the needs of our growing State and National population. This Wilderness area is vital for its own innate worth, a heritage for untold millions to camp, hike, ski, and recreate in; an undeveloped uncommercialized wilderness located, fortunately for southern California citizens, in a Mediterranean or dry subtropical climatic zone.

You, as Members of Congress, who have witnessed the icebergs of detergent foam flowing down the Potomac River daily can appreciate the concerns of many of us here for our valley and its underground water resources that descend to us from the San Gorgonio watershed. These water resources may not seem significant with the anticipated flow of Feather River water coming from the North, but in future unforseen emergencies or major catastrophies, this resource could be vital to all the people of southern California.

Those interests that urge a commercialized downhill ski investment into this wilderness area represent what I believe is an absolute minimum use when we consider the area's wealth of recreational use, in its present state. America and southern California does not need the 5 hour a week investment in minimum physical effort in downhill skiing that those supporting H.R. 6891 want. The United States and southern California needs to better educate its citizens on the values inherent in ski touring. Granted this type of skiing is more rugged, takes more in physical condition and physical stamina to participate in.

As an athletic coach and athletic director here at the San Bernardino Valley College for the past 17 years, I have been most pleased with the national emphasis on physical fitness. I personally see the conversion of this great area and its wonderful potential growth for ski touring into a downhill ski resort area as incongruous to our national aims. Furthermore, I am alarmed when a young Olympic coach, along with other downhill ski enthusiasts and those persons who have commercial designs on this wilderness area, decide that they can link our future success or past failures in international ski competition and the Olympic games to the specific withdrawal of a portion of the San Gorgonio Wilderness Area. This cure-all is quite hollow in its design.

We might as well reason that opening this area and building running tracks at the high elevation will win the next Olympic track and field championships because Mexico City, the host of the next Olympics, has an elevation of 7,440 feet.

There is further incongruity in suggesting that southern California should be a developmental area for the top skiers in international competition. To conceive that a dry subtropical area, because it is highly populated, should produce our national representatives in skiing, ignores that natural athletic development that occurs in those climatic regions where our skiers have come from in the past. I would prefer to think that track and field, swimming and boating, are indigenous to our geographical region and that skiing and winter sports are more indigenous to our colder climatic zones.

My next major concern is relative to the terminology used in H.R. 6891, when it refers to the proposed use "to provide family winter recreational use." The area is now being used for "family recreation" at no greater cost to the user than his investment in his equipment. Today the parking is free in this wilderness area. If some members of the family can afford ski equipment, they can ski at no cost and other

family members can ride their sleds and toboggans at no cost to the family.

In contrast, if one wishes to ski at nearby Snow Valley it would cost $6 to ride the ski lift per family member. For a family of four this would cost $24 a day. According to a member of the ski patrol this year Mammoth Mountain will be charging $7 per person to ride the ski lift or $28 for a family of four per day.

If this area were opened up would it create new opportunities for metropolitan Los Angeles families to participate? And what sociological cross-section of our society could provide a family of four the $16 for transportation, the $24 for skilift tickets and about $10 for meals? Now, let's add the costs of equipment which would be necessary to either the family that ski tours for free or the family that downhill skis:

If this area is opened to commercial downhill skiing, we can count on the need for commercial-type parking. According to Warren A. Johnson, Assistant Park Engineer at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park, their parking areas assign 130 spaces per acre. His

letter reads as follows:

Mr. SYLVESTER HEINBERG,

Athletic Director, San Bernardino Valley College,
San Bernardino, Calif.

DEAR MR. HEINBERG: We do not keep an inventory of the acres of parking provided in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. Many areas are used for parking that are not specifically designated such as along roads. As an average our designated parking areas have approximately 130 spaces per acre which includes roadway adjacent to the space for access. The average number of people per car is 3.5 on weekdays and 3.7 on weekends and holidays.

Your fourth question concerning the number of acres of forest terrain per acre of parking would be difficult to answer. It depends on the topography of the area. If it was level, the acres of forest terrain would about equal the acres of parking. On steep sites area would be consumed by cut and embankment.

