Noticias

• Telluride Mountain Club Proposes New Trails
• Open Space Work Plan Highlights Recreation
• The Best Book of 2025 Is…

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Telluride Mountain Club Proposes New Trails

More trails are coming to the Telluride region. The Telluride Mountain Club, a local nonprofit focused on human-powered recreation access, has proposed 11 miles of new trails and the rehabilitation of about five miles of existing ones.

Working with the U.S. Forest Service, the draft comment period for the environmental assessment on the proposal recently concluded. While the project is the result of years of collaboration with local stakeholders, some residents have expressed concerns about the potential environmental impacts.

“We’re proposing them to improve trail connectivity, trail variety, and accessibility in and around the Telluride region,” said Heidi Lauterbach, executive director of the Telluride Mountain Club. “Our current trails—a lot of them are just old mining roads or sort of relics of the past. Kind of things that were adopted over time. Our main goal is to actually just connect not only the communities but the trail system in a more sustainable fashion.”

The proposed trails range from a connector trail from Mountain Village to the Valley Floor, to the Ilium Flume Trail—a nearly five-mile route that follows a historic flume on the east side of Ilium Valley—to an uphill route on the popular T35 or Sunshine Trail.

“To a larger extent they were sort of more of a vision and not necessarily ground-truthed,” Lauterbach said. “Over time, we worked closely with the Forest Service to understand what would be possible and what wouldn’t be possible. What’s interesting about trail planning in our region is there’s actually not a lot of places that you can put a trail. It’s more common to find places that you can’t. The reason behind that is topography. We have really steep, rugged mountains. In addition to that, we have a ton of private land.”

Among the proposed additions is the South Side Perimeter Trail, a two-mile route that would connect Bear Creek to Bridal Veil Falls. Angela Dye, chair of the Telluride Open Space Commission, said the group aims to support both recreation and ecological preservation.

“It’s a combination of the county open space, of which I am a member, the town open space commission—by way of what it will connect to, which is Zone 1 Bear Creek Preserve—and the Forest Service and Idarado has been involved,” Dye said. “And [we’re] trying to get a connection between, say, Town Park, Bear Creek Preserve and the base of Bridal Veil Falls.”

While the trail could help disperse recreational use, some Idarado homeowners have raised environmental and traffic concerns.

“The fact that this is so close to town and is really untouched—you know, do we really need to have another place to walk right there?” said Thruce Morton, an Idarado resident. “There’s several other proposals. We’ve got lots of other great trails. Telluride Mountain Club does a fabulous job for us all, but this just seems an invasion—an unnecessary invasion of a pristine refuge.”

Christina Casas, president of the Idarado Legacy Homeowners Association, said the perimeter trail would increase congestion in the already crowded East End.

“The Forest Service land is just a sheer rock,” Casas said. “It’s going to be extremely disruptive and would be extremely expensive. So our feelings are for this trail—you know, of course we support the Mountain Club. And like I said, we’re donors of the Mountain Club and we want to see them continue their very, very, very good work.”

Trout Lake homeowners also expressed concern over the proposed Sheep Mountain Traverse, a three-mile section above the Galloping Goose road cut. Lisa Allee, president of the Trout Lake Owners Association, said the trail would harm local wildlife.

“The impact on wildlife habitat is of great concern,” Allee said. “By putting this trail into essentially an intact forest, [it] will greatly impact—negatively impact—the habitat of the non-human species that live on Sheep Mountain.”

She added: “We really don’t need another trail. There are an abundance of trails in this area. And the Galloping Goose already exists—already traverses the area that this trail is being proposed.”

Allee also cited concerns about increased traffic on North Trout Lake Road and impacts to lynx habitat. She said homeowners asked to meet with the Mountain Club but were directed to submit public comments instead.

In recent years, the Telluride Mountain Club has led or supported several trail development projects, including the Bridal Veil Trail and bridge, repairs to the Jud Wiebe Bridge, the Mill to Eider connector trail, and a summer trail maintenance program in partnership with the Forest Service.

