Win­ter had end­ed more than two months ear­li­er, and tem­per­a­tures in Sum­mit Coun­ty would climb into the 60s the Wednes­day after Memo­r­i­al Day. And yet, for 600 skiers and snow­board­ers at Ara­pa­hoe Basin who had endured a 10-week shut­down of the state’s ski indus­try due to the coro­n­avirus, it was high time to get out and shred.

On that warm day in late May, they found a cathar­sis with the illu­sion of nor­mal­cy, if only for a few hours.

“I got a tad emo­tion­al on the chair­lift,” snow­board­er Sarah May said after her first run on soft snow the day A‑Basin reopened under a strict pub­lic health vari­ance, con­ced­ing the expe­ri­ence made her teary-eyed. “We’ve real­ly been work­ing for our turns, hik­ing for them, but the priv­i­lege of being able to ride a chair is amaz­ing, and I am very thankful.”

Two days before, a reser­va­tions sys­tem set up to lim­it num­bers on reopen­ing day crashed the serv­er. Less than two weeks lat­er, Ara­pa­hoe Basin had to close again, this time for lack of snow.

Relat­ed: Huge jump in pop­u­lar­i­ty at Brainard Lake leads to extreme crowd­ing despite pan­dem­ic restrictions

But what hap­pened there was just one man­i­fes­ta­tion of a real­i­ty that played out across Col­orado in a year when we need­ed out­door recre­ation more than ever.

In 2020, Col­orado Parks and Wildlife report­ed a 30% increase in vis­i­ta­tion over 2019 through Novem­ber, and in CPW’s north­east region — basi­cal­ly areas east of the Con­ti­nen­tal Divide and north of Col­orado Springs — the increase was more than 40%.

Nation­al for­est offi­cials esti­mate a 50% increase in usage on the Col­orado lands they man­age. And based on the amount of toi­let paper used in Jef­f­co Open Space restrooms — What could be a more reli­able met­ric of vis­i­ta­tion in a sys­tem that charges no admis­sion? — vis­its this year were up 130% over 2017. Not 30%, but more than dou­ble, and then some.

Mean­while, the nation­al Rails-to-Trails Con­ser­van­cy, a walk­ing and bik­ing advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tion, said trail use where it has mon­i­tors is up 51% for the year. And they say there were weeks in the spring, as the nation was shut­ting down, that saw 200% increas­es over the com­pa­ra­ble week in 2019.

Some of the increase in Front Range pub­lic lands result­ed from the clo­sure of Rocky Moun­tain Nation­al Park from March 20 to May 27 that dis­persed demand else­where. When the park reopened, it insti­tut­ed a timed-entry reser­va­tion sys­tem intend­ed to keep park­ing lots in the park at 60% of capac­i­ty as a means of pro­mot­ing social dis­tanc­ing. Vis­i­ta­tion in the park was down 32% from 2019 num­bers through Octo­ber, the most recent num­bers park offi­cials made avail­able. The park also saw shut­downs due to the Cameron Peak and East Trou­ble­some fires.

But there is no doubt the pan­dem­ic drove peo­ple out­doors in over­whelm­ing num­bers. And that cre­at­ed problems.

After Gov. Jared Polis shut down the ski indus­try on March 15 — 10 days before he issued a stay-at-home order — ski shops that sell back­coun­try gear saw surges in sales. Search and res­cue groups open­ly wor­ried about inex­pe­ri­enced back­coun­try users get­ting into trou­ble, endan­ger­ing first respon­ders. Clear Creek Coun­ty made coun­ty roads off-lim­its to non-res­i­dents in hopes of keep­ing vis­i­tors from recre­at­ing in the back­coun­try there. The Jef­fer­son Coun­ty Sheriff’s Office issued a state­ment urg­ing res­i­dents to prac­tice social dis­tanc­ing in coun­ty open space park­ing lots.

