FOURTEENER

days. e Front Range peaks, including some of the most accessible fourteeners like Grays and Torreys, Mount Evans, and Mount Bierstadt, lost about 3,000 hiker days, while the Sangre de Cristos rounded out the losses with 1,500 fewer hiker days.

Athearn isn’t unsympathetic to the concerns of local communities.

In rural mountain towns, residents face the consequences of high visitor numbers— acutely felt in labor and housing prices — and a loss of the serenity that many moved there for in the rst place. Last month, a report by Montana’s Headwaters Economics outlined the paradoxical challenges of living in a mountain town so plentiful with natural features that its allure brings in crushing numbers of visitors and second-home owners, thereby degrading the quality of life for locals.

e report called this type of town an “amenity trap.” ose fears carry over to natural spaces. e dialogue about “overloved” natural resources is wellfounded in Colorado, and many heavily tra cked areas have implemented strict permit systems to try to do some damage control.

What Athearn is wary of is the kneejerk reaction by local communities who see more people and immediately want to regulate rather than invest in better infrastructure.

“Some people think we need to permit everything, but you have to think, who are the people that really bene t? People who have exible schedules, who can book a trip six months in advance,” Athearn said. “What about someone who works a retail shift and might not know they can get out until the day before? Who are the people that will get access to public lands, versus those who will feel locked out or that the system is too Byzantine to navigate?”

With so much focus on diversifying public lands, and on reducing barriers to entry like cost, Athearn nds it strange that communities also want to start charging people for something that was traditionally free.

“We’re at this crosscurrent,” he said about the future of the fourteeners. “What do people actually want?” is year, the heavy and late-staying snowpack is going to have an impact on the hiking season. at much CFI is expecting. Overlaid on those natural conditions are an increase in parking and reservation fees, and an increase of private land closures — more than 10% of the fourteener’s summits are on private land — due to liability issues. e way that those three forces will impact hiker numbers this year concerns Athearn.

“I worry that we’re going in this negative direction where people are just saying ‘there’s too much. Too many people, too many dogs, too much whatever, and so let’s just stop,’” Athearn said during a recent fourteener safety panel. “Is this a canary in the coalmine for our recreation-based economy?”

Another driver of what Athearn called the knee-jerk, “shut o the tap” reaction, is the fallacy that more people means more damage.

In 2015, CFI’s trail condition report card, an assessment that they conduct every four years, gave the Quandary Peak trail a C+. at year the trail hosted 18,000 people, according to the hiker use report. CFI used that information to prioritize the Quandary trail’s improvements. In 2018, the next iteration of the report card, the trail received an A-. It hosted 38,000 people that year.

“ ere were more than twice the amount of people on it, but the trail was better,” Athearn said. He emphasized that high numbers don’t necessarily mean high impact. “If you have a good trail, people are going to follow it like cattle. Nose to tail,” he said. “And that’s a good thing, right? at means they’re not going to be going o trail, picking owers, damaging the ecosystem.”

Higher concentrations of visitors on popular peaks is also a boon for local search and rescue crews. “From a rescue standpoint, to go back up the same trail again to rescue someone with a broken ankle, it gets a little monotonous,” Je Sparhawk, executive director of Colorado Search and Rescue, said. “But, if we had to go search for people all over the place, searches take a long time. And that’s volunteer time. at’s time away from work or time away from family.” e majority of rescues that COSAR conducts are for out-of-state visitors. Sparhawk hesitated to say it aloud, but added that keeping those travelers on a few consolidated peaks makes COSAR’s job easier.

Sparhawk added that locals go wherever they want to go. ey understand tra c patterns, and know where they can nd solitude.

Athearn recently had the opportunity to talk with climbers on Grays while a helicopter ew logs to the summit. While he was holding the foot tra c back, he asked where all of the climbers were from. “I recall only about ve people from Colorado,” he said. “ ere was an extended family from St. Louis, a woman from Maryland, a man from Wisconsin, some people from Los Angeles, Texas, Kentucky, Tennessee.”

Ultimately, Athearn encouraged Coloradans to think more broadly. “ e thing that’s always hard for communities to understand is that these are our national forests and our national parks,” he said. “ ey may be located largely in the West, they may be in our backyards, but they’re really owned by all the people in the USA.” is story is from e Colorado Sun, a journalist-owned news outlet based in Denver and covering the state. For more, and to support e Colorado Sun, visit coloradosun.com. e Colorado Sun is a partner in the Colorado News Conservancy, owner of Colorado Community Media.