Forest Service proposes major changes for off-road playground

By Chris Barge, Camera Staff Writer
May 8, 2005

LEFTHAND CANYON — Nathan Wittstruck drove Saturday to the only Front Range ravine he knew of for target shooting, and he immediately realized something was different.

Volunteer crews were at the mouth of the Lefthand Canyon off-highway vehicle area, cleaning up tens of thousands of spent shell casings.

  For 13 years, a group of mostly four-wheelers has conducted the cleanup in a goodwill gesture to the U.S. Forest Service, which is charged with managing their playground.

Seeing no guilt-free out, Wittstruck stayed to help them.

Soon, he learned that a proposed management plan for the intensely used area would set the safety on target-shooting there.

Off-road abuse, target-shooting and late-night partying proliferated virtually unchecked for three decades. The Forest Service has focused recently on how to better manage the area.

After intense study and public debate, the district ranger has proposed sweeping changes.

The most dramatic proposals include: closing Carnage Canyon, a popular and highly ; imposing a dusk-to-dawn curfew; and eliminating the illegal target-shooting areas for good.

A public comment period on the proposal ended April 29. This summer, the Forest Service will perform an environmental impact assessment of the plan and publish alternative proposals. The district ranger hopes to have a plan in place by Sept. 30.

Standing in a ravine full of shell casings that would become a rock crawling area for off-road vehicles under the proposed plan, Wittstruck shook his head.

"I'm pretty bummed, to be honest," he said. "We have a problem here."

Lefthand Canyon, he said, was about the only place left on the Front Range to go outside and practice shooting high-powered rifles.

Shooters aside, however, forest officials said a high proportion of users seem happy with the plan, which could cost about $5 million to implement. They said most people understand that as the Front Range's population grows, "front country" recreation destinations will have to be managed more carefully.

"The alternative is to close the whole darn thing," Forest Service recreation planner Ed Perault said last week.

The Forest Service and the off-roaders who play in the Lefthand area have made great strides in the past couple of years, Perault said. Volunteer cleanups like the one Saturday, in addition to a major restoration effort in an abused part of the forest called the Meadows, are examples of how the four-wheeling community has rallied behind the forest's health.

Three years ago, the Meadow was so ridden with spur trails and gullies that it was known more popularly as the Playground.

Pointing to the Carnage Canyon road on a map of the area at the Boulder Ranger District office last week, District Ranger Christine Walsh said her first priority is closing the controversial route. It runs up a steep creek bed and is a major contributor to pollution by engine fluids in the watershed.

"This has to happen," she said. "We don't build roads in riparian areas if we can help it."

Nor is the Forest Service in the business of managing roads, Walsh said. Citing that reason, in addition to environmental reasons and user conflicts with landowners, she said she has decided against re-opening Fairview Peak to motorized travel.

The northern area has been closed since around Labor Day 2003, when nearby landowners obliterated the road, felled more than 100 trees in its path and dug 8-foot-deep trenches.

Two people have been charged, and a landowner has helped restore the area, which sustained more than $20,000 in damages, Walsh said. She referred questions about the case to a Forest Service investigator, who did not return phone calls last week.

Adam Mehlberg, secretary of the Longmont-based Trail Ridge Runners, said he would prefer the Forest Service reroute the road to Fairview Peak so it avoids private property.

"The downed trees were a response to motorcycles and vehicles using the area," Mehlberg said. By closing the area, "you're basically rewarding bad behavior."

Walsh said she would not pursue rerouting the road.

"We think there's plenty of opportunity for a range of recreation within this area," she said.

Pouring gas into his off-road motorcycle at the mouth of Lefthand Canyon on Saturday, D.J. Bischoff called the Forest Service's dilemma "a real catch-22."

"Public land ought to be open to the public, but when it's such high use, it's got to be managed," he said.

Contact Camera Staff Writer Chris Barge at (303) 473-1389 or bargec@dailycamera.com.

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