The Seven Peaks Festival in Buena Vista, a country music extravaganza scheduled for Labor Day weekend, was canceled Friday due to Chaffee County’s COVID-19 capacity restrictions, which do not permit more than 5,000 people at an event.
The announcement was posted by the festival on Twitter and on Seven Peaks’ website Friday.
“All 2021 passes purchased at SevenPeaksFestival.com will automatically be fully refunded within 30 days back to the original form of payment,” the announcement read. “We are already planning for 2022, and a new location will be announced in the coming months.”
Country star Dierks Bentley, , posted on Twitter that he “really could not be more bummed out” about the cancellation, adding “Chaffee County has decided against lifting capacity restrictions.”
All 2021 passes purchased at will automatically be fully refunded within 30 days back to the original form of payment.
— Dierks Bentley (@DierksBentley)
This year’s festival, the third since it began, was to have featured artists Keith Urban, Old Crow Medicine Show and others.
The that the county commissioners in Chaffee County voted this week to maintain the county’s event cap of 5,000 people, which it only put in place a month ago after having a cap of 2,000. The Ark Valley Voice said concert organizers were seeking a permit for upward of 20,000 people.
More than 7,000 tickets had been sold to the event.
The decision to cancel comes as the delta variant of the coronavirus has established itself as the dominant version of the virus in Colorado. It has been particularly prevalent in Mesa County, where last month the Country Jam music festival lured thousands of fans for a three-day event near Grand Junction.
Colorado public health officials earlier this week declared Country Jam the site of a COVID outbreak, recording infections among 13 attendees and four staffers, according to the state’s outbreak database.
According to state health data, 62.8% of all eligible recipients in Chaffee County have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine.
