STOR Committee pushing for CB to CB South trail alignment by highway

Recommendation goes to county commissioners for consideration

By Katherine Nettles

The Gunnison County Sustainable Tourism and Outdoor Recreation (STOR) Committee last week decided to recommend that Gunnison County join it in pursuing an alignment along Highway 135 for a potential recreation path between Crested Butte and Crested Butte South. The path, referred to as CB2CBS, is part of the STOR Committee’s strategic plan and over the past 18 months STOR has been focused on attaining initial design and location details. 

The county hired consultant Design Workshop in 2023 to survey the area for a potential trail and do a feasibility study. That study was completed in fall 2023, and the question of where to align the trail became a major impasse. The study and community surveys suggested that an alignment from Brush Creek Road to Cement Creek Road, on the east side of the highway and continuing within the highway right-of-way along Cement Creek Road into CB South, terminating at Teocalli Road, would be most feasible and expeditious. However, the desire to make a more interesting path through potential private land easements away from the highway was also desired by some community and STOR members, and STOR formed a subcommittee last winter. 

The subcommittee took several months to explore an off-highway alignment, then conducted another community survey this fall to gauge people’s preference. That survey had a robust (624 person) response, mostly from full-time residents, showing a preference for the faster timeline of a highway alignment. 

The Met Rec master planning process also reported feedback from the community for expedited rec path connections within the valley. The subcommittee therefore recommended that STOR move forward with the Highway 135 alignment in mid-October and presented it to the full committee on October 24. 

The committee discussed the issue at length before voting in favor of recommending the highway alignment to the county commissioners as well. The one dissenting vote was from Steve Guerrieri, who represents the agricultural community on STOR. Guerrieri cited impacts on irrigation, proximity to cattle herds and closures during cattle drives as well as impacts to the wildlife corridors as e-bikes and teenagers would populate the trail at relatively high speeds. 

Commissioner Laura Puckett Daniels shared the committee’s decision with the county commissioners on Tuesday.

 “They [the STOR Committee] are sending a recommendation our way to move forward with designs for the CB2CBS trail,” she said. She asked what that recommendation would mean to the county. 

County manager Matthew Birnie cautioned that because the trail is not in the county’s strategic plan, the county would not do anything with it until or unless the next strategic plan identified it for action. He asked to remind the STOR Committee that the county is not the only entity that can take this project on. “I want to make sure it isn’t an expectation that it is a directive from STOR to the county. Because that’s not what STOR is,” he said. 

Puckett Daniels said she believed STOR was clear on that.

“I don’t think STOR sees it as a directive,” she said. “My read on the discussion was more that this project has been vetted; it has had public input; it has had balanced input from multiple different entities. And as a committee that leads sustainable tourism and outdoor recreation, they now feel comfortable moving forward with a plan that has come from the consultants that we hired.” 

Puckett Daniels said issues that need to be vetted if the project moves forward have to do with mitigating or eliminating potential conflicts with the agricultural community and determining funding sources.