Incline opening could be delayed yet again!
- Details
- Created on Tuesday, 21 June 2011 23:45
- Written by Dena Rosenberry
By Dave Philipps, The Gazette
A missing document threatens to stall the legal opening of the Manitou Incline until next year.
The Incline — a stairway of 2,100 old railroad ties that climbs over 2,000 feet in about a mile above Manitou Springs — has long been officially off-limits to hikers because it crosses private land. But an estimated 500,000 people a year climb the old railway, anyway.
The City of Colorado Springs has been working with Manitou Springs and landowners to legally open the route since 2008, spending over $100,000 on a lengthy public planning process and holding several public meetings.
City officials predicted the Incline would open by fall.
(Join the Incline Nation of regular users and see how your climb stacks up against other users.)
But city planners recently realized there is no federal railway abandonment document showing the Manitou Incline and Scenic Railway, owned by the Pikes Peak Cog Railway, legally abandoned the Incline right-of-way.
Kim Reaves, Colorado Springs’ acting project manager for the Incline, told the Friends of the Incline group this week the missing document could delay opening the trail by six months.
Reaves did not return calls to The Gazette on Tuesday, citing new rules for city employees that bar them from talking to the media without approval from the mayor’s office.
“It blows my mind totally that this matter has just now come up,” said Bill Koerner, advocacy director for the Trails and Open Space Coalition, a local nonprofit that advocates for trails and parks. “We’ve done so much work to organize volunteers and work days, and to find out at this point it could be delayed until winter, good grief.”
Vintage video of Incline (fast forward to 4:15)
Koerner said the U.S. Forest Service, which manages land at the top of the Incline, notified the city about the lack of documentation last week. Without the documents, Koerner said, there can be no inter-governmental agreement among the forest service, Colorado Springs and Manitou Springs to manage the Incline.
The tourist railway service ended in 1990. It is unclear whether the legal documents abandoning a claim to the right-of-way were lost or simply never filed, said Koerner.
“I suspect no one ever bothered,” he said.
Spencer Wren, manager of the Pikes Peak Cog Railway said, “I don’t know, this is the first I have heard of it.”
Check out this great old snapshot of the people ready to ride up the Incline.
Rails to Trails Conservancy, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., that advocates rehabbing old railways as hiking and biking trails, said it had no record of abandonment documents for the Incline.
Further delay in formalizing the inter-government management agreement may hinder plans to stabilize and protect the Incline.
“We have volunteers chomping at the bit that now won’t be able to do anything,” Koerner said. “There are trails that need to be fixed, really as a safety issue, and that will be delayed.”
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Contact the writer: 636-0223
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