CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. (AP) - A plan to expand the local ski resort onto a scenic mountainside has polarized residents here and stoked a long-running debate: Does adding more terrain really attract more people to the slopes?

Many locals welcome the millions of dollars new ski area owners are pumping into a base village makeover. But the resort owners' ambitions of reviving a plan to expand onto nearby Snodgrass Mountain have caused an uproar in this usually laid-back burg.

Some say the mountain should be preserved for its scenery and for backcountry pursuits. Others see the plan as a bid to boost real estate values for coming trophy homes. The Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory up the road in tiny Gothic fears development will encroach on its research, draw more traffic and increase avalanche danger in winter.

"The community right now is really divided," said Alan Bernholtz, mayor of the town of Crested Butte, just down the hill from the ski area. "A lot of people feel we should develop it and move to a new level. A lot of people think we should preserve it."

To attract more skiers and get them to stay longer, the ski area says it has little choice but to add more of the terrain that the relatively gentle public forest land on Snodgrass offers.

"For us to grow skier visits, we need to appeal to the big belly of the market," said Tim Mueller, who with his wife, Diane, bought Crested Butte Mountain Resort in 2004. "To compete with other resorts in Colorado, we've got to cater to intermediate skiers."

But in a town that often bills itself as "the last great ski town in Colorado," some locals balk at the notion of following the model that has led to increasingly large resorts such as Vail and Aspen. Others agree with the Muellers' contention that Snodgrass promises to help reverse the area's sagging skier visit numbers.

Snodgrass, which stands above town in the Gunnison National Forest, is home to a popular mountain biking and hiking route that wends through aspen and pine forests and a dazzling array of summer wildflowers. A sea of purple-blue lupine and other species blanket much of the hillside, making the site a must-see tour during the area's celebrated wildflower festival.

For those up to the trek, the mountain also serves as a gateway to some of the area's famed backcountry skiing.

While housing developments have begun to sprawl along the main route into Crested Butte, the former mining outpost has managed to retain much of its small-town character.

Locals refer to the four-way stop when giving tourists directions from downtown. There are no stoplights.

"Our return visitors come to Crested Butte because it's not like every other place," said Town Council member Billy Rankin, who works as a ski patroller at the resort. "People come here for more than to say, 'I skied a different blue run every day for a week.'

But the mayor of Mount Crested Butte, a separate town that consists mainly of ski resort offices, condos, houses and related businesses, said many residents he has heard from want the expansion.

"It would allow us to become more competitive with other Colorado resorts," said Chris Morgan, mayor of Mount Crested Butte. "We need to be bigger to compete."

In general, industry consultants say adding accessible terrain to a ski area does lead to longer visits.

"It really solidifies the destination base," said Nolan Rosall, president of Boulder-based ski researcher RRC Associates.

Rosall said increasing the variety of ski trails entices people to stay longer.

"The guy who spends the most is the guy who flies in on the airplane," said Allen Cox, owner of the Nordic Inn and a longtime resident of Mount Crested Butte. "He can't go up in the extreme areas. He's a beginner-intermediate. That's the man who pays the bills."

Data show, however, that overall skier visits to the state have stayed fairly flat over the years. That's despite a steady increase in the number of acres the Forest Service leases to ski areas in Colorado.

The ski area's Mueller predicts that more terrain could bring the resort closer to 600,000 skier visits a season. In recent years, visits have bumped around between 300,000 and 400,000 a year.

But in 1997-1998, the area attracted 550,000 skiers, almost as many as Mueller hopes to draw if he gets more lift-served runs.

A group calling itself Friends of Snodgrass has been collecting signatures on a petition calling for the mountain to remain lift-free. It had about 900 people signed up when it lost its local leader, Mike Martin, who died when the plane he was flying crashed Dec. 31.

"The issue doesn't seem to lend itself to a compromise," Martin, who owned the local Alpineer shop, told the Rocky Mountain News a few weeks before he died. "People love this valley because it is unique. We'll only become more unique with time as the place that didn't develop."

The Friends of Snodgrass group continues to campaign against the development. It delivered its arguments against the plan last month to the Forest Service.

"We feel that Snodgrass Mountain has more value economically to our community without ski lifts on it," said Vicki Shaw, a member of the Friends of Snodgrass.

The coming changes at the ski area already have set off a real estate frenzy there and in town, with out-of-towners buying homes before having visited the area.

"That's really the main reason I'm against Snodgrass," said town of Crested Butte Mayor Bernholtz. "I don't want to see the dollars come from somewhere else and go somewhere else."

Many locals are torn in part because the Muellers have brought new life to a ski resort that had suffered from a lack of investment under previous owners.

Strategic marketing and other improvements have bolstered business on the ski mountain. The Muellers' plan to revamp the resort includes an overhaul of the base area and a number of on-mountain enhancements that many residents embrace.

The Rocky Mountain Biological Lab has an entirely different set of concerns related to Snodgrass Mountain.

"We haven't decided to outright oppose it, but we have serious concerns," said Ian Billick, the lab's executive director. He worries that chairlifts on Snodgrass will draw more skiers to out-of-bounds terrain high above the road to the town of Gothic.

"It's reasonable to expect you'd see a dramatic increase in the number of people," Billick said. "And the expertise will be very different. The people who have to skin up a mountain have more experience."

What Billick fears most is that novice backcountry skiers will cause avalanches that could endanger his employees and all the recreationists who travel back and forth on skis to Gothic on a road that closes to vehicles in winter.

More skiers are likely to disrupt the lab's decades-old study of naturally occurring avalanches, he said.

"While a lift is kind of unsightly, ultimately our concern is about the skiing," Billick said.