Pikes Peak Region Trail Finder

 

 

If you obsessively follow news about our beloved national forests as much as I do (I know, I have too much free time), you may have read about a recent court decision that seems to cast  doubt on the fees the agency charges to use certain areas.

 

They're usually busier trailheads and other areas where the Forest Service charges a fee for upkeep to restrooms, picnic facilities and other amenities. Some hailed the ruling, from the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California, as a blow to all user fees.

 

That has reporters across the West asking questions about our local national forest fees, and we're all getting the same answers: Nothing changes here.

 

Local Forest Service spokeswoman Barb Timock says no changes are planned for fee sites in the Pike and San Isabel national forests, which includes locally popular places like Eleven Mile Canyon near Lake George and some trailheads going into the Lost Creek Wilderness. Other nearby fee areas include Jefferson Lake in Park County and the Mount Evans Highway (the Pikes Peak Highway is a toll road run by the city and a completely different animal.)

 

The Fort Collins Coloradoan reports fees in northern Colorado aren't changing either.

 

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Pay to hike. Pay to park. Pay to use the pit toilet. Pay to play.

It will cost you $5 to do that in Roosevelt National Forest at Chambers Lake, Dowdy Lake or Shadow Mountain Reservoir this sum­mer. Or $9 to park for a hike at Brainard Lake.

The cost to hike Greyrock, Hewlett’s Gulch or to spend a day trekking around Pingree Park or nearly any national forest trail in Poudre Canyon?

Priceless. No cost at all.

Recreation fees in Roosevelt National Forest aren’t new; but as the U.S. Forest Service reviews day-use fees at some popular national forest recreation areas and trailheads in Colorado and after a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision last month ruling some of the fees illegal, all local fees are staying put.

That means a drive up Mount Evans costs $10 and a hike in the Snowy Range or a climb at Vedauwoo, near Laramie, Wyo., still costs $5 — money used to pay for maintaining toilets, dumping trash cans, interpretive kiosks, picnic tables and for various “security services.”

The fees are used solely for those “amenities” at the sites and to pay the staff that manages those amenities, said Paul Cruz, recreation staffer for the Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest. None of the fees collected are used for trail maintenance, forest conserva­tion or management of the national forest itself, he said.

Read more here.