MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif. From Jackson Hole to Aspen's Richmond Hill to California's Sierra Nevada, backcountry snowmobilers and skiers are always going at it.It's a dispute of horsepower vs. manpower, says Mammoth's The Sheet.It's a noisy issue: from the snowmobiles themselves, and in the complaints from skiers and snowshoers. One side spews fumes, the other side fumes"They're noisy, they smell, they track up the powder, and it's a very different experience," backcountry skier Forrest McCarthy told the Jackson Hole News&Guide. Skiers also resent snowmobilers who can access backcountry powder many miles from the road within minutes, then track it up in a few seconds. "What's taken me two hours to get up, a snowmobiler has gone up in 5 minutes and it's ruined," says Jeramie Prine.The spotlighted dispute in Wyoming concerns Togwottee Pass, located northeast of Jackson. There, backcountry skiers want to limit areas where snowmobilers are allowed. Snowmobilers think there's plenty for everybody. "The vast majority of it, skiers don't go there anyway," says Jeff Golightly, a lodge manager who conducts snowmobile tours.In California, snowmobiler Jeremy Stoehr says he can't figure out the skiers. "We get bad reps as gear heads and fossil-fuel burners, but they're the ones who always start the confrontations, and it never makes any sense to me. We've got 100 horsepower, and they've got ski poles. Who's going to win that one?"Meanwhile, at Yellowstone National Park, air quality continues to improve after three years of federal limits on snowmobile use, reports the Billings Gazette. Proposed new regulations would continue the temporary restrictions, which require use of the newer quieter, less polluting four-stroke engines. Last year, more than 13,000 snowmobiles entered the park, along with a record 1,401 snowcoaches.Carbondale hears about big box and small mallCARBONDALE - The Carbondale community continues to debate whether it can abide an 80,000 square-foot Home Depot in its midst. Big national chain grocery stores in 60,000-square-foot boxes seem to be OK.Town voters have previously rejected an unspecified national-chain big box, fearing the small-town feel that they enjoy would be lost. But the developer, Rich Shierburg, this time is getting counsel from the Rocky Mountain Institute about how to make the project a prototype for low-energy use buildings that could be copied elsewhere. Carbondale is a hotbed for global warming activists.Any project would include a big, 60,000-square-foot grocery store. Any project would also have a mixed area of smaller retail stores and homes. But Shierburg predicts Home Depot's presence would yield Carbondale double the tax revenues, $1.2 million, from the project.Three-quarters of the business for the complex, reports the Valley Journal, is expected to come from the upvalley communities from Carbondale to Aspen.Meanwhile, town residents also heard from a Washington D.C.-based economist and writer, Michael Shuman, who proposes what he calls a "Small-Mart Revolution."Shuman advised the town against banning big boxes, but instead urged that towns figure out how to compete with them with such things as shop-local campaigns and by recruiting creative entrepreneurs.Small towns benefit from locally owned shops in that more of the money spent locally stays local. With national franchises, much of the money is removed from the community.Shuman also urged the town consider a tax on services, to move away from the depending upon sales tax economies. No such service tax has so far been applied in Colorado, and Carbondale officials are uncertain whether it would be legal.Meanwhile, Home Depot wants into Carbondale badly enough to up its ante."Our budget would allow us to extend a community contribution " to the town for housing or other necessities, said Home Depot representative Jim Spitzer. "I'm not here to say the checkbook is wide open, but we do have some funds available."The Valley Journal reports that Spitzer also pledged willingness to use varied roof lines, gables, and pedestrian friendly trellises, benches and public art in order to get into Carbondale.The underlying reality for Carbondale is that, while it remains a charming, prototypical small town, it is also growing rapidly, but much of the shopping is done about 12 miles away, at a huge 400,000-square-foot shopping complex called Glenwood Meadows.