WELD--The dramatic rescue last weekend of a critically injured hiker free-climbing on Tumbledown Mountain has brought to light the immense popularity of a recreational area that lies completely in private hands.
Most who climb the trails on Tumbledown likely assume they are publicly owned. But there are no forest rangers here. No public money is spent. No management plan is in place. And the volunteers who have adopted the trails pay for the work with suppers and raffles.
All that could change if enough money is raised for the state to buy the mountain.
The corporate owners, for now, still allow public access to climbers, fishermen, hunters and winter sportsmen. But, since 1999, the land has gone on the market, and Tumbledown and its cherished trails have been divided up by timber companies and investment firms.
Mead Paper Co. has a policy to keep its lands open to the public. But as businesses merge and sell out access will always be at the pleasure of the owner. And how much can volunteers do to protect the natural resources and the climbing public?
The Chimney Trail is a case in point. For five years, areal Appalachian Trail Club volunteers who maintain the trail have tried to close it after a landslide obliterated the upper section and loose rock on steep cliffs make it a dangerous climb. But some guidebooks still list it as being open and even recommend it for experienced hikers. And, for rock climbers seeking an extreme challenge, reaching the summit on Tumbledown from the Chimney Trail is a magnet regardless of the risk, locals say.
Making the situation worse are individuals who, with impunity, pull down signs that say the trail is closed. They remove the brush barriers that volunteers lay across the entrance. And they continually re-blaze the trail after volunteers paint over last year's markings, said Jerry Nering of Weld, the Appalachian Mountain Club trail coordinator for Tumbledown Mountain.
"It is so easily accessible that people look at it as a walk in the park. It isn't," Nering said. "It can be a quasi-wilderness situation if an emergency arises. We are managing it without really being the manager. We do what we can when we can, but we can't be there all the time."
The accident Saturday night occured after two hikers reportedly bushwhacked their way off the top section of the 3,000-foot mountain and were not on the trail. One of them slipped and fell 80 feet, and his companion and other hikers left no marker behind them when they went down to call for help.
Dozens of people trained in mountain rescue spent hours searching for the hiker in unsafe terrain. The victim was only spotted when he signalled using the flash of his camera, and he was eventually airlifted out in a precarious maneuver by a hovering U.S. Navy helicopter.
Three years ago, a New York woman fell down a cliff on a near-vertical section of the same trail. It took 65 volunteers five hours to carry her out at night.
Bruce Farnham, manager of Mount Blue State Park in Weld and a Weld firefighter, said there are four or five rescues off Tumbledown and nearby Bald Mountain every year. "My big concern here is management of the trails, and that is the focus of the land-acquisition project," Farnham said.
There are some 33,000 privately owned acres the state has targeted for protection in the Tumbledown Range and state park area with an $8 million price tag. Since June $4 million in purchase agreements to buy about 19,600 acres have been negotiated using federal and state funds. Those must be matched by $1 million in local donations. At least $300,000 must be raised by December 31 of this year to complete the first phase of the project. The state Bureau of Parks and Lands hopes to purchase a third of the property; the rest would be left in private hands, but development would be prohibited.
The local effort is being led by the Tumbledown Conservation Alliance, a coalition of local organizations, while the Trust for Public Land, a non-profit conservation organization, is negotiating the deals with landowners.
"In the Tumbledown range and around the region, there are tens of thousands of acres that have come on the market, and some have changed hands twice in the past two years," the Trust for Public Land's Jennifer Melville said. "This has been a huge change. Most of the land has been open to the public and has trails all over it, but everybody thinks they are public."
For years there have been stable relationships with landowners. But now, she said, some are carving properties up and are not as interested in allowing public access.
"These resources are in private ownership and, while some owners have graciously allowed us to continue using them, we have to ask ourselves: 'What assurances do we have that the next landowner will be as gracious?' " said Ralph Knoll, director of planning and land acquisition with the state Bureau of Parks and Land.
Nering said losing access to the land and potential development should be the biggest concerns for Tumbledown's devotees. "If someone decides to put up a house at the end of the road and you can't get up the mountain, it doesn't matter if the mountain is there because you won't be able to get to it," he said.
The Web site for the Tumbledown Conservation Alliance is <http://www.tumbledown.org>
 

Tumbledown Conservation Alliance