About Us
Our History
Nestled in the San Francisco Peaks within the Coconino National Forest, just 15 miles from downtown Flagstaff, the Arizona Nordic Village offers a variety of outdoor adventures, including hiking, camping, lodging, and cross-country skiing. It also provides a beautiful venue for weddings and events. The Arizona Nordic Village, formerly known as the Flagstaff Nordic Center, was established in 1984 by owner Bob Alexander. In 1994, it was acquired by the Arizona Snowbowl, initiating a new phase in its growth. A decade later, in 2004, operations were taken over by Peak Endeavors, LLC, under the ownership of Wendell and Jen Johnson. In 2015, Babbitt Ranches purchased Peak Endeavors, LLC, ensuring the ski area's continued legacy. The original lodge and ski trails from 1984 are still in operation today.
Vision
The Outdoor Recreation Ethic Attitude is demonstrated through behaviors
and actions of all those engaging in recreational activities with a self-imposed
focus on awareness, responsibility, obligation and accountability.
Mission
The Arizona Nordic Village promotes the Outdoor Recreation Ethic Attitude
through educational and experiential outreach efforts, which encourage a
broader sense of individual awareness of our use and activities, and a better
understanding of our place in the community.
Overview
The Outdoor Recreation Ethic Attitude is essentially a community-based recreation management strategy that has evolved with input from the community. It is a response to the increasing recreational demands and impacts of growing Western populations, at a time when budgets and management resources are greatly diminished. Western outdoor recreation is unique for several reasons, but it is the vast open spaces and highly heterogeneous land ownership that complicate management efforts. Landowners and managers simply do not have the time, money or resources to effectively manage all the forms of outdoor recreation taking place across both private and public lands. Self-management by recreationists is the only feasible way to achieve sustainable outdoor recreation practices across these vast landscapes. Similar approaches have been tried for years, often termed “soft management,” encouraging people to act responsibly in the outdoors without the use of regulations and enforcement. The Outdoor Recreation Ethic Attitude offers a new approach for managing outdoor recreation. The broad establishment of such an attitude has the potential to greatly benefit both public land managers and private landowners throughout the West.
Outdoor Recreation Ethic Attitude Defined
Aldo Leopold famously wrote of the need for a land ethic in his novel A Sand County Almanac, advocating the responsible management of land through an ecological conscience. He wrote: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise... It of course goes without saying that the economic feasibility limits the tether of what can or cannot be done for land. It always has and it always will. The fallacy the economic determinists have tied around our collective neck, and which we now need to cast off, is the belief that economics determines all land use.” Drawing on the ideals of Leopold’s land ethic, The Arizona Nordic Village has adopted the Outdoor Recreation Ethic Attitude and proposes the development of a conscience to guide the outdoor recreational conduct of individuals in a manner responsible to the land and its many uses and users. The Arizona Nordic Village expands Leopold’s definition of when “a thing is right,” to include not only biological integrity, but also the functional and aesthetic integrity of the land, in regard to its multiple uses and stakeholders. Today, most public lands, and many private lands, are managed for multiple uses. On public lands, there are many regulations in place intended to balance these uses in order to preserve the resources for the enjoyment and use by all. On ranches, lands are primarily managed for livestock, but many have diversified beyond the traditional intent to maximize livestock yield, and now manage for other interests including ecological integrity, hunting, fishing, outdoor access, and off-highway vehicle (OHV) use. Leopold opposed exploitive uses of nature without regard for the health of the land. Some forms of recreation can be exploitive and environmentally damaging. The Arizona Nordic Village maintains that the Outdoor Recreation Ethic Attitude will reduce negative impacts to the land by creating awareness and sensitivity, and continue to provide opportunities for people to interact and connect with the natural environment.