Just north of Sunrise Peak sits a worn-out mine that's for sale.
Positioned on an almost-inaccessible slope and tapped out of ore, it's not worth a lot - unless you're the company that wants to bring the Heber Valley its first ski lift.Boyne USA, owner of Brighton Ski Resort just over the mountains west of Snake Creek, has for at least a few years been poised to expand its runs into the canyon.
It would be the first ski resort to actually traverse the Wasatch Mountains.
Boyne's only problem is that the notion seems broadly unpopular in the valley below. In an unusual alliance, environmentalists and farmers have quietly teamed up to create a consortium of public and private interests attempting to buy the 750-acre claim, a move that would effectively block Brighton's gateway into Wasatch County.
"It's probably the last pristine canyon we've got left," said Sharron J. Winteron, a Charleston dairyman who was elected to the County Commission last fall on a platform that included a promise he would fight the proposed Brighton expansion.
"Snake Creek is sacred," said Winteron, who earlier this month joined the commission's two other members in pledging $50,000 in county money to help buy the property.
Though Brighton's owners for some time have held an option on the land, they haven't exercised it because Wasatch County won't give them the required go-ahead.
Randy Doyle, area manager for the resort, said Boyne USA still wants to put a single chairlift into Snake Canyon. Doyle said the company, which owns other ski areas in Michigan and Montana, has presented what he thinks is a fair offer.
Brighton would happily cede ownership of the land to whoever wants it as long as it could build its chairlift along the scenic canyon's upper reaches.
"That would preserve the lower part . . . and we think that's a pretty reasonable deal."
Some fear it would open the door to further development, but Doyle said Brighton has no intention of opening access to the area from the Heber side of the resort.
Owned by an aging Boston widow who issaid to be anxious to part with the land in order to supplement a meager retirement check, in recent months it has been listed for sale, despite Brighton's option.
The fact has not escaped Winterton and many others, attracting the attention of the Nature Conservancy, which under a proposal in the works would buy the acreage and then resell it bit by bit to the state parks system, which operates the adjacent Wasatch Mountain State Park.
"It's a project that's going to require lots of partners, support from private individuals, local governments, nonprofit organizations," said Chris Montague, a spokesman for the Nature Conservancy's Salt Lake-based Great Basin field office.
But support is emerging, according to George Hansen, a Midway chemical engineer who has led the anti-ski-lift fight. Hansen said in addition to the county's $50,000 commitment, Midway's town government has pledged $20,000 to the effort and the Midway Booster's Club has offered to raise another $15,000.
Though the asking price has not been disclosed, those offers would cover only a fraction of the cost, which apparently would be in the neighborhood of $1 million.
"It sounds like they've got maybe a 10th of what they need," said Doyle.
In order to make the deal work, the group needs - and might get - help from the state.
Appraisals are currently being conducted on a handful of small but separate pieces of Wasatch Mountain State Park that are scattered around the Midway area, where real-estate values since 1992 have escalated astronomically. Under the proposal, those parcels would be sold to pay back the Nature Conservancy.
State powers-that-be appear to at least vaguely support the effort. The board that oversees the parks system last year endorsed long-range plans to protect the park's borders from development, reacting to a 1994 proposal that would have allowed private developers to use the park for construction of luxury homes, a hotel and a golf course.
"A lot of people are interested in preserving it (Snake Creek Canyon) in its natural state," said Lucille Tuttle, a parks board member who lives in Heber City.
She added that the area is also an important watershed for Midway.
Hansen said ski-resort glamour is easily resisted by many residents of the area. He noted skiing is already available a half-hour away at Wolf Mountain, Park City, Deer Valley and Sundance resorts, locales that have long since lost the tranquility that Snake Creek maintains.
"We get everybody moving here from Park City," said Hansen, "because they don't want to live in all that."