Welcome to the Telluride Mountain Club blog. The goal of this site is to serve as a discussion forum for our extended mountain community, and provide up-to-date information on access issues, TMC projects and initiatives. From trail closures, to safety concerns, to current conditions, this blog is a place for all of us to communicate. Hey, it beats writing yet another “Letter to the Editor” in the newspaper.
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Sorry to miss the Bear Creek evening at the Last Dollar tonight. Just wanted to pass along a few thoughts.
1. Did anyone see the interview with Tom Chapman on Lou Dawson’s http://www.wildsnow.com? It occurs to me that as important as money is, the other main element in Chapman’s argument is Takings/Property Rights. This position throughout the West in antithetical to Access. I believe this has to be reckoned with in any attempt to settle this issue.
2. In some of the exchanges I read, some voices advocated just buying landowners out to guarantee access. The problem, throughout the Rocky Mountain West, is that there are patented mining claims everywhere, no more so than right here in the upper Bear Creek Basin. “Playing the game” piecemeal will not get the access we desire. How does the existence of public trails used over time (eg. Wasatch Trail) affect landowners’ desire to block usage?
Thanks for your comments, Clint. We did see the interview on Wild Snow, as well as the Google Earth posts. Agreed that buying out landowners is not the solution. Somehow we need to solve this on a large scale instead of reacting to each time it happens somewhere. Perhaps working with landowners and giving them incentives to preserve public access would be a good approach. Please feel free to share your ideas and comments via email, phone or continue posting on this site.
In terms of the issue about outright buying of private land to add to the public commons, my view is it works part of the time and might as well be one tool in the toolbox. Trust for Public Lands or Wilderness Land Trust of course go by that philosophy. But in a way they’ve messed things up by making land owners frequently go into fantasy land about how much their backcountry property is worth.
Result is property owners that hold out for unrealistic high prices, instead of quickly selling to a trust and in turn to USFS, and thus solving access problems. The whole thing is a mess and as I’ve stated over on WildSnow, after watching this progress for about 50 years, I believe we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg. More, if you’ve been around for a while, you can drive around your local area and tick off in your mind all the access that’s been blocked over the years, with nary a whimper or cry from anyone.
For those of us outside of the Telluride area such as myself, it is indeed a bit astounding that Telski themselves went ahead with commercial guiding in Bear Creek without addressing the private property issues. One has to wonder if that wasn’t indicative of some sort of overall apathy on the part of the everyone from the USFS, to access advocates. In that sense, you guys are like a mirror for the rest of us around Colorado. We’ve had some minor access victories, but overall, we’re seeing a constant trend towards closing or blocking more and more land to public use, whether as the result of private land blockage, mountain bikes being disallowed by new Wilderness, overblown wildlife concerns, or other sundry stuff that on the whole should be driving any recreation advocate crazy!
At any rate, yes, over on WildSnow we publish quite a bit of material about the Bear Creek land. If you’re looking for something, you can first go to our “Land Use” category index and you’ll probably see it there. Here is the URL:
http://www.wildsnow.com/category/public-private-land-issues/
BTW, Chapman is what he is, and vilifying him serves no useful purpose. In fact, he is only one of a number of people who own and are setting policy for the Bear Creek private inholdings. Instead, my hope is that folks would be activist, proactive, and solve access problems such as this with creative thinking and powerful action. For example, it’s amazing how much money a small group of dedicated and creative people can raise for a popular cause.
L