Baxter’s trailhead open without the stand of trees by highway

Solar farm project slated for 2022

[ by Mark Reaman ]

With recent elimination of more than a thousand trees at the Baxter Gulch trailhead, the area is now open for bikers and hikers and set for a solar farm project that will likely begin construction in 2022.

The Town of Crested Butte owns the land and had done a selective thinning of the trees in 2019 to prevent the spread of mountain pine beetles (MPB) that had the potential to spread havoc to the forest on Gibson’s Ridge and eventually the entire valley. According to Crested Butte Recreation, Open Space & Trails supervisor Joey Carpenter, there were approximately 1,400 trees in the stand that was cut down this spring. Of those, 119 contained MPB larvae with approximately 67 standing dead due to MPB but no longer infested.

“This is compared to 40 infested and 34 standing dead in 2019, all of which were removed through the selective mitigation attempt,” he explained. “Increases of 200-percent infested and 100-percent standing dead were alarming to the town staff, council and the Colorado State Forest Service. There are trees with both MPB and Dwarf Mistletoe in the remaining part of the stand to the south. But this is private property and the responsibility of the landowner to mitigate.”

Carpenter said the Baxter’s Gulch trail opened June 1 and the parking lot is open to the public but parking should only occur in the designated trailhead parking area. There may still be some snow up high toward Green Lake but it is clear and open.

He said that the wood chips left on the ground or mastication process in the cut area is the best known practice for regeneration of the forest floor and that is why additional parking has not been made available in the cut area.

As for the upcoming solar farm project that will be installed on the property, he said the council has directed staff to plan for the solar farm project in 2021. “The earliest feasible dates for construction would occur late in the 2022 building season,” Carpenter said. “The trailhead will remain in place for the 2021 season and likely into 2022. Moving the trailhead would not occur until a more complete understanding of the solar farm project is in place.

“While tree removal on some scale would have been a component of installing an effective solar farm, it did not hold much weight in the MPB mitigation project,” he continued. “The MPB mitigation project needed to be completed prior to June 15 at the recommendation of the Colorado State Forest Service as that is when the beetles begin to spread to adjacent trees and stands.”