Alma – Four of Colorado’s tallest and most popular fourteeners have been declared off-limits to hikers who lack permission from the dozens of property owners with old mining claims on the mountains.
Trails to the top of the four – Mount Democrat, Mount Lincoln, Mount Bross and Mount Cameron – cross and recross private land, so the U.S. Forest Service has stopped issuing permits to groups seeking to climb the peaks.
“The bottom line is there is no public access to those peaks,” said Sara Mayben, head of the Forest Service’s South Park Ranger District.
Their proximity to Denver and relatively easy climbs have made the four Park County peaks among the most popular of Colorado’s 54 mountains taller than 14,000 feet, the so-called fourteeners.
The agency this week began distributing fliers warning hikers to keep off trails to the peaks unless they had permission from landowners.
“We can’t stop the public from trespassing, but we will take steps to make it clear that they are,” Mayben said.
The four summits of the Mosquito Range are not the only fourteeners in private ownership.
Access issues are simmering along the slopes of Culebra Peak in the Sangre de Cristos and Wilson Peak near Telluride, said T.J. Rapoport, executive director of the Fourteeners Initiative.
The problem goes back to the 1872 Mining Act, a Civil War-era law designed to open up the mineral wealth of Western states.
Prospectors and miners once clambered over the heart of the Mosquito Range when the mountains were a major source of gold, silver and lead.
As a result, dozens of mining claims across the four peaks have been patented – transferred to private ownership.
Terri Gifford drove all the way from Illinois to climb the four peaks in the Mosquito Range. She was astounded to learn they were off-limits.
“Are we not supposed to be up there?” Gifford asked as she rummaged for a map in her van parked by the Kite Lake trailhead. “It’s in all the guidebooks.”
Trespass has been an issue for decades, but as interest in climbing fourteeners has soared – roughly a half-million people climb one peak each year – private landowners such as Maury Reiber worry they will face crippling lawsuits if someone falls into one of the mine shafts that pock the mountain slopes.
Reiber has boarded up mines and gated roads on Mount Lincoln and Mount Bross, he says, only to see vandals tear down the barriers.
Reiber wants the Forest Service to do a better job of warning hikers to stay off his land.
“We’re trying to keep an open mind about different solutions, but these issues need to be addressed,” Reiber said. “If we have to be hard-nosed and say no one goes up there, that’s the way it’s got to be.”
Some residents are angry at the developments.
“We have a compelling economic interest in seeing that these peaks remain open,” said Richard Hamilton, a former county planner who works at the historic Hand Hotel in Fairplay.
In an average year, hikers book more than 250 nights at the 11-room hotel, he said.
Recreation and tourism have become an increasingly important part of the local economy, said Gary Nichols, director of Park County’s tourism and community development office.
Adding to the pressure on the peaks is a tide of second-home development propelled by overflow demand from the Breckenridge area, he said.
In an effort to resolve tensions, Nichols has joined with the Trust for Public Land; a local group, the Alma Foundation; landowners; and state and local agencies to create the Mosquito Range Heritage Initiative.
Chief among its goals is to have the Mosquito Range declared a National Heritage Area as a way to attract funding to protect historic mining structures and to reach access agreements.
Since 1997, when Colorado Open Lands designated the broad valley of South Park as a state heritage area, Nichols has managed to win $12 million in grants, $10 million of which was spent on conservation easements preventing development on 20,000 acres.
He also started a program that pays ranchers for opening their streams to fishing.
“We have the model,” he said.
Staff writer Steve Lipsher contributed to this report. Staff writer Theo Stein can be reached at 303-820-1657 or tstein@denverpost.com.
