ASPEN, Colo.—Crews are working around the clock to reroute a popular trail in the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness area to protect it from further damage to fragile tundra.
About a dozen workers are using slings because they are barred from using motorized or mechanized tools in the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness 11 miles southwest of Aspen.
The volunteers are part of the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative dedicated to educating people and fixing ecological damage caused by heavy recreational use of the state’s 54 peaks above 14,000 feet. The organization usually repairs two to three trails a year.
This year, its members have been working in Minnehaha Gulch for five weeks, living and working above 10,000 feet. Their goal is to reroute about one mile of the trail up North Maroon Peak, one of the iconic Maroon Bells. The tundra they are trying to protect is frozen subsoil with small plant life that can be damaged for decades by hikers.
North Maroon Peak suffers from unofficial trails that run through ecologically sensitive areas. About 90 percent of the new route takes the trail through broken rocks. New rocks are being hauled from a quarry to build a 300-foot retaining wall along the new trail section to build a 67-step staircase.
Miriam Venman-Clay, of Vermont, one of the two Colorado Fourteeners Initiative project managers, tells the Aspen Times () the U.S. Forest Service and volunteers have planned the project for years.
“We’ve built this entire trail in five weeks. We have to tie it up in four more weeks,” she said, hoping to beat the first snow.
The mornings are getting colder and the crew already has the end of their hitch in sight. They said it gives them peace of mind of knowing they helped heal a scar on one of Colorado’s 14ers.
“It can’t get better than this,” said Taylor Beeson, 24, a North Carolina native.
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Information from: The Aspen Times,
