Briefs Mt. Crested Butte

Benefits of bike race linger
Mt. Crested Butte Town Manager Joe Fitzpatrick said it was a “strong Labor Day weekend” and that the town had remained relatively busy since the USA Pro Cycling Challenge race passed through in late August. Some of the people he had spoken with were in town for weddings or from the Front Range and decided to take the trip after watching coverage of the race on TV.

Because the bike race was seen as a success by town officials and some business owners, Fitzpatrick said the Local Organizing Committee had already committed to applying for a stage in next year’s race.
“The Base Area worked really well because of the proximity of everything: the VIP parking, team parking, lodging and so on. All in all, it was very smooth and people were happy,” Fitzpatrick said. “One challenge we weren’t ready for was the arrival of the van that brought all of the fencing in at 2 a.m. That was interesting.”
“Hopefully we’ll get it back and do it better next time,” Mayor William Buck said.

Smith Hill update
Three weeks into the reclamation of the Smith Hill Mine site, along Slate River Road, Crested Butte Land Trust executive director Ann Johnston and Colorado Division of Mining, Reclamation and Safety project coordinator Tara Tafi gave the Town Council an update on the work being done.
After a quick history of the 120-acre mine property and how it fell into Crested Butte Land Trust hands, Johnston told the council the reclamation work that started last month is coming along well and assured them its appearance will change as the project progresses.
“We had a plan in the works for quite some time to pull the coal out of the wetlands just north of the Gunsight Pass Bridge. That coal waste has come down the steep hillside on the opposite side of the road from Cloud City,” Johnston said. “We’re doing tours, now that we’ve started. We want people to know that it is going to look worse before it looks better.”
With a map of the reclamation site showing about a third of the area covered in coal, Tafi explained that the heavy equipment crew from McCollum’s Excavating has already carved their way into the wetlands and will be working their way out, taking the coal with them.
A helicopter will also be used in the removal of the coal on the steep slope for one, or possibly two, days.
“We had someone stop and ask us if we were building a house,” Tafi said.
Tafi explained that the coal would be moved from the wetlands, where it is spread out in layers of a few inches to several feet, to the parking area where it will be contained in a geogrid fabric and stored forever.
If all goes according to plan, Tafi said work at the site will be finished after 15,000 young plants will go in the ground just before the snow falls on the site for the winter, sometime around late October.
 To tour the site, join Johnston and Tafi at the Gunsight Pass parking lot Thursday evenings at 5 p.m. until the project is complete.

Utility trouble pushes paving to spring
The Town Hall parking lot paving project that got started early this month in Mt. Crested Butte unearthed some major problems with the underground utilities, pushing work into the spring.