It’s been eight years since Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper announced his “Colorado The Beautiful” plan to connect 16 gaps in trails across the state, championing development of the highest profile trails, many of which had been in the works for many years.
Only one trail on the list of 16 rural and urban pathways is completely finished: the Palisade Plunge in the Grand Valley. Some appear permanently stuck, like the multi-use trail proposed between Eldorado Canyon and Walker Ranch in Boulder County. Most are winding through complex approvals involving multiple local governments and state and federal land agencies.
The slow, steady trail building is happening as land managers and local governments begin adding extra layers of scrutiny to recreation and its impacts. For many years, recreation was heralded as the easy choice when replacing things like mining, drilling and logging on public lands. That is changing as adventuring skiers, cyclists, paddlers and hikers push deeper into remote areas.
“Land managers like the Forest Service are increasingly recognizing the importance of reducing the ecological impacts of recreation. It’s not an easy task,” said Will Roush, the director of the Carbondale-based Wilderness Workshop. “However, our land management agencies still have a long way to go regarding crafting policy and implementing management decisions and practices to ensure our decreasing wildlife populations are protected from ever-increasing recreational use and development of public lands.”
The recent approval of a small section of the proposed 83-mile Carbondale to Crested Butte Trail — one of Hickenlooper’s 16 priority trails — illustrates the growing wariness of adding new recreational access in wild areas.
Pitkin County commissioners spent two years gathering public input on the Carbondale to Crested Butte Trail and in 2018, narrowly approved a small section of unpaved trail from Redstone to the the top of McClure Pass. The county — which has a 293-page plan outlining 10 potential alignments for 13 segments of the trail from Carbondale to the top of McClure as part of a possible 22-year development plan that could cost $103 million — finished construction of a 8.5-mile paved trail along the Crystal River out of Carbondale in 2010.
Pitkin County commissioners in June amended the county’s 2018 plan to make sure any future approvals for the trail follow “a comprehensive environmental analysis of the potential direct, indirect, and cumulative impacts and connected actions” from the trail from Carbondale to the top McClure. That analysis will weigh access alongside protection of wildlife and habitat.
A second amendment approved in June by Pitkin County commissioners eliminated construction of a trail on the east side of the Crystal River around Avalanche Creek, dismissing one alternative in the 2018 plan that routed the trail off the river though undisturbed elk and bighorn habitat. That requires the trail to more closely follow Colorado 133 for about a mile at Avalanche Creek, with engineering challenges and higher costs.
The White River National Forest started a National Environmental Policy Act review of five miles of the Redstone to McClure Pass segment on federally managed land in 2019 and issued a final decision in July. The White River’s acting forest supervisor Heather Noel approved a 5-mile, natural-surface trail following an historic wagon trail and the old McClure Pass Road to the top of the pass. Her decision required seasonal closures for construction and maintenance of the trail to reduce impacts for nesting birds, calving elk and lynx. The Forest Service also committed to a comprehensive analysis of the entire trail for future segments planned between Carbondale and Redstone.
Roush and the Wilderness Workshop cheered the promise of a landscape-scale review of the trail after working with the Pitkin County and Forest Service to protect wildlife habitat along the Crystal River.
“I’m very glad the Forest Service recognized the need to shift from a piecemeal to a comprehensive approach when considering recreational impacts,” Roush said. “It was also heartening to see Pitkin County amend their trail plan to remove the option for a trail through the ecologically valuable lands near Avalanche Creek. The animals and landscape win as a result. Going forward it will be even more critical for land managers and proponents of recreational development to take this holistic and ecologically centered approach from the start.”
Understanding the ecological consequences of new trails vs old
In 2023, the Wilderness Workshop commissioned a study to analyze the ecological impacts of recreation in western Colorado’s wild places as participation in outdoor activities exploded. The study detailed how trails can disturb soil and vegetation in wildlife habitat and suggested new trails should be built only after “thorough consideration of the ecological consequences” and a better management strategy would be to concentrate use on existing trails.”
The impacts of recreation are becoming more evident in the 2.3 million-acre White River National Forest, where an estimated 17 million annual visitors inject $1.6 billion into rural Western Slope communities, making it the busiest, most economically vibrant national forest in the country. Roush and the Wilderness Workshop have spent years pushing the Forest Service to consider quality over quantity when it comes to recreation on public land, with additional protections for undeveloped areas. And limited new trail development.
Roush said the underway update to the 2002 White River National Forest Management Plan is a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” for wild lands and wildlife advocates to work with the Forest Service “to ensure our public lands are not loved to death.”
“The science is clear: The most important piece of that is increasing protections for large, unfragmented landscapes,” Roush said.
The Gunnison County section of the trail is pretty much one-way — down — from the top of McClure Pass. (Hence the Carbondale TO Crested Butte name.) The plan calls for using the existing 18-mile Raggeds Trail from the pass down to Kebler Pass Road and no one pedals up the Raggeds Trail.
The segment of trail at the base of Kebler Pass near Paonia Reservoir to Crested Butte follows the Kebler Pass Wagon Road for about 23 miles up from the Erickson Springs Campground. It was first floated by the Gunnison National Forest in its comprehensive 2010 travel management plan.
The Gunnison National Forest has built two new segments of trail along the wagon road parallel to the road over Kebler Pass and a third segment also following Gunnison County Road 12 over Kebler Pass is approved and planned. The portion of the Carbondale to Crested Butte Trail from Erickson Springs Campground to Horse Ranch Park on the Kebler Pass road “is a much lower priority” than the sections along the pass, said Paonia District Ranger Levi Broyles in an email.
There’s little controversy over plans for the trail in Gunnison County. The Crested Butte Mountain Bike Association has an idea for building the trail and connecting it to the popular Dyke Trail on Kebler Pass. David Ochs, the longtime boss and trail builder at the Crested Butte Mountain Bike Association, said basic plans are taking shape but there’s been little progress.
“It should be a full-on ‘path,’ with some backcountry huts and overnight spots on it,” Ochs said. “ It should friggin’ exist, but there is a lack of resources. We’ve pledged efforts, and spent time out there, but it takes that Paonia side — or someone — to really champion it. We love that they are moving on it Pitkin County. Now it needs to happen here.”