Four Front Range open space sys­tems — Jef­f­co, Den­ver, Boul­der Coun­ty and the City of Boul­der — issued a joint state­ment plead­ing with vis­i­tors to stop dam­ag­ing the land they were using. One day in May, hun­dreds of cars were parked along the road at the Maxwell Falls trail­head near Ever­green after the small park­ing lot there filled up. Res­i­dents near­by com­plained about an ongo­ing prob­lem of peo­ple leav­ing trash and bags filed with dog waste in their wake.

“If you could see the bags of trash we’re pick­ing up, you’d be dis­gust­ed,” said Mindy Han­son, who lives near the trailhead.

Relat­ed: Hik­ers at Ice Lake left behind feces, trash and dam­aged his­toric structures

Mary Ann Bon­nell, vis­i­tor ser­vices man­ag­er for Jef­f­co Open Space, attrib­ut­es much of the surge to the pre­vail­ing Col­orado lifestyle and pop­u­la­tion growth that is bring­ing new res­i­dents with the same mind­set, com­pound­ed by the pandemic.

“It’s almost embar­rass­ing to let a nice day go by where you don’t enjoy Col­orado for what Col­orado is,” said Bon­nell, who over­sees a sys­tem that attracts more than sev­en mil­lion vis­i­tors annu­al­ly. “That’s the lifestyle. Peo­ple have decid­ed. ‘This is fun, I’m going to do this, this feels good, it’s good for my men­tal health, I’m get­ting healthy doing it, it’s safer because I’m outdoors.’ “

Bon­nell says what hap­pened in 2020 came as no sur­prise because trend lines in recent years sug­gest­ed crowd­ing would soon become a prob­lem. Jef­f­co Open Space rangers noticed park­ing lots were being filled sev­en or eight days a year, most­ly on holidays.

“COVID made every day like Fourth of July, like Mother’s Day, like Father’s Day, where you’re deal­ing with those num­bers on a dai­ly basis instead of a hol­i­day basis,” Bon­nell said. “We knew this was com­ing, we could see on those hol­i­days that things were con­gest­ed and our park­ing wasn’t work­ing. When you throw that at us every day, we need­ed to make some seri­ous adjust­ments to how we dealt with things to accom­mo­date that. So one of the big lessons was, we no longer can look at this as a down-the-road prob­lem. This is a now problem.”

Relat­ed: Maxwell Falls, anoth­er Col­orado trail being loved to death

With crowd­ing comes con­flicts. One day in Novem­ber, a moun­tain bik­er on a trail at North Table Moun­tain cut off a trail run­ner with an aer­i­al maneu­ver, squeez­ing between him and two young women who were hik­ing the same trail, com­ing with­in inch­es of them. One of the women screamed in fear and the trail run­ner shout­ed obscen­i­ties, but the moun­tain bik­er nev­er looked back.

“We had a video of two grown men throw­ing rocks and shout­ing names at each oth­er,” Bon­nell said, adding that real trou­ble was rare. “When you have sev­en mil­lion vis­i­tors, you’re talk­ing about a one-off or two-off or three-off. I don’t know that we had any­one phys­i­cal­ly hit that was report­ed to us.”

Bon­nell apol­o­gizes for using the term “new nor­mal” in case it sounds cliched. But that’s what pub­lic lands man­agers in Col­orado are fac­ing, because even after the COVID threat ends, the Front Range pop­u­la­tion is bound to dri­ve high vis­i­ta­tion rates.

“If any­body had told me two years ago, ‘You’ll be on the front line of a pan­dem­ic,’ I would have said, ‘I’m sor­ry, what do you mean?’ ” Bon­nell said. “I am so proud of our team and any per­son who has been on the front line of pub­lic lands, pro­vid­ing a safe expe­ri­ence for vis­i­tors and pro­tect­ing the resource, and doing it in the face of a pan­dem­ic. These are peo­ple with grit, with resilience. We didn’t close. We stayed open, our restrooms stayed open. We didn’t have all the answers and we did it any­way. It was real­ly to the ben­e­fit of every­body, because (out­door recre­ation) was the only thing left to do.

“I told my team a hun­dred times, if you ever doubt­ed what we do is impor­tant, 2020 should remove all doubt.”

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