A plan to manage erosion on peak

This is a part of Pikes Peak most tourists don’t see.

At 12,000 feet, below the steep section of the Pikes Peak Highway known as “the Ws,” the mountain seems to have washed in on itself. Storm runoff from the impervious highway has carved out massive unnatural gullies, and the wetlands below have become choked with sediment from the mountain and gravel from the highway.

“Most people don’t realize the problem,” said Eric Billmeyer, assistant director of the Rocky Mountain Field Institute, on a recent cold morning high on the mountain. “It’s kind of like, out of sight, out of mind. If you don’t see it, you don’t know it’s a problem.”

Erosion like this led to a Sierra Club lawsuit in the late 1990s against Colorado Springs and the U.S. Forest Service to force officials to pave the highway. As part of the settlement, Billmeyer’s group was given $300,000 by the city and Forest Service for erosion control projects.

It is getting ready to embark on the largest, an eight-year, $6 million project to restore this area, near Elk Park, and another nearby heavily eroded creek.

“Nature needs a little help in being able to stabilize this,” Billmeyer said.

The gravel highway was built in 1915 by Spencer Penrose, and is run by the city for the U.S. Forest Service.

It was built with little regard for drainage issues. As early as 1952, the Forest Service called for paving and other erosion work. The city’s master plan in 1992 recommended the same, but the cost was prohibitive and there was opposition from the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb race.

The problem is runoff from the often-violent storms that batter the peak. Water rushes quickly off the highway, taking with it tons of gravel dumped on the road each year into watersheds below. Creeks and reservoirs have become clogged with this sediment, posing threats to aquatic life and Colorado Springs’ water supply.

Said Billmeyer, “Whenever the stormwater rolled off the highway, it just cut through the landscape like a knife in butter.”

The paving of the upper 12 miles of the highway, mandated by the legal settlement, is expected to be completed by 2012, at a cost of $1 million a mile, funded by tolls on the highway.

Although the newly paved sections have elaborate drainage controls, including culverts, rock weirs and ponds to collect stormwater, it does nothing for the estimated 120 unnatural gullies on the mountain, and the streams and wetlands below.

The Rocky Mountain Field Institute began work in 2005, building rock barriers in gullies to slow runoff. But these were small compared to the work ahead.

It wants to restore 4 acres of wetland near Elk Park, at the headwaters of Severy Creek, the gullies above the wetlands, and to restore Ski Creek, which begins near Glen Cove.

The Elk Park project area is steep and remote, and the gullies are massive, so Billmeyer doesn’t know yet if the group will fly in equipment to dig out sediment, or do it by hand. It will also re-vegetate the area. The cost is well beyond what the group received in the settlement, so it will be heavily dependent on volunteers and grants.

Without the work, Severy Creek, home to a rare species of cutthroat trout, will continue to fill with rock and gravel, Billmeyer said. Ski Creek, he said, will continue to wash sediment into the drinking water reservoir below.

“Unfortunately, they’ll continue to widen. You’ll continue to lose trees, you’ll continue to have more sediment washing downstream,” he said. “The whole system is completely out of equilibrium.

“We still have a chance to prevent the sediment from moving all the way into the wetland and the creek itself.”

The U.S. Forest Service is accepting public comments for an environmental assessment of the project through the end of the month. Comments can be submitted to Ski and Severy Creek Restoration Proposal, District Ranger, Pikes Peak Ranger District, 601 S. Weber St., Colorado Springs, CO.

If approved, Billmeyer hopes to begin next year.

CONTACT THE WRITER: 476-1605 or scott.rappold@gazette.com