The non-profit Colorado Fourteeners Initiative will use $250,000 in state funding this summer to hire seasonal work crews for trail maintenance on a dozen fourteeners, part of its annual trail work largely funded by the state’s recreational trails program.
The fourteeners grant was announced last week by the governor’s office as part of $2.4 million earmarked for 26 trail projects around the state this year. Funding for the state’s Non-Motorized Trail Grant Program comes from Great Outdoors Colorado, the Colorado Lottery and the Federal Highway Administration. Great Outdoors Colorado, which derives its funding from lottery proceeds, typically distributes around $70 million in grants annually.
The fourteeners initiative will hire eight seasonal employees, as it does annually.
“They’re a mobile team that will go out and do smaller-scale reconstruction efforts — cleaning of trail drains, removing downed timber, fixing ‘staircases’ and trail features that have fallen out or eroded,” said CFI executive director Lloyd Athearn. “Sometimes we have avalanche impacts or intense rain events that have washed out parts of trails. It’s stuff we will always be doing as long as there are fourteeners, and as long as there is a CFI.
“There are impacts from hundreds of thousands of people a year,” Athearn added, “in a very loose and highly changing environment.”
Grants from the state’s recreational trails program are capped at $250,000. Last year CFI used that amount for a major trail construction project focused on Mount Shavano.
The initiative has other sources of funding for its trail projects besides state trail grants, Athearn said, such as local governments, community foundations and business contributions.
“State trails pays for roughly a third to a half of our cost in a given year,” Athearn said, “but it’s kind of a lead funder.”
Although Colorado Parks and Wildlife approves the grants after an independent commission analyzes and prioritizes applications, the funding doesn’t come from CPW coffers. However, with already underfunded federal land managers facing increasing budget challenges, Athearn said CPW “really needs to fill the void,” especially given staff cuts by the Trump administration.
“The state is likely to be a more influential trail funder in the future than they have been in the past, just given what is happening with the federal government and money,” Athearn said. “Trails has historically been a small part of CPW’s work, (compared to) state parks and wildlife management. I think there is a growing awareness within CPW that the public would certainly welcome them having a larger role as the federal government becomes much harder to work with and more unpredictable.”
CPW spokesman Joey Livingston said the agency has “worked closely with our federal partners” for more than 150 years and that their partnership would continue.
“When asked by federal land managers, CPW will continue to explore potential partnerships and seek cooperative management solutions that align with our shared goals for sustainable resource management and appropriate recreation management,” Livingston said in an email.
In February, Gov. Jared Polis announced a partnership involving federal and local agencies in the Pikes Peak region that could result in the creation of a recreation area, managed by CPW to improve amenities and create new ones. In 2021, The Conservation Fund purchased Sweetwater Lake on the western slope and transferred it to the White River National Forest. Because that forest lacks the funding to manage the property, CPW may end up managing it for them.
Fourteeners where maintenance crews will work this summer include Mount Bierstadt and Mount Blue Sky in the Front Range; Quandary Peak and Mount Democrat in the Mosquito Range near Hoosier Pass; Mount Princeton, Mount Massive and Mount Columbia in the Sawatch Range; Redcloud Peak and Wetterhorn Peak in the San Juans; Capitol Peak in the Elk Range, San Luis Peak in the La Garitas, and Mount Sneffels near Telluride.
Of the other trail grants announced last week, the only one to receive the maximum $250,000 grant was Austin Bluffs Open Space in Colorado Springs. A grant of $150,000 will go to the Colorado Mountain Bike Association for trail needs in Front Range national forests.