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slobmonster
Aug 28, 2004, 1:42 AM
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Registered: Jul 28, 2003
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Wilson Peak is perhaps best known as the backdrop for a generation of Coors beer advertisements; in one, if my memory serves me right, the Wilson massif served as a volleyball net for some raucous, presumably Coors-drinking, oversize volleyballers.
Regardless, it's a stellar fourteener. And now the property beneath Wilson, on which an old county and/or USFS road crosses, is being posted, gated, and closed by the landowner.
What follows is an article from the Telluride Daily Planet
Access to Wilson Peak still up in the air
By D. Dion
Just like the careful footing needed to summit the 14,000-plus-foot Wilson Peak, restoring access across the private land to the peak requires cautious steps in the negotiating process. The delicacy of the situation was highlighted in Wednesday's county meeting on the issue: the landowner has threatened to start a mining operation if his proposed land exchange is rejected, and the alternate route around his property has been deemed too dangerous.
Landowner Rusty Nichols paid for a full-page advertisement in the Aug. 25 Daily Planet proclaiming the value of his land, but the landowner didn't attend the San Miguel County Commissioners worksession to discuss issues surrounding his closure of the traditional access to Wilson Peak. In the advertisement Nichols claims he will reestablish a gold mining operation in Silver Pick Basin if he is not adequately compensated for his land.
"Call it a 'threat' if you wish," wrote Nichols, "[acquiring the permits to mine] was to find the highest and best use of an asset."
The worksession was well attended Wednesday despite Nichols' absence. Members and representatives of local search and rescue teams, the Sheriff's Office, Telluride Mountain Club, the Access Fund, the U.S. Forest Service and San Miguel County filled the meeting room to discuss how to restore access to the popular peak and the basin that lies below it.
Steve Johnson, representing the Access Fund, and Tor Anderson, representing the Telluride Mountain Club, strongly urged the San Miguel County Board of County Commissioners to work out a resolution with Nichols and restore the traditional access. Both Johnson and Anderson cited the extreme danger of the proposed alternate route to the summit, which circumnavigates the private mining claims owned by Nichols.
The alternate route devised by U.S. Forest Service and county officials allows hikers to access the peak through its west gully, a tenuous scramble up a loose scree field.
"The west gully, if you get people going up and down there at the same time S I'd consider it dangerous, myself," said Johnson, a local attorney who is affiliated with the Access Fund.
Negotiations with Nichols have been similarly difficult to navigate. After the landowner acquired a mill site and various mining claims in the Silver Pick Basin, he said that he worked, unsuccessfully, with various open space and environmental groups to try to sell and preserve the land. Nichols then made two proposals to the Forest Service for a land exchange, both of which were rejected by that agency because they judged the values of the land to be unequal.
Nichols made a third - and final, he said - proposal to the forest service this month and warned he would start mining in the basin if his request were denied. He set a deadline for their response of Monday, Aug. 30 - a deadline that the Forest Service is not likely to meet, according to U.S.F.S. District Ranger Judy Schutza.
Schutza said that the agency is assessing the proposal and will probably make its decision by next week.
"We're in the process of responding to his proposal," said Schutza. "He's going to have a letter next week. It'll be pretty soon."
Nichols was critical of the forest service's response to his first two offers, claiming that they didn't consider the mineral value of his claims when contemplating his trade proposals. The properties are literally a gold mine, Nichols contends, saying that the underground veins are rich with an average of three to five ounces of gold per ton of ore. Still, the forest service rejected the proposals because Nichols requested more acreage than he was giving up. Nichols called the agency's appraisal of the exchange like saying "a large rock is worth more than a small diamond."
While Nichols awaits his response, county officials are still trying to restore access to the basin. The alternate route does not use the traditional road, which bisects Nichols' claims, but a poorly maintained 100-year-old road to the mill site, county road 59H, to divert hikers around to public land to access the peak through the gully. But all three entities involved in the discussion claim that Road 59H is their property - the Forest Service has it mapped as a U.S.F.S. road, the county has it mapped as its own and is researching its chain of title, and Nichols has also questioned its jurisdiction.
"Now the county is trying to claim an old burro trail is a public 'road'," Nichols wrote in his advertisement.
County officials believe that a four-plus mile stretch of 59H is indeed public, and that the gate erected by the forest service in the early 1990s exists not on U.S.F.S. land but on the county's road. Commissioners have asked the Forest Service to open the gate, but with the road's ownership still in dispute, the gate remains locked.
Gates on roads into the basin, once open to the public, have also stymied police and search and rescue teams. Besides the 59H gate there is a gate on Nichols' property accessing the traditional route to the peak, and according to San Miguel County Search and Rescue commander Eric Berg, his teams used to have the combination to this gate, but the combination has been changed.
"We don't have access," said Berg. "Well, we have boltcutters, so we have access, but we don't have access."
Some people attending the meeting expressed the opinion that the gate's closure was a good thing, a deterrent to some of the trespassing and vandalism that has frustrated Nichols in the past and hastened his threat to start mining.
"I'd urge you to go softly and slowly" with opening the gate, said Johnson.
The commissioners penned a letter to Nichols on Aug. 6 asserting their jurisdiction over 59H and inviting him to attend the Wednesday meeting concerning access to Wilson Peak and Silver Pick Basin.
"I'm disappointed. We offered Mr. Nichols the opportunity to come," said County Commissioner Art Goodtimes. "We appear to be in an adversarial position."
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climb14er
Aug 30, 2004, 3:19 AM
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Registered: Jun 26, 2003
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I've been to Silver Pick four times and IMHO, it's a pit of a rock pile that the landowner is holding Colorado hostage.
Call his bluff and let him be. He wants 2300 acres of prime and expensive land on Wilson Mesa in exchange for 130 acres at Silver Pick.
He's a money grubbing Texan and he can go to hell. There are other ways to climb Wilson Peak and climbers should look at the alternatives. Granted, Silver Pick is an easy access to Rock Of Ages saddle and Wilson Peak and Navajo Basin for Mt. Wilson and El Diente.
If you continue to pay these bastar*s off, then you lose. Call his bluff and see what he's going to really do.
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