I may have already forwarded this to you – if so, I apologize (just another reminder!).

 

Good chance to be brought up to speed on the impact of 2C/300 on the realm of parks, trails, and open space in the Pikes Peak region by the Colorado Springs employees that have to manage the books (in other words, no sugar coating, just the facts).

 

 

 

One last thing I forgot to mention – if you can’t attend tonight and still want to make comments, please get them in by Nov.1.  They plan on then using the next few months to formulate a “preferred” plan and will then bring that before the public at meetings in Feb. of next year.

 

 

I attended last nights meeting in Woodland Park and I wanted to pass along some additional information that might be helpful:

 

-          although it is an open house, they do split people into groups and go over some basic concepts at the beginning onf the meeting, so if you can be there @ 6pm, that would probably prove to be useful.

 

-          They unveiled 3 concept plans (they don’t have a preferred one) – I’ll mention some main points I came away with, but by no means are these snippets complete regarding everything in the plans:

 

o        The first has substantial amounts of new multiuse non-motorized singletrack trails that do a pretty good job of linking everything together.  It also had substantial amounts of new motorized trails at the Rainbow Falls motorized area, which I think is probably a good thing.  There were no new motorized trails anywhere else in the area being covered.

o        The second had new motorized emphasis in 2 additional areas to the Rainbow Falls area, but dropped off the new non-motorized singletrack.

o        The third had the mountainbike emphasis area discussed below, but also left out most of the new non-motorized singletrack.

 

I came away thinking that I’d like to see the best of all three rolled into one:

 

- Plenty of new non-motorized singletrack trails linking everything so you can do some nice epic rides from Manitou to Woodland Park to Monument, etc.  I also emphasized that links from communities to the trail network are important.  Specifically that liks to Manitou and Cascade should be included (make the Williams Canyon and Mt. Pyramid Trails that link Cascade and Manitou to the Waldo Canyon Trail official forest service trails).  I’m not as familiar with the trails further north, so maybe those attending tonight can voice similar opinions regarding other communities (Monument, Palmer Lake, etc.)

                        - I liked the fact that they were trying to accommodate the motorized users by including new trails, both singletrack and wider, with “challenge” areas for rockcrawling, etc.

                        - The mountain bike emphasis area is a good idea – not that it be exclusive to mtb use, but that the trails be planned with that user group as the main target.  The trails that they had designated for this use were current roads, so it is a good idea to emphasize that new singletrack is greatly preferred for that use over existing roads.

                        - I also echoed Jim’s thought below that all trails should be inclusive of all non-motorized users.  Properly designed trails can be shared without conflict.  User-specific trails can have their place, but in general it opens a can of worms that may eventually lead to mountain bikes being excluded from the trails we love.

 

 

Don’t forget, if you want any current trail that is not a “forest service designated” trail to be recognized by the USFS as “official” or if you want any new trail to be constructed (even if it’s just to link existing trails), now is the time to speak up.  It is virtually impossible to get this done on a trail by trail basis since every change has to have an environmental study done (go through the NEPA process).  The great thing about the current Management Plan process is that all of the changes will be done under one large NEPA process.  The down side is that another might not be done for this area for another 10-20 yrs.  SO SPEAK UP NOW!

 

And don’t forget to thank the employees of the Forest Service for all they do for us!