This is the first in a weekly series profiling the areas proposed by the Hidden Gems campaign for federal wilderness designation. The campaign, led by Carbondale’s Wilderness Workshop, calls for more than 400,000 acres to be protected as wilderness. Most of the land is in the White River and Gunnison national forests, and includes areas in Pitkin, Gunnison, Eagle and Summit counties. An act of the U.S. Congress is required to designate new wilderness. The campaign has drawn criticism from some outdoor recreationalists, because all mechanized use and development is barred in federal wilderness.
The proposed Basalt Mountain Wilderness covers roughly 20 square miles of forest land just north of the town that shares its name.
Among the most visibly recognizable areas included in the whole Hidden Gems proposal is the escarpment near Basalt’s gradual mountaintop, which is visible to drivers on Highway 82 for several miles passing through the midvalley. The unique basalt formations and boulder fields on the mountain are left over from the ancient time when it was a shield volcano.
The area is home to deer, bighorn sheep and elk, including areas where elk give birth. It is believed to be hospitable habitat for lynx, though it’s unknown whether any of the rare wildcats actually call it home. Portions of the proposed area include the upper drainage from Cattle Creek, and its streams are populated by some rare-breed trout. The mountain is also home to the band-tailed pigeon and olive-sided flycatcher, both birds flagged by the Audubon Society as species of concern. Gems proponents say designating the area as wilderness would provide needed protection for that wildlife and the lower-elevation ecosystem they inhabit.
The woods of Basalt include aspens and scrub oak, as well as an old growth spruce and fir forest covering the mountaintop, and in the summer months a bright magenta fireweed sprouts from the basalt-rich soils.
Like much of the Gems proposal, it includes lower elevation wildlife habitat which is close to a developed — and still developing — area, and is therefore somewhat atypical of designated wilderness. Elevation of the proposed Basalt area runs from about 7,000 feet on the southern Fryingpan River side to about 11,000 feet on the east where it meets the Gems-proposed Red Table Wilderness. The boundaries for the proposed area are cut on the northside along the 1911 bike trail and a road until it meets Red Table. On the south it mostly abuts the Lake Christine and Toner Creek wildlife areas, and on its west it runs into a designated roadless Bureau of Land Management area.
The peak of Basalt is among the least grandiose in the Elk range. But the legendary mountaineer Aron Ralston calls getting there “a grand adventure.” Ralston, an advocate of the Gems campaign and former Aspenite, recently recalled bushwacking to the summit and finding a south-facing view of Sopris, Pyramid and the Elk range from a hunter’s lookout built from cut branches, which included a jar stuffed with a few pieces of paper serving as a visitors’ log. A unique topography also pops up from sandstone formations and amphitheaters, like Seven Castles which lies the proposed wilderness area’s southeast corner and which Ralston describes as “the red rocks of Utah in our backyard.”
Loggers have operated historically on Basalt Mountain and it was slated for more timber development as recently as the 1990s. Wilderness Workshop Executive Director Sloan Shoemaker highlights the threat of logging as a reason to preserve Basalt as wilderness.
“Wilderness would permanently prevent the top of Basalt [Mountain] from getting scalped,” he said via e-mail.
Hidden Gems carved out popular mountain biking trails from the Basalt Mountain area, including the 1909 and 1911. They have also cut out a controversial plot near where bikers have been lobbying to create a trail through the state wildlife area on the southside of the proposed wilderness site and west of the mountain itself, along with other areas where bikers hope to build trail connections.
The border of the proposed wilderness area and the existing state wildlife area on the southside remains the biggest sticking point between bikers and wilderness advocates. Trails through the wildlife area could potentially link bikers directly to downtown Basalt or El Jebel.
The Colorado Division of Wildlife controls that preserve and has shot down the idea of trail development through it, though they allowed bikes on a road there for a period in the mid-1990s — before they enacted a regulation banning all mountain bikes in 2000.
Mike Pritchard, spokesman for the Roaring Fork Mountain Bike Association, called possible trail development there “a longshot,” but expressed discomfort with permanently shutting off trail development in a place so close to residential Basalt.
“We consider Basalt Mountain to be one of these close-in areas that is pretty darn accessible,” Pritchard said. “We don’t necessarily want to build a whole trail system, what we want to do is improve trail connections.”
Jack Albright, vice president of the White River Forest Alliance, a group advocating for outdoor enthusiasts, said the Gems campaign should not write off further trail development. “They say it will never happen,” he said. “But there’s no telling what may happen in the future.”
Albright also notes that portions of Basalt Mountain have old and now-overgrown jeep and logging roads through them, which he said ought to disqualify it as wilderness-quality land. The Wilderness Act of 1964 defines wilderness as “untrammeled by man,” and Albright says, “Wilderness has to be ‘untrammeled by man’ and these roads were cut by machines, not by hand.”
The Daily News welcomes feedback from readers about these proposed areas. Next week we’ll profile the proposed Red Table Wilderness.
andrew@aspendailynews.com
