OUT THERE: Wilderness effort for "hidden gems" causes open conflict

SUMMIT COUNTY• We’re at 12,000 feet on a desolate, wind-swept ridge that towers over the resort town of Breckenridge.

Across the valley is the ski area, visited by more than a million people a year, and the fourteener Quandary Peak, where hikers often march like a trail of ants to the summit.

Conservationists call this comparatively unvisited area a “hidden gem.”

It’s part of a proposal to designate 342,000 acres in the high country as wilderness, where vehicles, bicycles, drilling and road-building are prohibited. Most of the land is in Summit, Eagle, Pitkin and Gunnison counties, places supporters say meet the Wilderness Act standard of being “untrammeled by man.”

“We like to say it’s the hidden gems, or the kind of places in between that don’t get a lot of attention, that people don’t visit that much,” said Kurt Kunkle, coordinator for Summit County of the Hidden Gems Wilderness Campaign. “They’re not the most visited, like the Eagles Nest Wilderness, like the Holy Cross Wilderness, but they’re the hidden gems you have to search out.”

“We must protect these lands now, before it’s too late. Our population is skyrocketing and the pressure on public lands is growing. We simply need to set aside more pristine wild places,” Kunkle said.

But the proposal, a decade in the crafting by conservation groups, has run into stiff opposition.

Off-highway vehicle users have turned out in droves at public meetings, saying wilderness designation would unfairly remove access to public land, as has Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jane Norton.

At its heart, this is a debate about how people enjoy the national forests. Most of these lands are not slated for drilling, or logging, or mining.

The proposal dates back to the White River National Forest-planning process in 2002, when the U.S. Forest Service identified 82,000 acres as suitable for wilderness designation. Conservationists thought that was a light number.

“The Wilderness Act of ’64 was passed because Congress recognized the national Forest Service wasn’t doing the job of protecting the places the American people expected,” said Sloan Shoemaker, executive director of the Carbondale-based Wilderness Workshop. The Wilderness Workshop is a nonprofit that aims to protect the Roaring Fork Watershed and neighboring areas.

Shoemaker’s group and three others, the Wilderness Society, the Colorado Environmental Coalition and the Colorado Mountain Club, hiked and mapped back-country areas in the mountains and on the Western Slope.

They identified nearly 450,000 acres, and whittled that down by 100,000 after meeting with recreational groups, utilities and water providers and other forest users.

The scope of the proposal is huge: 14 new wilderness areas and 26 significant additions to existing areas.

Wilderness can be designated by the Forest Service or by Congress, and supporters found an ally in the 2008 election of U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, D-Boulder, whose district includes Summit and Eagle counties. Polis, whose office has been working closely with the campaign, held three public meetings this month, with hundreds turning out for each, split evenly for and against the proposal.

“It locks you out if you get wilderness in the wrong spots,” said Tom Fisher, president of the White River Forest Alliance, an OHV group whose supporters attended the meetings in T-shirts saying “public land, public use.”

“The Forest Service came up with 82,000 acres already. We do agree with that. We feel it’s been fully vetted,” Fisher said.

“The areas remaining are going to be used and abused, too many people into one spot,” said Rich Holdcroft, president of the High Country Snowmobile Club.

Bicyclists, meanwhile, have given Hidden Gems their reluctant support.

“We all feel like we’re not the enemy. Commercial development is the enemy. Resource extraction is the enemy,” said Mike McCormack, president of the Summit Fat Tire Society.

Hidden Gems supporters have trimmed favorite mountain-biking areas from the proposal. Said McCormack, “A lot of the wilderness areas, we don’t want to ride in anyway. The trails are too steep and too rocky and it’s not good mountain-biking.”

Kunkle said mountain-bikers and conservationists are “friends who disagree on issues.”

What about the OHV users?

“But the tone between the conservation community and the OHV community is different. We’re not there yet. We’re not friends,” Kunkle said.

What will come of the proposal is unclear. Polis’ staff will continue to evaluate it, and could make changes before he submits legislation, said Polis spokeswoman Lara Cottingham.

“We keep on doing what we’re doing right now, which is going through the proposal trail by trail,” Cottingham said.

Some water providers, including Colorado Springs Utilities, have concerns about how Hidden Gems would affect high-mountain watersheds, and the military has voiced concerns about what it would mean for its High-Altitude Army Aviation Training.

Back on the proposed Hoosier Ridge wilderness, we are not alone.

A group of older hikers — one of them is 82 — is climbing behind us through the tundra. They are Colorado Mountain Club members, supporters of Hidden Gems.

“I really don’t like motorized (use),” Susanna Novembre said. “We hike and talk a little bit, but I don’t think we bother other groups. The noise (of OHVs) only travels so far, but the smell stays.”

While a few of the Hidden Gems areas have pressure from development, timbering or mining, supporters acknowledge that motorized use is their main concern. Kunkle said supporters plan no more large adjustments to the proposal for recreation.

He denies that wilderness designation would close areas to the public.

“A lot of people say, ‘You’re closing the areas. I’m not going to be able to get there.’ That’s not true,” Kunkle said. “We’ve got an 82-year-old up here right now.

“If you want to enjoy the land on a mountain bike or a dirt bike, there are plenty of places to go.”