Access eliminated to Granite Basin from Highway 135

Entities working on solution

[ by Mark Reaman ]

A trailhead and parking area in the north valley that is used by hikers, bikers and hunters has been decommissioned and the general public barred from access—at least for the time being.

The Granite Basin/Eccher Gulch trail that people would use by parking on Highway 135 across from the county shops south of Crested Butte South sits on 40 acres of property owned by the Colorado State Land Board. The board has a lease with a private entity and did not realize the public was parking on its property for the last several years. Upon that discovery, public access was officially prohibited.

The State Land Board manages and leases parcels around Colorado to raise money for public schools.
According to State Land Board Southwest District manager Ron Rivale, “The State Trust Land (STL) parcel is being leased by a private entity for recreational use.” The five-year lease was entered into in 2018 and the parking area essentially barricaded through earthwork last month.

“In general, all STLs are considered private property unless leased by an organization that allows for public use such as Colorado Parks and Wildlife Public Access Program,” explained Rivale. “We recently learned of the illegal access on this parcel this past summer and we’re working with the USFS (United States Forest Service) to reach a possible lease agreement. Unfortunately for the USFS, the trail continues past us onto private lands. So the USFS will first need to secure access across the private lands before negotiating a possible lease with State Land Board. In the meantime, the State Land Board considers any unauthorized access as trespass and we have asked CDOT to correct the fence line and barricade the pull-off.”

The 40-acre State Land Board property straddles both sides of Highway 135. On the west, it touches the East River and some people have gone behind the county shops to fish. On the east, the trail winds through a small section of private property before entering U.S. Forest Service land and trails.

The trail from Highway 135 leads to more trails in the Cement Creek drainage and over to Jack’s Cabin. It is a popular hunting area in the fall and is used by mountain bikers and hikers from late spring into the fall. There is also a Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory research project monitoring native bees that uses that trail. Early indications are that all the stakeholders will eventually find a solution to the access issues.

State Land Board communications officer Kristin Kemp explained that the parcel is leased for two purposes: private recreation and agriculture. “Both leases are held by Cockrell Investment Partners, LLC. The group is an investor/developer of the Reserve on the East River Association located west of the state parcel,” she explained in an email. “They have leased this property for private recreation for more than 10 years. Their existing recreation lease runs through August 8, 2023. State Land Board recreation leases are five-year terms.”

Gunnison Forest District ranger Matt McCombs said this is a typical example of when a change occurs at a place people assumed was open to everyone and set in stone but isn’t.

“The recent change at the Eccher Gulch trail exit illuminated we’ve got some work to do to acquire permanent parking and access for trail users,” said McCombs. “There are a number of these legacy trails on any given district that when a change comes up and we start digging into the files we find there’s effort to expand on access. Fortunately, the State Land Board and the district agree durable public access is something worth working toward together. This will take some time, we haven’t reached out formally to landowners or the state with a proposal, so in the meantime visitors should respect the state’s intent and access the Granite Basin and Cement Mountain trails from the Cement Creek side.”

Crested Butte Mountain Bike Association (CBMBA) executive director Dave Ochs was also surprised when the parking area was decommissioned. “We knew this was a State Land Board parcel and have met with them in the past to discuss permanent access, but we didn’t expect the abrupt shut down,” he said. “It’s a more primitive and harder to get to trail, but it sees consistent use from locals from spring through the summer, in addition to hunting in the fall, and accesses some beautiful country.

“In our conversations this week with the State Land Board and the Forest Service, it appears we all want to figure out how to keep public access from that area to the Forest and Eccher/Granite Basin Trail,” Ochs continued. “We are discussing a number of alternatives that might mean a shift in the trailhead. The bottom line is that this is a situation that needed to be fixed no matter what and that is what we all want to try to do.”

Kemp said when the lease was up for renewal, the state board received no comments or other offers. She said anyone could contact the board to try to obtain one of the leases. “Lease use types and lease terms vary, and many parcels of land are leased for multiple uses by different parties,” she said. “For instance, 98 percent of trust land is leased for agriculture, and 770,000 acres of trust land are publicly available for limited sportsmen access via the Public Access Program (PAP). PAP is made possible by a lease with Colorado Parks and Wildlife. Trust land is not public land. Per Colorado law, state trust land is closed to all public use and managed similar to private property. Persons wishing to enter and use these properties must obtain permission from the State Land Board, typically through a lease or permit and almost always at a fee.”

The fees generated by the leases then are earmarked for public schools. “Since 1876, our constitutional mandate has been to earn money from the land for public schools,” Kemp said. “We are very proud to have earned $2.1 billion for public schools in the past 15 years. In particular, the State Land Board is the primary funding source for the Building Excellent Schools Today (BEST).

“There are 2.8 million acres of trust land located across the state,” Kemp continued. “There are 4,754 acres of trust land in Gunnison County (i.e., 0.2 percent of Gunnison County’s two million total acres). In the 2020-21 grant cycle, Gunnison Watershed RE1J was awarded a $493,292 BEST grant for new roofs.”