Visions clash in debate over forest roads

GLENWOOD SPRINGS - If you talk to Tony Vagneur and Ed Pfab about what some folks who drive off-road vehicles in the White River National Forest are doing to the land there, you can almost feel their blood pressures spike.

"I see it every fall," says Pfab, who lives near Basalt. "These people are totally out of control with these four-wheelers."

Vagneur is a Forest Service volunteer, cowboy and Aspen Times columnist who grew up in Woody Creek and regularly keeps an eye out for "bandit trail" users - those who, he says, wreak havoc on the land by illegally creating their own trails with their jeeps or by riding their four-wheelers on roads or trails in the forest that are closed to motorized vehicles.

"Those people are going to ruin the national forest," he said. "They have no idea the damage they do. They'll ride right by signs.

"It might be just a few. It seems like it's all of them," he said.

Vagneur and Pfab and forest users like them are part of a heated debate about the place of motorized vehicles in the White River National Forest, which sprawls from Summit County into Eagle County and west to Glenwood Springs and south toward Aspen.

Forest Service officials and environmentalists say damage from illegal vehicle use is severe in some areas, often doing significant ecological damage to the forest.

Off-roaders say it's just a few who are doing damage, while most riders stay on designated trails and clean up after themselves.

And while some trails need to be closed as environmentalists would like, new rough-terrain motorized vehicle trails need to be built to accommodate the ever-increasing number of people who get their backcountry kicks in jeeps and ATVs, said Chris Overacker, president of Basalt-based High Country Four-Wheelers.

How motorized vehicles will be managed will likely be front-and-center at the June 21 Colorado Roadless Area Task Force meeting in Glenwood Springs, where people will give the state their two cents about what they think should be the fate of the forest's 640,000 acres of roadless land.

At about the same time, forest officials will unveil a rewritten forest "travel management plan" that will determine where motorized vehicles are allowed to go and what trails and roads could be closed to them.

Deep impact

White River recreation program manager Rich Doak said that as off-roading becomes more popular, two things are true: Motorized vehicle use will increase exponentially and forest officials will spend much of their time policing errant off-roaders.

"I will tell you we spend a lot - a very disproportionate amount - of management time trying to manage that use," Doak said.

Just how much use has increased in recent years is unknown because the last data were gathered in 2002, just after the 2001 terrorist attacks, which caused usage to drop a bit.

Today, he said, "the only thing that will slow down ATV use is if the price of gasoline gets so astronomical, people drop out of the market."

And just because more off-roaders are in the forest doesn't mean they're all doing serious damage to it, he said.

"Those who stay on the road and do what they're supposed to do are very low impact," Doak said.

But evidence of the damage done by those who stray from designated vehicle trails and roads can be seen all over the forest.

"We figure almost all people are basically good, trying to do the right thing, but there is always going to be a minority percentage who don't have the same respect for other users," he said.

Areas seeing the most damage from illegal motorized vehicle use include places near Basalt Mountain, Red Table, Thompson Creek, Broderick Creek, Richmond Ridge, the Warren Lakes and Smuggler Mountain, among others near Vail and in Summit County.

Vagneur said he knows well what errant off-roaders do near Sloans Peak near the Hunter-Fryingpan Wilderness.

"You can see where they've ridden in the wilderness area," he said. "Wherever they go, they create a crease in the earth. The next time it rains, it just gets a little deeper. On trails, they get so deep, I've seen trails three or four feet deep."

All it takes, he said, is one motorbike to stray from the trail to do serious damage.

In the Flat Tops, Doak said, there is little damage caused by off-roaders, "but there's an incredible opportunity there." The southern Flat Tops, he said, sees the most damage during hunting season.

White River National Forest by the numbers 1: Rank of the forest among all national forests for amount of recreation use. 3.5 million: Annual number of non-skiing-related visits. 4,000: Estimated percent increase in all-terrain vehicle use on the WRNF by 2050. 1,970: Miles of designated roadway. 205: Total miles of motorized vehicle trails. 210: Total miles of roads closed to motorized vehicles. 770: Total miles of trails closed but often used illegally by motorized vehicles. Source: White River National Forest

Competing visions

Some solutions may be found in the forest's soon-to-be-released travel management plan, Doak said. But environmentalists and off-roaders have competing visions for how the forest should regulate motorized vehicles.

"We'd like to see all of the existing roads stay open," said Overacker, who owns Code 4x4 in Rifle. "We're willing to make compromises where we need to."

Greg Noss, land use officer for High Country Four Wheelers, said the forest should build new loop trails for four-wheelers.

Overacker said he understands the Forest Service needs to close some roads for environmental reasons, but new roads and trails need to be built to compensate for those forest officials close.

More people are venturing into the backcountry with their jeeps, he said, but the Forest Service is making more and more roads and trails off-limits to vehicles.

Forest spokeswoman Kristi Ponozzo said only trails created illegally have been closed.

"We have not closed any system roads in the last five years," she said. "That doesn't mean we haven't gotten rid of roads that never were roads."

Unease over where vehicles are allowed in the forest is a matter of balance, Overacker said.

"There's plenty of wilderness area out there that we're not allowed in," he said. "I'm all for that. It's very important to us. That's why we're involved in cleanups. Those other user groups, they can use our roads, but we can't go in and use theirs. It's getting out of balance."

Overacker said most off-roaders are responsible and do volunteer work cleaning up after themselves and maintaining trails.

"We're not tearing up this terrain, no worse than Mother Nature with a good gullywasher," Overacker said. "We're actually going in and cleaning up. We're true conservationists."



Vail Daily, Vail, Colorado