For years noisy and dirty snowmobiles dominated winter tourism in Yellowstone, but now they are beginning to be displaced by a new generation of clean, quieter, and warm snowcoaches. The coaches also feature numerous options for stopping, and dropping off skier and snowshoers, stripping away one of the arguments in favor of snowmobiles — the freedom enjoyed by their users.
Over the years, the gradual decrease in snow too, which many attitribute to global warming, has given an advantage to snowcoaches which are better able to travel long expanses of bare pavement.
When changes like this come, there are some people who are more critical in the process than others. Apparently Randy Robertson of West Yellowstone is such a person.
Story from New West. By Randy Robertson. Guest Writer.
Ralph Maughan
Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He was a Western Watersheds Project Board Member off and on for many years, and was also its President for several years. For a long time he produced Ralph Maughan's Wolf Report. He was a founder of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. He and Jackie Johnson Maughan wrote three editions of "Hiking Idaho." He also wrote "Beyond the Tetons" and "Backpacking Wyoming's Teton and Washakie Wilderness." He created and is the administrator of The Wildlife News.
