Park Service officials, snowmobile manufacturers and even foreign countries are taking notice of an annual collegiate clean sled competition completed in March at Flagg Ranch.
This year an all-time high of 17 college teams took part in Clean Snowmobile Challenge 2002, sponsored by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE).
Flagg Ranch is a year-round resort south of Yellowstone and north of Grand Teton parks. Like Pahaska Tepee on the North Fork, Flagg Ranch faces the prospect of losing most of its winter business if snowmobiles are banned from the parks.
First conducted in 1998, the snowmobile challenge pre-dated the drawn-out Winter Use Environmental Impact Statement and Supplemental EIS process presently under way in Yellowstone, Grand Teton and the connecting parkway.
But its goals fall in line with those of entities such as the Park County Commission, which as a cooperating agency with Yellowstone winter use actions has urged the Park Service to consider data on clean and quiet snow machines and their use rather than banning snowmobiles from the parks.
Bill Paddleford of Jackson, a Teton County commissioner and co-organizer of the snowmobile contest, said the aim of the event is to see who can engineer the cleanest, most powerful and most fun-to-drive snowmobile.
Co-sponsor of the event is Lori Fussell of Wilson, an environmental engineer.
"All federal land managers have access to our data," Fussell said. "Yellowstone Park has paid for a report on the competition every year - they own our data."
Fussell says the competition is making a difference on several levels, not the least of which is "more than 500 young engineers will be entering the workforce" with a mindset that improvements are possible.
"There is no price tag for the values being instilled in them," Fussell said. In the future, these engineers "can't help but pay attention to a focus on emissions and sound."
The impact of the event on industry is more concrete.
"They get to hire these young students, who require much less training" because of their experience, Fussell said.
In addition, the competition "has created at least a regional market demand for clean and quiet machines," Fussell said.
Paddleford said the Park Service "watched with interest and participated," adding that "for our fuel economy run they (NPS) groomed 25 miles of trail."
In addition, NPS and Forest Service personnel, including "assistant superintendents" of the Forest Service, serve on the Clean Snowmobile Advisory Board.
While the snowmobile industry has been "slow to get on board," they did have a presence at the competition the last two years and have contributed a "small amount of money" toward staging the event, Paddleford said.
The NPS and the Environmental Protection Agency "have been involved in the competition from the start" and also have obtained a hands-on experience that likely will carry over to decisions they make, she added.
Paddleford said he and Fussell served on a clean air board together and "decided we might be able to do something good for everybody" by organizing the collegiate challenge.
For more information about the competition, which will be in Michigan next year, visit the Web site www.sae.org.
