The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Teo Ridge stays open…for now
After three years, 3,000-plus public comments and many public meetings, the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management last week released a travel plan for the area that will make some people happy and will leave others scratching their heads.
Travel Management Project planner Gary Shellhorn said it best when gauging how people will react to the plan: “We can’t predict how the public will respond to these designations.”
It’s no secret that recreation is a major force—and a source of contention—on the public lands in the Gunnison Basin. Somehow, the agencies that administer the public lands have to simultaneously preserve the integrity of the land and balance the desires of many stakeholders.
The question of “who gets to go where” can become quite contentious when one stakeholder is granted access and another is not.
The Gunnison Basin Federal Lands Travel Management Plan is the primary tool the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management will use to determine which roads and trails will be open to what types of travel on public lands in the North Fork Valley and Gunnison Basin.
The plan’s Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) was released to the public on Friday April 30 and identifies the Preferred Alternative (proposed plan) for managing travel on BLM and USFS lands. The proposed plan designates roads and trails open or closed to specific modes of travel, from motorized uses (4×4, jeep, motorcycle and ATV) to mountain bikes to hiking and horseback riding.
The agencies spent three years working on the plan and received more than 3,000 public comments. A draft EIS came out last March and according to Gary Shellhorn, it’s taken a year since the draft EIS came out to develop the Preferred Alternative—“crafting what we think is the better alternative for the BLM and Forest Service,” Shellhorn said.
“We’ve gone through the process, and let the process work. We let the public give feedback, and we assimilated their feedback and developed a Preferred Alternative. We recognize even with all the hard work and input, some people are going to like them [the route designations] and some won’t. We tried to do what was most appropriate. We put a lot of work into it, and made an earnest effort to do what we think is right.”
The document is currently in a 30-day review period. If the agencies need longer to make adjustments to the plan, then the review period will be extended as needed. Otherwise, according to Shellhorn, the BLM and USFS will each craft a Record of Decision following the review period, and that will be the final decision.
The plan changes the travel rules for a number of trails and roads in the basin, from Strand Hill to Doctor’s Park to the Caves Trail. It also opened the door to some proposed new trails and routes, although the plan itself does not authorize the construction of the trails.
The following is not a comprehensive evaluation of everything in the proposed plan, but covers some of the changes-of-interest to local stakeholders, from hunters to bikers to hikers.
Motorized use
Shellhorn said, “We did take away some motorized miles in the Cement Creek area and Brush Creek. It’s somewhat misleading if you just look at miles—you can get hung up there, depending on what group you’re in you might have lost something. The question is, what ride can you not access now? Because we had a lot of comments about conflicts in that area, we tried to create some separation of use in that area and accommodate both objectives. We still kept those areas open to motorcycles—they can still get to Double Top—instead of three ways to get there, maybe there are now two. But you can still reach the same objective.”
The trails that would be closed and/or converted to non-motorized trails in the Preferred Alternative include:
—Green Lake Trail
—Strand Hill, Strand Bonus, Canal, Trail 402
—Timbered Hill and trails between Teocalli Ridge and Middle Brush Creek Road
—Parts of Farris Creek Trail (409) and Double Top, Walrod Gulch, Cement Creek Trail (north of the Waterfall Trail connection), UT-7073 and UT-7164 above and parallel to Cement Creek Road, Hunter Hill, Crystal Peak, Roaring Judy trail
—Lower Doctor’s Park Trail, Doctor Park Bonus, Ute Gulch Trail, 413 trail between Doctor’s Park Trail and Taylor Reservoir/River’s End Campground
In the Preferred Alternative outline, access to the Farris Creek area for motorcycles would be available via the 409 trail off of East Brush Creek Road. The plan also proposes a new section of motorized singletrack trail on NFS lands to connect Brush Creek Road directly to Farris Creek Road in the vicinity of the existing full-size Farris Creek road that is currently closed at Brush Creek Road by the private landowner.
The Teocalli Ridge Trail remains open to motorcycles, mountain bikers and other non-motorized users, but there will likely be a short-term closure to fix and realign the trail. “It’s not where we want it to be right now,” said Shellhorn. “We may very well close it in the short term to fix it, but the long term may take some major readjustments or re-alignments. The desired condition is to keep that open to motorized use but in the short term we have problems to address.
Seth Weiner, former owner of the Colorado Boarder, works at Sun Sports in Gunnison and said he is often a liaison between multiple motorized user groups. “I was expecting worse, to be perfectly honest with you, because that’s what happens to us,” he said. “If I had to complain it would be about North Bank [the trail that leads down from Doctor’s Park to the North Bank campground]. It’s just a kick in the tail to ride down that thing, and it connects a great loop.”
Weiner said he was pleased to see Carbon, the Monarch Crest Trail, and Agate Creek maintain their historic designations and allow motorized use.
