MIKE BONNIE

PIERCE FLINN AND HIS friends, most of whom are surfers, head for the ski slopes in the winter. A few years ago they started noticing a certain lack of respect for the environment up there. "We saw a lot of trash being dumped on the hills, cigarette butts and lift tickets, for example," said Flinn, who as executive director of the Surfrider Foundation is keenly aware that what's on top of the watershed flows down toward the shore. "A lot of the younger kids were bashing into trees with their snowboards, using the mountains as amusement parks."
Granted that the very presence of ski resorts damages the watershed, he said, there's no need for people to add to the damage by careless behavior. "We see kids fixing cars on the side of the road and cars dripping oil in parking lots. All that stuff comes down the mountain in the spring."
Surfrider has long been active in clean water efforts along the shore. Now, clearly, more had to be done. Flinn and his friends set out to raise consciousness in the upper watersheds by launching the Snowrider Project three years ago. The aim is to reach as many people as possible among those who go to the mountains for recreation--starting with surfers, about 60 percent of whom also do snow sports, according to Flinn. "We want them to know that whatever goes on 'up there' ends up 'down here,'" he said.
As part of the Snowrider Project, Surfrider has placed ads in snow sports magazines and posters in ski shops and resorts; it has produced public service announcements and a brochure that describes the water cycle and points out connections between snow in the mountains and water in rivers, streams, and ocean waves. This brochure is being distributed through manufacturers of winter sports equipment, retailers, and mountain resorts.
Surfrider has also teamed up with the snow sports industry to get the Snowrider message across in a way that appeals to the high energy crowd. In the November 1996 issue of High Maintenance, a snow sports magazine, Steve Barilotti's "Downstream Theory 101" described the "Snowboarder Water Cycle":

Starting at the top of the food chain, take one pitcher of tasteless mass-market American lager purchased at a hideously inflated price from the Bear Butt Lodge atop Mount Whatever. Process through one snowboarder. Flush. In time, that largish stein of prole ale--after having passed through Mr. or Ms. Boarder's kidneys--will filter down the mountain to the ocean to be picked up as evaporation and sprinkled over the mountains as snow to be carved, ripped, slashed, whipped, and flayed by legions of snowboard enthusiasts.

The project has progressed to a second stage in Colorado, where Surfrider is sponsoring mountain cleanups and working with resorts in Vale and Aspen to start recycling programs and to manage ski slopes better by revegetating them in the spring with native wildflowers and grasses, which help absorb runoff and avoid erosion.
"This project is particularly interesting," says Steve Rogerson of Patagonia, Inc., "because I don't think many people think about the connection between the snow that falls in the mountains and what ends up in the oceans, and there is an interconnectedness. [It's] also a way to reach a little bit younger crowd--the set that I think is more likely to heed this message because it's snowboard-oriented."

Lisa Owens-Viani writes from Richmond, CA.