“This has been a really collaborative process,” Lauterbach said. “We’ve worked closely with the Forest Service. The county and the towns have been partners in many of these concepts. And really it came to life because of the surveys we’ve done with the communities. You know, we didn’t dream a lot of it up alone. We were able to modify things based on trail-building perspectives. A lot of this feedback has been community generated, and that’s one of the reasons we love it—because we know the community is into it.”

The Forest Service and the Telluride Mountain Club received 76 public comments during the draft environmental analysis period. The next step is for the Forest Service to review those comments and publish a final proposal before any trail construction begins.

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Open Space Work Plan Highlights Recreation

A hike up Bear Creek, a meander through the Valley Floor, a scamper up to Cornet Creek — Telluride is surrounded by open space.

That open space is managed and maintained by the town, in part through an Open Space Commission Work Plan — an annual document identifying special projects, maintenance and stewardship priorities on open space in Telluride.

Last week, the Open Space Commission and Telluride Program Director Lance McDonald went before Town Council for approval of the 2025 document.

The work plan breaks down local open space into three categories: Valley Floor Stewardship and Management, Bear Creek Preserve Stewardship and Management, and Other Stewardship and Management and Acquisition.

Before diving into projects for the upcoming year, McDonald highlighted some accomplishments from the last.

“There was a new bike trail put in Bear Creek that went from the new kiosk location down to the top of Firecracker Hill,” he said. “We did keep the existing steep social hiking trail in that area, at the request of users. But we did close off some of the braided trails and redundant trails in the area.”

The town also replaced small wooden bridges around the beaver pond, repaired the Cornet Creek Trail after it closed from a rock fall the year before, and made River Trail improvements on the Valley Floor for rideability.

“We also had a snowcat this season. It wasn’t the best season to try that out, but that is the future, we believe,” McDonald said. “So hopefully next season we’ll get a better chance. What this does is allows grooming on the Valley Floor with a snowcat on a daily basis. We’ve never had that.”

Last summer, the town unveiled a new kiosk in Bear Creek.

“We had representatives from the Southern Ute Tribe and the Ute Mountain Utes attend that as well. It was a great group and a great gathering,” McDonald said. “We are now incorporating Native American acknowledgements into our signage on our open space, but we also want to go a little further than acknowledgements. What other items can we bring to bear in our communication with the public that is more than just acknowledgements that you typically see?”

McDonald said discussions have also started for updating signs across Telluride’s open space.

Looking to 2025, McDonald said they’re looking to realign trails behind Town Park Stage to connect the Bear Creek Trailhead to Firecracker Hill.

“We also want to work with the Forest Service to connect the bike trail that we constructed a couple years ago on the west side of Bear Creek to the Wasatch Trail, one or two switchbacks up off Bear Creek,” he said. “And then also, several of you have noticed what the condition is at the end of Pine Street when you walk onto Bear Creek Trail. It’s gravely, it’s steep. We want to improve the walkability and appearance of that area, but we also need to maintain access for those who have the right to use the road, and emergency and maintenance vehicles that go up the road. That’s what we’re going to work on, come up with a plan on what that should look like, and hopefully start doing some of those improvements this summer.”

The town is also continuing to review plans from the U.S. Forest Service on river restoration on the Valley Floor, and is working on weed mitigation and forest health.

While the Open Space Commission is planning for things like revegetation and forest health, Councilmember Dan Enright noted an emphasis on the people using the open space.

“This year there’s been more of a push of incorporating usage and recreation and getting people into these spaces, new trails opportunities,” Enright said. “There’s always been some component of that, but I feel like it’s greater this year, and I’m heavily supportive of that.”

The remainder of Council added their appreciation for the Open Space Commission’s work, and Town Council unanimously approved the 2025 Open Space Commission Work Plan.

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The Best Book of 2025 Is…

And the winner of the 2025 Book Battle is…

Kristin Hannah’s The Women.

“That was knockout every single round. It knocked out its competition out every single round by at least double the votes,” said Jill Wilson, public services manager at Wilkinson Public Library.

This year, the library hosted an all-out brawl to name the best book of the year through a March Madness-style bracket.

Tiffany Osborne, Wilkinson Public Library program coordinator, came up with the idea and set the literary ball in motion, first picking a top 16.