I hope this information will be of value to you.
Sincerely yours,

WARREN A. JOHNSON,
Assistant Park Engineer.

The inferences that the promoters make is that if San Gorgonio is open that very little timber will need to be cut near the ski runs. Nothing has been said about the loss of timber where the parking will take place. Let's open up all the factors in this case if H.R. 6891 is to pass. The expansive parking area would have to be at the elevation where we now maintain a great many youth camps.

The youth coming to the mountains look forward to natural beauty, not a continuation of their asphalt jungles that they have tried to leave behind them. These acres of parking would in addition detract from our needed watershed.

Gentlemen, I feel that I am well paid in my present capacity as division chairman of physical education and coordinator of athletics at San Bernardino Valley College. Let me assure you my family, as an entity, can afford the free summer and winter recreation our present wilderness area provides each weekend. We could afford very few trips to a commercial ski resort. If actually polled, you will find that families do not support these commercial ventures except in rare instances. The commercial ski resorts are most often supported by single members of families and most often by the very youth who need the physical experience of ski touring.

In concluding, I would like to recommend that as a part of the national fitness effort, we encourage and promote the sport of ski touring through explanatory films, booklets, and slides and promote the free, healthful potential in family winter recreational use that exists in the great natural area of the San Gorgonio wilderness.

This issue of whether a portion of the San Gorgonio Wilderness should be set aside for commercial interests is not new and it will come up again in the future because as long as any one thinks that there is a "buck" to be made, they will try and try again. Havelock Ellis made the point in his "A Dance of Life" when he said, "The moon, the sun, and the stars would have disappeared long ago were they within reach of predatory human hands." I ask the committee's support in maintaining the San Gorgonio Wilderness area inviolate.

I believe the position I am representing is that of concern for national fitness and particularly fitness locally in the southern California

area.

I was pleased and honored to be allowed to speak before you, gentlemen, and very appreciative of the time and consideration which you are giving to hearing the points that are, I think, cogent to the issues at large.

We have heard some of the people present positions heretofore, their positions on physical fitness and physical education, and I am concerned that we have a very strong and wonderful national fitness program going. I think it is completely incongruous to take an area which represents, I think, the finest of the developmental areas and aspects of rugged mountaineering, cross-country skiing, ski-touring, and converting this into a downhill-type of skiing program. I think it is completely incongruous and I think that it should be emphasized that this is a point that should be clarified.

Now, we have heard from gentlemen such as people of the stature of Mr. Merritt and others, and I think those of us in California who have put in the years which we have here appreciate those names in our athletic past in this area.

Now, I get concerned when people who come to us say, "I have, in my youth, climbed those mountains; I have skied these areas; now, I am interested in having it established in a downhill pattern for recreation to simplify and make it easier for more people to ski.

I am concerned with a program that will identify, publicize, broadcast, and give forth the forest of cross-country skiing, of ski-touring, of mountaineering, in the winter, as well as that kind of a program that we see developed in the summer. I think this can very well happen.

We heard the arguments relative to the fact that there are problems in traveling 4 hours to these areas. I say, gentlemen, that all of south

ern California, is having a travel problem, and I do not see this as the answer to opening up this area. I think that we have in Japan developed trains that can travel at a hundred and a hundred and twenty miles an hour with electricity and we can do the same in this country by moving our population to good recreational areas. I do not see Disney putting in a tremendously large amount of money in the Mineral King area which is based on a survey indicating that he could open it up and draw heavily from the Los Angeles population, and supply his populous there with the people from the Los Angeles area. At this particular time, I don't think the need is here.

I think until such time as we achieve the effects of the Mineral King area, until such time as the chambers of commerce of Big Bear cities do not come in in opposition because they know they will lose their ski traffic to the area, I think

Mr. BARING. Just a moment. Let me interrupt you.

Who did you mean when you indicated that you thought a mass transit or rapid transit system could be put in?

