Keeping camping sustainable

Keeping thecamping sustainable

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.

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,

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it’s got to happen,” said Catmur, a Crested Butte native and lifelong camper. After helping to clean up and mitigate damage from recreationists flooding the backcountry, and after hearing the Forest Service consider halting all camping in the area, “I see designated campsites as a great solution,” he said. “This will help preserve what we love so much and why people visit here. The goal is to concentrate the human impact to isolated and sustainable locations.”

The plan got unanimous support from the Sustainable Tourism and Outdoor Recreation (STOR) committee, which includes representatives from the towns and county, federal agencies like the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, and land-related nonprofit organizations like CBMBA, the Crested Butte Land Trust and the Gunnison Stockgrowers Association. The Forest Service public comment period drew generally positive feedback as well.

Additional designated sites could be added in the future. A STOR subcommittee is also studying the possibility of the Forest Service using a reservation system for the sites and charging fees, which could cover the cost of hiring personnel to monitor the campsites.

Once the designated camping plan was approved in 2020, the Forest Service partnered with the CBCC to buy supplies and do much of the work. The Forest Service allotted $150,000 for the project, matched by STOR. The Conservation Corps was created by CBMBA to educate recreationists and mitigate their impacts, so it seemed a logical resource for the campsite transition. “We were happy to take this on, to get it done in an efficient and timely manner,” Catmur said. “The sooner we get the sites designated, the sooner people can adapt. This summer might be tough because we’ll be in transition.”

His advice: Plan ahead, especially for your first night in the valley. Research other camping areas a bit farther from Crested Butte. Or plan far in advance and book a reserveable public campsite at Oh Be Joyful, Taylor Canyon, Irwin, Cement Creek or Gothic (rec.gov). Or book a hotel room for your first night, or stay at a private RV park like the ones in Crested Butte, Gunnison or Blue Mesa. The CBMBA website provides campsite maps and updated information. Eventually new kiosks in each drainage will display campsite information. “It will take some adjusting, but it’s the right thing to do,” Catmur said. b

Riding for kicks ...and carbon credits

Dave Kozlowski

TerraQuest and the county’s tourism association just invented a game-changer: using local biking and hiking miles to fund global climate action.

This summer, when you hit the local trails by bike or foot, you can feel good for all kinds of reasons. You can burn some calories, soak in the beauty, and – through a new CBGTrails carbon challenge – help fund global efforts to lower carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

Gunnison County’s Tourism and Prosperity Partnership (TAPP, formerly known as the Gunnison-Crested Butte Tourism Association) and TerraQuest, an app and mapping company, four years ago set up the TrailQuest game. Mountain bikers record their routes, or tracks, with ongoing leaderboards and the ultimate goal of covering all 750plus miles of singletrack trail in the valley. Wilderness TrailQuest invites hikers, trail runners, backpackers and horseback riders into the game.

“We have more than 1,000 people playing TrailQuest, approximately a third of them from outside the valley,” said John Norton, TAPP’s executive director. “We were asking ourselves if there were other games we could create with the app that might cast a wider net. Derrick [Nehrenberg of TerraQuest] had the idea of people riding and hiking for carbon credits. Visitors could basically offset the carbon they used to get to the valley [e.g. driving from Denver or flying from Houston]. We mountain lovers have a stake in eliminating carbon in our atmosphere.”

This summer, visitors or residents can download the free CBGTrails app, join the carbon challenge and record their biking or hiking tracks in the valley. For every 100 miles of track recorded, TAPP will purchase a carbon credit, equivalent to one metric ton of carbon offset, through a tradeable carbon currency called UPCO2. UPCO2

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Norton said if the CBGTrails carbon challenge game is “wildly successful,” TAPP this year could contribute up to $150,000 to fund carbon offsets.

“There’s a lot of talk about climate change and how to tackle the problem,” Nehrenberg said. “When you do the math, carbon credits are a viable option. They’re not a panacea, but they’re a bridge to future solutions.”

For Nehrenberg and TerraQuest, the carbon challenge might be even more of a game changer.

“It’s incredibly exciting,” Nehrenberg said. He foresees large corporations, municipalities and other entities jumping on board with similar challenges – “whoever wants to take the lead, taking decisive action on climate change not just by purchasing carbon offsets but also by engaging their communities.” Cities could reward bicycle commuters with carbon credits; companies could likewise encourage their employees’ healthful practices. TerraQuest would set up and maintain the challenge for each entity. “Things are going to change for TerraQuest very rapidly,” Nehrenberg predicted.

TerraQuest benefits from its TrailQuest games by incentivizing people to hit the trails and share their tracks, which adds data and on-the-ground observations to the company’s navigation services. Though Nehrenberg’s office is in Crested Butte, TerraQuest’s detailed trail mapping covers the entire United States, building off trail users’ data. The company aims to provide “wearable navigation” of the highest sophistication. Explorers can download information for their region and use the app anywhere, even without cell service, because it uses GPS satellite technology. The app offers route building with audible turn-by-turn navigation, winter map layers and other unusual features.

Nehrenberg said it’s appropriate to debut the carbon challenge concept in this valley. “The spirit of Crested Butte is in this. The community has very deep connections to the outdoors. That’s why I’m here.”

Norton also expects the carbon challenge idea to take off locally and then spread to other places. “It’s just another reason to come and ride our beautiful trail network,” he said. As for becoming a model for other entities, he said, “It’s always fun to be first.” b