Every five years, forests managed by the US Forest Service take a look at user-ship levels and activity types on their trails, facilities, lands and so on.
It’s part of the USFS’s National Visitor Use Monitoring Survey. This year, the Grand Mesa Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forest was due for its NVUM update. Running from October of last year through September of this year, folks hired by the forest have been tallying traffic and chatting with recreators to report back.
On a recent sunny summer's day, we caught up with one such surveyor, Tara Malmstrum, at the intersection of the Jud Wiebe Trail and Tomboy Road and got to quiz her about what she's learned from a summer of talking with forest users.
Malmstrum: I'm a teacher over in Ridgeway, so it's summer work for me. Of course, I want to do anything I can to help the natural environment — the forest in particular. The Forest Service have me going up to Blue Lakes a lot, and that's a very high priority for them. Part of that will help inform when they do the permitting, which I think they're planning on doing in 2026.
(Blue Lakes is a trail south of Ridgway, below Sneffels Peak. Due to an increase in traffic in recent years, the USFS is considering requiring day-use permits in the area.)
This is a pretty busy trail, Ice Lakes and other places…So I think they want to look at where they're putting their resources and how they manage those trails. A lot of locals I think use the Jud Weibe, but I had a young man from Canada, a lot of people from Texas and Arizona getting out of the heat. A lot of people with second homes here who are traveling, hiking, walking up the trail.
This is actually my second time in two months [monitoring here,] and the first time the Imogene Pass was closed. So it was pretty quiet. Now it's really busy. I mean, I've counted 205 people leaving the trail or the road since 8 o'clock, and I go until 2. There have been 35 vehicles.
So, this is one of the busier trails that I've seen. Blue Lakes, hands down is busier. I was there the Saturday after 4th of July and I counted over 300 people and that was in a six-hour period. So you double that for the day. That's a lot of people on that trail.
I also have been working with the San Juan Mountain Association to do some trail ambassador work with them. They have a permanent tent set up over at Blue Lakes. So that's another little arm that's helping the Forest Service, you know. And of course just the locals [do their part to educate visitors, saying:] ‘Hey, put your dog on a leash, or pick up your poop bag’ or whatever it is.
I love this and I love the forest and I hope you know it helps in some small way!
Monitoring efforts within the GMUG will wrap up at the end of September. In a statement, the Forest Service says the survey will help its managers ‘estimate the number of people who engage in recreation on forest land and give a picture of the specific activities they partake in.’