The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Forest Service considering .75 mile addition
The Crested Butte Mountain Bike Association (CBMBA) and Gunnison Trails Commission are seeking Forest Service approval for another extension of the Kebler Wagon Trail.
CBMBA board president John Chandler says the local group of bike aficionados is hoping to break out the stamps and shovels to continue the trail this summer.
CBMBA plans on scheduling an overnight workday sometime in August.
CBMBA hosted an overnight trail workday last summer, when volunteers built the most recent addition to the Kebler Wagon Trail, on the east side of the pass.
The proposed .75 mile extension will take the trail from an old Irwin access road to the curved bridge that crosses Anthracite Creek on the west side of Kebler Pass.
Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison (GMUG) recreation manager Greg Austin says the Forest Service’s and CBMBA’s ultimate goal will be to create single-track trail to Horse Ranch Park, the exit point of the infamous Dyke Trail. “In the meantime we’ve been doing bite-sized chunks,” he says.
Austin says trail supporters west of Kebler Pass have also pitched the concept of a Crested Butte to Carbondale single-track trail, but that idea is still quite a way off.
He says another 0.6 mile section of trail is included as a conceptual idea in the proposal, but would require building a trail bridge over Anthracite Creek.
The Wagon Trail currently stretches from the Kebler Pass trailhead to a spot near Irwin. It’s a little over four miles long. The first sections of trail were built in 2001. “The thing we like about it is it gets bicycles off County Road 12 [Kebler Pass Road],” Austin says.
The Forest Service is accepting comments on the trail extension until March 5, but Austin says they usually don’t receive any comments when a trail extension is proposed.
Comments can be sent to gpaustin@fs.fed.us.
