STOR committee updates strategic plan

Advocating for ranchers, hotels and working on funding

By Katherine Nettles

 The Gunnison County Sustainable Tourism and Outdoor Recreation (STOR) Committee has approved a new strategic plan for 2025–2027, capping off a process that began last winter and wrapped up just before the summer solstice. The plan tackles the year-round challenges of recreation management across the Gunnison Valley.

The process kicked off in December 2024 in a work session with county commissioners, and after several months of fine-tuning, the STOR Committee adopted the new plan. 

The plan addresses impacts on wildlife, ranching, a need for multilingual communication and launching a campaign to encourage people to book hotel rooms when designated camping is full. It also focuses on funding and infrastructure.

STOR Committee stewardship coordinator Nick Catmur and assistant county manager for community and economic development Cathie Pagano first reviewed the STOR Committee’s previous 2023 to 2025 strategic plan bullet points, discussing completed goals and some still in progress.

In short, user fees and a Crested Butte to CB South rec path are not likely to happen in the immediate future but trail use/designated camping enforcement and stewardship messaging will continue, with more emphasis on funding and advocacy, and infrastructure and maintenance are expanding. 

Goals past and present

STOR’s strategic plan uses four overarching goals (A through D) to guide nine different objectives. Goal A is to “promote a sustainable, resilient community that supports thriving natural ecosystems and native wildlife resources, a vibrant rural and ranching culture and a diverse recreation economy.” 

The STOR Committee completed its first previous subset of this goal, convening wildlife professionals and developing spatial models to include land ownership designations, current and potential human and recreation impacts on wildlife and a map of current county zoning, lands under conservation and lands under mining impacts. The map is now complete and being incorporated to support decision-making and public outreach. 

“The next steps are to publish a final draft with recommended changes for south of Highway 50,” said Pagano at the outset, where vast sage brush is present along with important wildlife corridors and winter wildlife habitat.

With that in mind, the strategic plan’s first subgoal is now to work with Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission by the end of 2026 to support the development of wildlife crossing structures on Highways 135 and 50, reflecting community support for land conservation and the need to assess feasibility in those areas. 

The second subgoal, to work with the ranching community to find ways to reduce impacts from recreation, is ongoing. It includes educating people through updated “Code of the West” and “Right to Ranch” documents. Catmur said there is also a cattle gate replacement priority list from ranchers, and during the winter of 2025, he explained, “We awarded a grant to the Gunnison County Stock Grower’s Association to allow them to replace 20 old wire gates with new swing gates at high priority areas where ranching and recreation overlap.” The committee agreed to assign a point of contact within the local Stockgrowers Association to improve coordination and communication around special events and cattle movements. This subgoal is to be complete by end of 2026.

Goal B is to “Foster a culture for residents and visitors that demonstrates an ethic of environmental stewardship and respect for our community.” The two subgoals were previously to develop a multilingual communication plan and signage needs assessment to help people locate campsites, get information on Leave No Trace principles, e-bike etiquette/trails and stewardship. Those will continue through 2025.

To do this, STOR tried an ad campaign around stewardship in 2024 and while still advocating for strong stewardship messaging, this year’s focus is more on trying to educate people around the limited availability of campsites and to encourage them to consider booking a hotel as a plan B. “We’re trying to spread the message that we do not have unlimited campsites and in fact it’s often full, while many hotels are not,” said Catmur.

Other elements to these subgoals previously included new graphics in Spanish and English for kiosk signage across the valley, the design for which is now complete. The new signs will be installed this fall. 

Additional enforcement patrols in the six drainages surrounding Crested Butte in 2024 during busy weekends were not continued this summer, due to federal spending cuts and limited funding sources. 

Goal C, “Support collaboration between federal land management agencies, state and local government, nonprofits and user groups to improve management of recreation and natural resources” includes three previous subgoals are ongoing: to prioritize annual funding for the Gunnison Stewardship Fund, to advocate for the community to federal and state lawmakers for related funding and policy decisions and to explore funding opportunities to advocate for public lands and STOR Committee goals. 

STOR and the US Forest Service have previously secured toilet cleaning for 2024 and 2025 at trailhead facilities, made road improvements in Brush Creek, Slate River and Washington Gulch, constructed new tent pads in Gothic campsites, constructed boulder and fencing for campsites in Slate River and Washington Gulch and done maintenance work at Hartman Rocks. “We want to keep working on projects like these, but it is very dependent on funding,” noted Catmur.

STOR board chair Tim Kugler added that a new toilet was installed at Hartman Rocks in 2024 and there is ongoing Stewardship Fund support for the Crested Butte Mountain Bike Association and Gunnison Trails trail and stewardship crews, “working on a variety of projects across federal lands.”

The final strategic goal, Goal D, is to “Minimize degradation of natural resources and enhance accessibility of recreational amenities by focusing recreational development close to population centers and emphasizing conservation and wildlife habitat preservation in outlying areas.” Its four previous subgoals have been pared down to two, with the goal of an eventual fee proposal for high use areas to support infrastructure, and developing a plan for a recreation path between Crested Butte and Crested Butte South (CB2CBS) removed from the plan. The remaining two, identifying areas to add infrastructure and/or transit to accommodate recreation and protect natural resources and last, creating a plan to address infrastructure needs and recreation demands at Hartman Rocks, have been significantly reworked to reflect some progress and changes. 

These goals have resulted in a parking lot at Tent City in Brush Creek. However, STOR’s memo stated that user fees will not be coming anytime soon as fees for both designated camping and day use areas are “not feasible at this time.”

The CB2CBS path has a 10% design plan complete and after extensive community surveys, outreach and public meetings the STOR Committee voted to recommend the highway alignment design to the county for implementation with offers to help facilitate it. “We understand that this is not likely to take precedence at this time but would advocate for the county to put it on their next strategic planning cycle,” according to the memo.

“We are abandoning one [strategic result] item to get mass transit to trailheads,” said Catmur. He said in-depth studies and meetings with Mountain Express revealed they must have three things in place to offer that service which are not yet realistic: “Reasonable [transit] frequency of 20 or 30 minutes, parking/travel restrictions already in place and usability: being able to carry people and gear to the right places,” he summarized. 

The last two subgoals now aim to identify and pursue grant funding by the end of 2025 to implement high priority projects already identified, and to identify high-use, non-federal trailheads for improving user experience and environmental outcomes. Those improvements would come in the form of bathrooms, trash disposal, hardening and more.

Last, a memo from the STOR Committee reviewed the work accomplished by the Gunnison County Stewardship Fund and National Forest Foundation since they partnered in 2018. Accomplishments include $400,000 in business partner contributions, 21 partner-led projects achieving $1.2 million in land conservation value, 521 miles of trail work, 697 campsites maintained, 8,000 volunteer hours and 70 trees planted. Participating organizations include MetRec, Irwin Guides, Vail Resorts, Crested Butte Mountain Resort, Atmos Energy, Scenic River Tours, Freeport-McMoRan, Elevation Hotel and Spa, Eleven and Gunnison Energy LLC.

“There’s challenges, but a lot has been accomplished,” summarized commissioner Jonathan Houck.