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Spotlight: The Wild San Juans
The San Juan Range, Colorado's wildest, roughest and highest mountain playground, sprawls across the southwest corner of the state. Covering nearly 2 million acres, the San Juans include 13 peaks over 14,000 feet which provide a dramatic backdrop for ice-blue alpine lakes and waterfalls fed by snowmelt. Much of this Rocky Mountain high country remains pristine habitat for elk, black bears, mountain lions, grouse, turkeys and Mexican spotted owls. The San Juan National Forest includes the 500,000-acre Weminuche Wilderness, along with less-protected lands, such as the Hermosa Creek watershed, the HD Mountains and the headwaters of the Dolores, Animas and San Miguel rivers. These roadless areas of the San Juans are highly threatened by oil and gas exploration, and by coal-bed methane development in particular.
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Outside in the San Juans
Telluride and Durango are Meccas for outdoor adventurers for a reason -- there's no end to the Rocky Mountain highs the San Juans offer. Here's a taste:
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Hike the Colorado Trail:
Enjoy solitude and the beauty of the San Juans within the Hermosa Creek watershed, which, covering more than 150,000 acres, is the largest roadless area in the southern Rockies. A 20-mile stretch of the Colorado Trail from Kennebec Pass to Hotel Draw offers a challenging, multi-day adventure as it dips and climbs to a height of 12,300 feet, affording views of "fourteeners" in the San Juans' Lizard Head Wilderness.
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Go Mountain Biking on the Hermosa Creek Trail:
The Hermosa Creek Trail bisects the vast Hermosa Roadless Area, and is prized among fat-tire enthusiasts as a Rocky Mountain classic. Usually ridden north to south, it rolls mostly downhill along a relatively gentle grade, with the trail's namesake creek for company. Switching between gravel forest roads, smooth singletrack, and the occasional stretch of rocks and roots to keep you on your toes, it's a long and memorable day trip.
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Raft the Dolores River:
From its headwaters in the San Juans, the Dolores spills from the Rockies to the Colorado Plateau as it passes through canyons of Douglas fir and ponderosa pine to the desert region of the Dolores Wilderness Study Area. In nondrought years, leisurely floats of up to 10 days are possible, or pick a shorter section for a two- or three-day paddle.
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For details on these and other adventures in Colorado's wild San Juans, visit the websites in the Local Information section at right. Don't wait long, though; if the energy industry and its friends in the Bush administration have their way, the views from your raft or from the peaks might be marred by the sights and sounds of oil and gas drilling.
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Another Special Area at Risk
Vermillion Basin:
Signs of oil and gas development are evident throughout much of northwestern Colorado's canyons and windswept plateaus. But the Vermillion Basin, an isolated wild area of colorful badlands, ancient petroglyphs and rare plant communities, remains untouched by energy development; it is a unique and wonderful destination for intrepid backcountry explorers. The basin, which lies about 20 miles north of Dinosaur National Monument, had been part of a Colorado citizens' wilderness proposal since 1994. In April 2003, however, the Bush administration stripped the area of its temporary wilderness protection, and it is currently developing a land use plan for the basin that could open the door to oil and gas development and all-terrain vehicle recreation.
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The Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management have approved plans to drill new coal-bed methane wells and build miles of new roads in the HD Mountains of the San Juan National Forest. This new development in the foothills of the San Juans would jeopardize stands of old-growth ponderosa pines, many of which are more than 300 years old, and worsen ozone pollution and impair visibility at Mesa Verde National Park and the Weminuche Wilderness. This decision is being challenged in court. Coal-bed methane extraction is especially destructive because it can lower water tables and pollute drinking wells. Gas seepage can also destroy vegetation and contaminate aquifers. Moreover, roads built to allow access to the drill sites leave scars on the land long after exploration is finished.
In another part of the San Juans, along the Dolores River -- home of some of the longest, wildest multiday rafting trips in the country -- development on the rims of the canyons would likely mar views and pollute the air.
To learn more about how oil and gas development would change these special areas forever, visit the websites in the Local Information section, below.
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Photos, from top: Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4 © Jeff Widen; No. 5 © Colorado Environmental Coalition
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