Keeping the
camping sustainable
By Sandy Fails Crested Butte Conservation Corps workers install a firepit and signage for a designated campsite.
This summer the Crested Butte Conservation Corps is creating designated campsites on public lands around town to protect the wild landscape. As campers lounge outside their tents gazing into the night sky, the canopy of stars seems boundless and unchanging. Their campsites, however, are not. Camping around Crested Butte is changing this summer. In an effort to preserve the landscape, dispersed camping along roadways is being organized into designated campsites. As work is completed in each valley around Crested Butte, camping will be restricted to those official sites. This summer the sites will be free and available on a first come/first-served basis. (The plan won’t affect backpacking.) The transition will come in phases. Designated campsites are already set up out Washington Gulch (48 sites) and Slate River (43 sites), and roadside camping out those drainages is limited to those marked camping areas. Dispersed camping will be allowed in the remaining valleys only until designated sites are completed: midsummer for Brush Creek and Kebler Pass/Irwin, autumn for Cement Creek and Gothic. The Crested Butte Conservation Corps (CBCC) is completing the work – installing markers, site numbers and metal fire rings, delineating parking spaces and placing barriers to prevent damage to natural areas. In total, CBCC crews will create about 200 designated sites. 18
Nick Catmur, director of the CBCC and operations manager for the Crested Butte Mountain Bike Association (CBMBA), has been working on the camping transition plan as part of his masters in environmental management (MEM) studies at Western Colorado University. MEM student Jennifer Fenwick did the initial planning. Though in the short term the plan reduces the amount of camping available around town, Catmur considers it a success. “As much as it’s a bummer to see dispersed camping go away,
