UPPER SALFORD — The Spring Mountain Ski Area, which sits atop a 528-foot peak at the center of one of Montgomery County's largest remaining woodland tracts, has just slumped through a second consecutive mild winter and flagging enthusiasm among area skiers.
But interest in the site among county officials has grown since February, when the owners of the 180-acre ski area, part of a large canopy-forest system of sugar maple, tulip poplar and hickory trees, put it up for sale.
It is an opportunity that county officials have been waiting for. The mountain's lush forest is home to a wide variety of plants and animals, including some endangered species, county planners said - features that earned it one of the top spots among 59 sites that the county targeted for open-space purchases in 1996.
``The habitats are nice,'' said Michael Stokes, the county Planning Commission's assistant director. ``But I think the other aspect is it's a unique and locally recognized topographical feature. It looks like a mountain. It's not a big mountain, but it's as close as you can get to one in Montgomery County.''
The lack of snow made for slow business at Spring Mountain this year and last, said Hiram Hershey, the Harleysville real-estate agent who put the 38-year-old ski resort up for sale on behalf of owners Negt Jansson and Al Manning. Jansson and Manning want $2.3 million for the land.
Stokes and County Commissioner Jim Maza, who helped draft the county's open-space plan, did not say how much they would be willing to spend to preserve the land for passive recreation. But they hinted that county taxpayers might find the asking price a little steep.
Early last year, a coalition of three environmental groups withdrew an application for a $700,000 state grant to help buy the resort, balking at an asking price rumored to have been close to $2 million.
``We're interested in acquisition, but we're not interested in being extorted,'' Maza said.
``Certainly, we want to preserve this area, but we're not going to just throw all sorts of money at them to buy it,'' Stokes said. ``It's not the end-all-be-all.''
Jansson and Manning did not return phone calls yesterday.
One alternative would be for the county to buy only part of the property, leaving out the resort's buildings and four ski runs, Stokes said. Or the county could try to persuade the eventual buyer to sell the land's development rights.
Such a move ``may not always ensure public access to the property, but it would at least keep the property whole,'' Stokes said.
It helps that the land is not all that alluring to developers, despite its location in the middle of one of the region's fastest-growing areas. The steep mountain itself is largely made up of wetlands and black granite rock, making it unlikely that it will be overrun with subdivisions anytime soon, Stokes said.
Still, county officials said they would like to stake some kind of claim to the land before anyone else does.
``We haven't had any concrete offers, but there's been some interest from investors as well as from the county and land-preservation groups,'' Hershey said.
``It's a wonderful tract of ground, and I don't know of any parcels like it in Montgomery County that are available or will be available in the near future,'' Hershey said. ``I'd like to see [the county] get it, but we're far apart in price yet.''
