Designated camping spots and recreation rangers are a couple of the current and potential changes to Chaffee County public lands. The Chaffee Rec Task Force held their 30th meeting on Tuesday, August 3. The Taskforce heard from Chaffee Rec Council members who toured sections of Gunnison National Forest in the area near Crested Butte, where, in high-impact areas near Crested Butte, camping management has drastically changed.
Ben Lara, Recreation Program Manager with United State Forest Service (USFS), said about the Gunnison National Forest, “they’ve gone to a designated site management system. Not fee-based and not reservation, so it’s first-come-first-served. The six major drainages within the Crested Butte area are now open to camping in designated sites only. They have containment fencing, campsite hosts, and fabricated fire rings.”
The sites are patrolled and cleaned by agency staff and volunteer groups. These changes are the result of record numbers of visitors and negative impacts on the land like erosion, loss of vegetation, human waste, residential campers, and riparian damage. To address similar issues in the Arkansas Valley, the Chaffee Rec Council previously approved the Chaffee County Outdoor Recreation Management Plan and its broad recommendations on camping. Some of these could resemble the actions taken on public lands near Crested Butte.
Alan Robinson of Friends of Fourmile, detailed just how much increased use they’ve seen in the Fourmile Travel Management Area near Buena Vista. Robinson shared the results from Friends of Fourmile’s 13th annual Memorial Day survey. The informal survey is conducted by volunteers on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend.
This Memorial Day, the volunteers say they saw drastic increases in use above even the record breaking, pandemic-fueled 2020. According to the point in time survey, street vehicles were up 26 percent, overnight campers 30 percent, and ATVs 86 percent year over year, in 2021. The group also tracks dispersed campsites in the Fourmile area.
According to their Memorial Day report, “the total number of dispersed campsites we visited in 2021 was 389, nearly three time the number we visited in 2009. Within this total are at least 100 sites which have expanded, some as much as five times [in size].”
In an effort to address the increased use, four recreation rangers, two employed by the Bureau of Land Management and two by the USFS, are patrolling and cleaning up public lands.
Lisa Mellick, who works in Developed and Dispersed Recreation at the Salida Ranger District for the USFS, described what the Rec Rangers have done. “They have been patrolling some of the more heavily used areas, South Cottonwood, Fourmile, and Browns. They’ve cleaned up trash, fire pits, human waste. There was an unauthorized route up South Cottonwood that they closed,” said Mellick. The rangers have also built fences, rehabbed overused areas, and assisted agency staff with discreet projects. As recreation grows to unprecedented levels, much of the burden of day-to-day clean up and maintenance of campsites is falling on the Rec Rangers and volunteer groups like the Chaffee Rec Adopters and Friends of Fourmile.
The Chaffee Rec Task Force is open to the public and meets on the first Tuesday of every month. For meeting information, contact Kim Marquis at kim@envisionchaffeecounty.org.
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