Clear-cutting changes the landscape in Summit County

Iwas lost in my own backyard, and all because of a clear cut. You would think that I could see the forest for the (lack of) trees. But when I met a “trail closed” sign on one of my favorite lunchtime mountain-bike rides— climbing Gold Hill between Frisco and Breckenridge and descending the Peaks Trail — the detour left me disoriented.

The massive OphirMountain forest-health logging project has stirred quite a bit of controversy in Summit County this year, with a small cadre of outspoken locals raising objections as the heavy equipment began chewing up entire swaths of lodgepole pines that have been decimated by the pine beetle.

The 1,500-acre project was proposed in 2010 and, after the full public- and environmental- review process, approved the next year by the U.S. Forest Service as a way to protect developed areas from the threat of wildfire and in an effort to stimulate new growth.

At the time, entire stands of dying trees gave the mountains around here a disturbing reddish tinge, and residents and local officials were begging the Forest Service to do something.

Since then, the needles have fallen from the trees— an estimated 90 percent of which died — leaving only a subtler gray pallor across the landscape and reducing the alarm of locals.

But when logging crews moved into the area over the winter, using “masticators” that literally chew up everything in their paths and leaving only fields of jagged stumps and muddy tire tracks, nature lovers cried foul.

It’s true that entire hillsides have been scalped, visible from the highway and, even more egregiously, along the popular hiking trails. Crews have built huge piles of slash and stacked the marketable trees like pick-up sticks along newly carved dirt roads.

The rumble of heavy equipment and the barren landscape are jarring for those accustomed to peaceful forests.

It was here that I encountered the blaze-orange closure sign midway up the Gold Hill Trail and was diverted onto a rutted, muddy logging access road. After a mile or so, that spit me out onto a marked Forest Service trail that surprisingly I never had encountered previously.

Seeming to head in the direction I intended, I forged along it into the healthier spruce forest. A short way in, I reached a fourway intersection with additional official Forest Service trail signs. Who knew? Not me. (By the way, I have an aversion to the illegally created “social” trails that have proliferated in the area, created by rogue bikers.)

The trail dumped me onto a long-forgotten, two-track road, lined with brilliant purple lupine and fiery Indian paintbrush along with a smattering of yellow cinquefoil. A new generation of young pine trees had taken root along this old logging route, which seemed to be taking me west-ish, and I was confident it would eventually intersect with a known route.

After some distance without seeing any recognizable landmarks, I passed a Forest Service pickup parked along it, and had I seen the ranger I would have stopped to ask where I was, here in this territory where I ride all the time.

Finally, the track grewso faint that Iwas riding through tall grasses and around 2- and 3-foottall young pines before ultimately bursting out onto the heavily trammeled Peaks Trail, much further south than I had anticipated.

My peaceful, overgrown route wasn’t even detectable looking back at it.

The point of all this— if there is one— is that despite the consternation over the current round of logging and the ugly scene it has created, eventually the land will recover.

Meanwhile, I never would have found these fun new routes had I not been detoured.

All is not lost. Only I was.