Non-motorized uses (mountain bikers, hikers, horseback)
If this proposal passes, there will be approximately 378 miles of non-motorized trails on Gunnison Basin Forest Service lands managed for mountain bikes, hikers, and horseback use, plus an additional 510 miles of trail already available in designated Wilderness. On Forest Service lands, of the 378 non-motorized trails miles noted, approximately 260 miles would be managed for mountain bike use; the other 118 miles would be managed primarily for hikers and horseback riders. Of these 118 miles, approximately 90 percent are already managed for hiker and horseback use only under current conditions.
From the hiker’s perspective, the proposed plan offers some benefits, according to co-chair of the Elk Mountains Hikers Club Maureen Hall. “The Caves and 409 are non-motorized, and that’s something that we really wanted, to have at least one non-motorized route that connects Brush Creek and Cement Creek.” Hall said the organization would be able to comment further on the project in the coming weeks.
More numbers
Under the Preferred Alternative, non-motorized trails managed for mountain bike use on Forest Service lands would increase from 87 miles to 260 miles. In the Kebler Pass area, a new trail (approximately 23 miles) is being planned to link the existing Kebler Wagon Trail to the Erickson Springs Campground running parallel to the Kebler Pass Road. This new route would help establish a biking trail between Crested Butte and Carbondale via Kebler Pass. A non-motorized trail connection would also be provided from Gunsight Pass down to the Kebler Pass Road and from Splain’s Gulch Road to Ohio Pass Road.
Conversion to mountain bike use
The following trails are currently motorized and would be converted to non-motorized trails managed for mountain bike use:
—Strand Hill, Strand Bonus, Canal
—Portions of #407 to Brush Creek, another connector trail between the Farris Creek Road (#736) and the Brush/East Brush Creek Road junction (UT-7736.1B), lower Farris Creek Trail (#409) from Farris Creek Road to Cement Creek Road including the lower portion of Double Top
—Walrod Gulch/Caves Trail, portion of the Cement Creek Trail (below Waterfall Trail junction), UT-7073 and UT-7164 above and parallel to Cement Creek Road, Crystal Peak Trail, Roaring Judy Trail, lower Doctor Park Trail, and Doctor Park Bonus Trail.
Other Changes of Note
—Eccher Gulch/Round Mountain will remain open to non-motorized users, and managed as an out-and-back trail due to private property issues on the west end of the trail.
—The Carbon Trail remains open to motorized and non-motorized uses.
—Doctor’s Park will have a new seasonal closure in place from March 15 to Memorial Day weekend.
Scarp Ridge and Ridge 70 trails above the Irwin Lodge property would be open to horses/hikers only.
Existing motorized roads and trails that would be open to hiker/horse only include:
—Green Lake (only the portion of trail between the Lake and Wildcat junction)
—Quakey Mountain West (Trail #538), April Gulch, Baxter Basin Road, and Oh-be-joyful Road (#754)
Approved concept trails (still subject to site-specific NEPA analysis) that would be open to all non-motorized uses include:
—A new non-motorized loop on the south side of Slate River Road between Oh-be-Joyful Creek and Pittsburg (an extension of the existing Lower Loop)
—A new non-motorized trail along the south side of East River that would connect the parking lot at Brush Creek Road to Crested Butte Mountain Resort
—Two new loop opportunities on Snodgrass Mountain
—New non-motorized trail opportunities in the “Gunnison Northeast” area (i.e., Signal Peak-Lost Canyon area).
Dave Ochs, secretary for the Crested Butte Mountain Bike Association, commented on the Travel Plan FEIS. “Overall for mountain bikers, it’s really pretty good,” Ochs said. “I think it’s a realistic approach, what they’re doing is something they can manage.
“I’d say it seems that they did something that was reasonable for them, and they absolutely heard comments and you could see it in their designations and language. I think there’s the opportunity for even more mountain bike trails in the future. I think they did a good job.”
Dave Wiens of Gunnison Trails would have liked to see more of the trails proposed by CBMBA and Gunnison Trails incorporated into the proposal, though he was pleased to see 20 miles of potential singletrack in the Signal Peak/Gunnison Northeast area worked into the plan. The Gunnison to Crested Butte trail is one in particular Wiens would have liked to see come to fruition.
“I was definitely pleased to see the trail potential on BLM lands near Signal Peak,” Wiens said. “A lot of these [proposed] trails have great merit—CBMBA’s proposed trails, the trails northwest of Gunnison, and Gunnison to Crested Butte. [The agencies] want to see a pretty long track record of interest, to keep them alive and keep pushing them forward. If we can lay the groundwork for some great things to happen in the future, that’s a victory in itself.”
To see the maps for yourself and sift through 300-plus pages of material on the Gunnison Basin Travel Management Plan, visit: http://www.fs.fed.us/r2/gmug/policy/travel_mgmt/gun/deis.shtml#FEIS.
