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By Suzanne Webel Prologue, written in October 2017. Recently I’ve spent a lot of time (again) learning about elk, this time in the context of Rabbit Mountain. In the past few years a growing herd of elk has decided that Rabbit Mountain is a great place to hang out. In spite of Boulder County Parks and Open Space’s mission of providing a haven for wildlife with no hunting, Colorado Parks & Wildlife (CPW) has decided there are too many elk. So they imposed an elk hunt that will close the park to the public for half of every week, for half of every year, so that two hunters a week can have the entire park to themselves while they “harvest” a couple dozen animals a year. The theory is that hunting will inconvenience the elk into migrating off Rabbit Mountain. Whether trails actually inconvenience wildlife seems to be a perennial debate. Over the years we have asked for new trails on many BCPOS parks, and been told repeatedly that trails inconvenience wildlife so we can’t have more trails. Here, we suggested that staff should build at least the trails that have already been approved, especially if the goal is to inconvenience the elk. The first Rabbit Mountain management plan was written in 1984, when the park consisted of about 560 acres, and the plan promised some really nice trails. One short trail was built. By 1995 when the next management plan was written, the park had grown to more than 2400 acres, and more trails were […]

By Suzanne Webel This trail had been on my bucket list, for just about ever. It was reported to be enormous and gorgeous, with dinosaur tracks, prehistoric rock art, a Spanish Mission, and a historic ranch….. But it was always a bit too far, too remote, and too … well, just too unknowable. And then there was the small matter of the US Army declaring it wanted to expand its Fort Carson Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site (PCMS) by taking over the entire 400,000 acre Comanche National Grassland — including Picketwire Canyon — and turning it into a bombing range. Starting in 2003, the plan would have condemned an additional 6.4 million acres of land owned by private citizens, making the total project area three times larger than any other military base in the United States, larger in area than the states of Maryland and Massachusetts combined, and displacing more than 17,000 residents. Sight unseen, I figured that was a pretty bad idea, so I joined up with other trail advocates, geologists, archaeologists, and ranchers to oppose the Army’s expansion plans. After a decade of pitched political battles, on 25 November 2013 the U.S. Army announced that its plan to expand the Piñon Canyon Maneuver site had been cancelled. So, naturally, by early spring of 2014 I had organized an equestrian expedition to check it all out. Warnings: Picketwire is a very long drive from Boulder County, approximately 5 hours. The area is next to a bombing range There is no designated horse camping and no water