Appeals court sides with government in Crazy Mountains trail dispute

The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has sided with the Forest Service in a five-year-old dispute about its management of a contested trail in the Crazy Mountains.

In a five-page opinion issued last month that was first reported by the Billings Gazette, a three-judge panel affirmed a lower court's ruling in its finding that the Custer Gallatin National Forest adequately studied the impacts of a trail the agency rerouted to limit public passage through private land in the west side of the Crazies.

The trail in question is the Porcupine Lowline Trail. Landowners opposed to public use of porti...