“We know what’s popular. We knew what had been checked out a lot in our library. We know what people were talking about,” Osborne said. “At the end of the year, we had an idea of what was the top of 2024, and that helped narrow down the field.”

Wilson added the matchups also had to make sense.

“Then you just had to make sure the matchups, the genres, worked together. You didn’t want to put Life Impossible with The Women,” Wilson said. “You wanted to pull two historical fictions next to each other, and two more mystical books next to each other. Looking at the overall list of the popular fiction and then pairing it with things that made sense.”

After weeks of building out brackets and voting the top 16 to 8, then to a Final Four and a championship round, The Women beat out romance, mystical and debut novels to take the top spot.

If you ask Osborne, it’s well deserved.

“If you haven’t read The Women, and I’m sitting in a cubicle with two people that haven’t read it, I don’t know what’s wrong with you guys.”

A work of historical fiction, The Women follows an Army nurse during the Vietnam War.

“Her ambitions and her thoughts prior to going to Vietnam, and then what happens during and after, and being a veteran, how veterans are treated, especially being a woman,” Osborne said. “I think it’s a really good spotlight into why people join the military, and the reasonings for it, what their experiences was during it and then afterwards. I thought it was an incredibly well told story.”

While the 2025 Book Battle is over, it’ll be back next year. And if you want to be caught up on the books likely to be vying for the top spot, Osborne already has some suggestions.

“I can already tell you there are three books coming out in June. They’re going to be in the top 16 for sure,” she said. “We have Fredrik Backman coming out with a new book and it’s going to be really good. That’s going to be in the top. Taylor Jenkins Reid is coming out with a new book, Atmosphere, that’s going to be up there, probably the book of the summer. And then Kevin Wilson is coming out with a book, and it is going to be in the top. Those are my first three predictions.”

Until then, one book gets the crown.

All hail the reigning champion: The Women.

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Lizard Head Closed for CDOT Operations

The Colorado Department of Transportation will conduct winter maintenance, including helicopter operations, at Lizard Head Pass on Thursday, April 10.

Northbound and southbound travelers should expect full stops and intermittent delays lasting up to 30 minutes throughout the morning.

Northbound travelers will encounter delays on Colorado Highway 145, nine miles north of Rico (mile marker 56). Southbound travelers will encounter delays near Trout Lake (mile marker 61).

Work is scheduled from 10 a.m. to noon.

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Nature Mural Comes to the Lone Cone Library

The Lone Cone Library is bringing the outdoors inside.

This Friday, San Miguel Basin 4-H and the Lone Cone Library will team up for a Nature Painting Wall event to create a nature-inspired mural.

The event invites youth and adults to get creative and build something together. Participants are encouraged to bring their own supplies—pine cones, acorns, or other natural materials. All artistic levels are welcome.

The Nature Painting Wall event will take place Friday, April 11, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the Lone Cone Library in Norwood.

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Federal Conservation Funds on Hold During Trump Administration Review

Since January, some federal conservation funds have been paused while the Trump administration reviews projects. That includes more than $20 million earmarked for conservation in northwest Wyoming.

The Jackson Hole Land Trust was set to distribute the money and secure land protections.

“Conservation easements have never been political, they’ve never been partisan,” said Max Ludington, executive director of the Jackson Hole Land Trust. “It’s a private transaction between a landowner and a private landowner, and us, a private nonprofit.”

The funds would go to landowners to limit development. The stated goals are carbon sequestration, supporting ungulate species, and preserving agricultural economies.

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Secretary of State Griswold Announces Run for Attorney General

Secretary of State Jena Griswold is entering the race for Colorado attorney general. Griswold, a Democrat, is term-limited and will finish her second term next year.

Bente Birkeland reports for the Colorado Capitol News Alliance.

Story begins at 15:50.

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Breckenridge Ski Instructor Chronicles the Many Words for Snow

The resort season may be winding down, but there’s still time to carve some late-season turns at Breckenridge.

KUNC’s Alex Hager spent the day on the slopes with a ski instructor whose passion for skiing extends beyond the sport itself—into the language of snow. The instructor has made it a mission to collect and catalog the many unique words used to describe snow across languages, regions and cultures.

Story begins at 16:42.

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