off the wild Swans and to can the tram. 

Peter Metcalf is executive director of Glacier-Two Medicine Alliance.