TAKE ONLY
MEMORIES, LEAVE ONLY
FOOTPRINTS By Graham Coffey
Ryan Nott
Leave No Trace
The U.S. Forest Service will be partnering with the San Juan Mountains Association once again this summer to help encourage visitors to Ice Lakes Basin to practice Leave No Trace principles when visiting the area. The Ice Fire of October 2020 led to Ice Lakes Basin being closed last summer. When the area reopened on September 15th, SJMA volunteers staffed a pop-up tent at the South Mineral Falls trailhead for the following month. During the summer of 2022, SJMA volunteers will staff the trailhead starting in May and will be there every day until the peak season ends in September. Jed Botsford works as a natural resources specialist for the U.S. Forest Service in the Columbine Ranger District, of which Ice Lakes is a part. He says the area has seen positive results with volunteers in the South Mineral Falls parking lot. SJMA staffed a tiny home with volunteers in 2019, but during 2020 they were not able to put volunteers at the trailhead due to the pandemic. “In 2020 when nobody was there,
a busy hub of activity, and Botsford says his organization is searching for a long-term plan that will help keep the area beautiful and allow everyone to recreate. “We do have a project for our fiscal year of 2022 to start doing a planning effort for the South Mineral drainage that Ice Lakes falls into. We want to evaluate the best way to permit or regulate the use of Ice Lake Basin.” We asked Botsford what recommendations he would give to those visitors who want to help keep the area pristine. “We really encourage people to camp in the lower basin instead of the Priscilla Sherman upper basin because it doesn’t affect the alpine environment. We also want to encourage people to pack out their we were finding nails in fire pits, which inwaste because it does not degrade in the aldicates that people were taking apart hispine environment and it can be detrimental toric structures and burning them. In 2021 to some of the plant life up there.” we asked for volunteers to step up and we In addition to having volunteers at the were fortunate to have volunteers that were trailhead, the Forest Service is working to willing to help out. There was a lot of eduget portable toilets in the parking lot. The cation that went on with visitors that were hope is that the toilets will cut down even furcoming into the area.” said Botsford. ther on the amount of waste left behind. The South Mineral Falls parking lot is
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