Mr. HEINBERG. I am concerned with the entirety of southern California which is involved. I know this is a national problem; this is a matter of congressional concern; transportation is a major congressional concern and will be for the next 20 years. I am concerned also that private enterprise as well as Government support be concerned in the future in this particular direction.

Mr. BARING. You do not mean, though, that the Government should put in a rapid or mass transit in southern California for either group, did you?

Mr. HEINBERG. No, I am not saying that this should be done; I say only that the potential exists. I am very pleased that you have asked this question, because I think that we recognize these are growing problems that growing populations demand; and, the southern California area is probably the one that is going to need it before any other major area of the country.

Mr. HOSMER. They say the difference between mass transit and mess transit is about 50 years.

Mr. HEINBERG. Well, I would say that is correct; I can agree, having grown up in the southern Californa area.

Well, now continuing this particular area; on the way in which the bill is written, I am concerned from the standpoint of family recreation.

Now, apparently my concern for family recreation is something that the family can do regularly and at a reasonable rate, so that the majority of families can afford it.

I think I am in a very fine financial position, I am very happy in my position, but I know that I cannot afford for four members of my family a $6 ski ticket or to go to Mammoth when my friends tell me that the ski lift ticket there is going up to $7 this year; that would be $28 for a weekend just for the ski lifts alone. If I could, I may make it just once or twice a year, but this does not represent, in my judgment, family recreation at these prices for the majority of the southern California people.

Again, as I have indicated, I do not think that this is an answer for the ski proponents from the standpoint of juvenile delinquency. From the standpoint of one who has worked in physical education and rec

reation for a great many years in southern California, I think it is utterly and completely wrong to take young people who cannot afford this kind of equipment and impose it upon them in a very short period of time. I think there are kinds of recreation for free that are present in our mountain areas, and that we could do a great deal in introducing these people into a form of recreation and tobagganing and the precise things that would be of no cost to them. I think we do irreparable harm when we introduce young people to things they will never be able to afford. I think it is fine to see them from the standpoint of seeing this kind of activity and making it available to them. But from a standpoint of trying to introduce something that is as expensive as skiing, I think we are way out of line as a deterrent to delinquency.

I thank you, gentlemen, very much, for hearing me today.
Mr. BARING. Thank you, sir.

The next witness, please.

STATEMENT OF FRANCIS L. POST, CHAIRMAN, SKI MOUNTAINEERING COMMITTEES, UNITED STATES SKI ASSOCIATION, AND FAR WEST SKI ASSOCIATION; AND NATIONAL MOUNTAINEERING ADVISER, NATIONAL SKI PATROL SYSTEM; AND MOUNTAINEERING ADVISER, FAR WEST DIVISION OF THE NATIONAL SKI PATROL SYSTEM

Mr. Posт. My name is Francis L. Post. I am currently chairman of the ski mountaineering committee for both the United States Ski Association and the Far West Ski Association. I am also the national mountaineering adviser for the National Ski Patrol System and the mountaineering adviser for the Far West division of the National Ski Patrol System. Today I speak as an individual.

Both proponents and opponents of commercialized skiing on San Gorgonio realize that San Gorgonio Peak itself is the true heart of the wilderness area. It is the ultimate goal of the skier who dreams of the Big Draw and the young camper who looks forward with great anticipation to his first major mountain ascent. The very reason for the existence of the complex of youth camps on the wilderness area perimeter is the great unspoiled peak open to any with the ambition to climb it. In my youth I served as a cabin leader in the old camp SanY-Ca and by far the greatest experience for the majority of the boys was their climb to the summit of San Gorgonio; for them, it was an experience not to be forgotten.

If this area is commercially developed the annual usage will probably run to one half million skier days. I don't think anyone can hide the evidences or the mechanical and structural devices necessary to this amount of usage. Wilderness and commercial skiing are not compatible.

We have heard much testimony relating to teenage morals and I submit that the young people involved in the camping programs which already exist and the young people who ski-tour in the undeveloped mountains of California are every bit as moral as the youths who ski in the commercial resort environment.

Regardless of the amount of snow deposited, normal temperature variations in late spring on San Gorgonio create snow surface condi