{"id":47607,"date":"2021-04-02T12:55:10","date_gmt":"2021-04-02T18:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/crested-butte-ending-free-for-all-camping-designating-sites\/"},"modified":"2021-04-02T18:55:10","modified_gmt":"2021-04-02T18:55:10","slug":"crested-butte-ending-free-for-all-camping-designating-sites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/crested-butte-ending-free-for-all-camping-designating-sites\/","title":{"rendered":"Crested Butte ending free-for-all camping, designating sites"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Forest
Forest Service officials and the Crested Butte Conservation Corps saw record-setting numbers of campers last summer in the drainages above Crested Butte.<\/span>Courtesy Crested Butte Mountain Bike Association\/Crested Butte Conservation Corps<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Dave Ochs spent some long days last summer working on a new bike trail up the Slate River above Crested Butte.<\/p>\n

The executive director of the Crested Butte Mountain Bike Association was driving down to town one July evening when he counted a train of 20 cars a minute heading up the drainage.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the campsites up there were already taken,\u201d he said. \u201cI was like, \u2018Where could all these people be going?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Wherever they wanted. The river drainages that spill into the East River Valley above Crested Butte offer some of the most popular dispersed camping escapes in Colorado.<\/p>\n

Maybe too popular.<\/p>\n

After a deluge of trailer-hauling, tent-tossing campers last summer, a coalition of locals and forest officials plan to end the free-for-all, camp-anywhere bacchanal. Beginning this spring, the six drainages surrounding Crested Butte will have designated campsites. By as soon as next year, reservations will be required.<\/p>\n

\"Forest
Forest Service officials are joining the Crested Butte community in designating 211 official campsites in the drainages above Crested Butte as a way to protect natural resources.<\/span>Courtesy Crested Butte Mountain Bike Association\/Crested Butte Conservation Corps<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"The
The Crested Butte Conservation Corps is working with the Forest Service to build 211 designated campsites in the six drainages that spill into Crested Butte.<\/span>Courtesy Crested Butte Mountain Bike Association\/Crested Butte Conservation Corps<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"By
By 2022 there will be 211 official campsites in the six drainages that spill into Crested Butte.<\/span>Courtesy Crested Butte Mountain Bike Association\/Crested Butte Conservation Corps<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cI chalk this up to Colorado\u2019s growing pains,\u201d said Joe Lavorini, the Gunnison County Stewardship Coordinator for the National Forest Foundation. \u201cNone of us would really want to go down this route if we didn\u2019t have to, but this is best for the resources and ultimately it\u2019s what\u2019s best for the users as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new management approach is part of a collaboration between the Forest Service and the Gunnison Valley Sustainable Tourism and Outdoor Recreation (STOR) Committee. That committee, created by Gunnison County\u2019s commissioners, includes 19 members from the community.<\/p>\n

The STOR Corps, as they call themselves, works to promote sustainable tourism and recreation in the valley and approached the Forest Service with the designated-campsite plan after last summer, when Crested Butte was busy with campers and visitors eager to get outdoors during the pandemic.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe decided as a community and as a committee, that it was time to say you just can\u2019t camp anywhere,\u201d said John Norton, the executive director of the valley\u2019s Tourism and Prosperity Partnership. \u201cIt\u2019s not an anti-camping sentiment. Everybody here loves to camp and everybody here does camp. It\u2019s just that you can only take so much without hurting the resource. We need to protect the natural resources that make this valley so special and this one way to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Camping exploded in Colorado last summer with record numbers of residents and visitors popping tents and parking trailers in remote corners as a way to get outdoors and distance themselves during the pandemic. In some areas, the deluge overwhelmed both land managers and facilities.<\/p>\n

The South Platte Ranger District in the Pike National Forest last fall converted 340 dispersed campsites into reserved, fee sites after the close-to-Denver forest swarmed with record crowds. The district\u2019s $15-a-night sites have assigned parking spots, pit toilets and fire rings. And they are a sign of the future.<\/p>\n

Reservations are increasingly common in Colorado\u2019s busy high country. Hikers need to book access to Hanging Lake. Camping permits are mandatory around Conundrum Hot Springs. Access to the Maroon Bells outside Aspen starts with a shuttle ticket. Even Vail Resorts required reservations to ride chairlifts this winter.<\/p>\n

This summer the backcountry-protecting Crested Butte Conservation Corps will help the Forest Service install campsites, with posts and numbers to designate each site. They will start up Slate River Road with 43 sites and 48 campsites up Washington Gulch Road and then expand into Kebler Pass, Irwin Lake, Brush Creek, Cement Creek and Gothic Road. By next spring there should be 211 designated camping sites across the valley.<\/p>\n

Norton said if everything works well this summer, campers will be able to book the sites on rec.gov by next spring. But that would require the campsites to meet a host of infrastructure criteria, like fire rings and toilets, outlined under the Federal Land Recreation Enhancement Act\u2019s rules for establishing fees.<\/p>\n

The Crested Butte Conservation Corps is already building campsites. A crew of 10 STOR Corps workers \u2013 paid by a Great Outdoors Colorado grant \u2013 will spend the summer helping campers learn the new rules. Tourism officials in the valley will warn visitors to have a back-up plan for camping. And maybe a back-up back-up plan on busy weekends.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is our community being proactive and doing something before the recreation gets out of control,\u201d Lavorini said. \u201cIt\u2019s time because we are seeing these areas lose their wild and wilderness characteristics due to overuse.\u201d<\/p>\n

The STOR Committee studied camping landscapes around other popular destinations, including Sedona, Prescott and Maricopa County in Arizona.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe saw that if you don\u2019t have reserved camping, it\u2019s just chaos,\u201d said Ochs, whose mountain bike association formed the Crested Butte Conservation Corps in 2017 as a professional trail and stewardship team focused on protecting the valley\u2019s backcountry.<\/p>\n

The camping crowds last summer were gasoline on the Crested Butte community\u2019s simmering plan to designate campsites around the valley. Ochs and his corps spent many days talking with campers about proper etiquette, including how to bury poop (deeply!) and where to discard trash (not piled at makeshift campsites and trailheads!).<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of them truly just did not know,\u201d Ochs said.<\/p>\n

Ochs and his corps have some concerns about the coming camping season. More people have their toys \u2013 rooftop tents, trailers and vans \u2013 and are eager for another summer in the woods. He\u2019s joining the Crested Butte community in a chorus of messaging urging visitors to make a plan and have an alternative in mind when that perfect campsite they\u2019ve visited for years is not available.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s urging town leaders to set up a temporary one-night spot in a local parking lot for campers who get denied when they arrive late.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are coming here to camp and ride and \u2026 they are going to do it,\u201d Ochs said. \u201cWe need to be ready for them and help them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Colorado Sun is a reader-supported, nonpartisan news organization dedicated to covering Colorado issues. To learn more, go to coloradosun.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Agencies identifying as many as 211 formal campsites, requiring reservations<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47608,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[2064,233,28,193],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-47607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-camping","tag-coloradosun-com","tag-headlines","tag-land-use"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47607"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=47607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}