• Jack-it Night: April 2024 RS Meeting Hey Guest: Wed. April 3rd is the next Rising Sun meeting, and you won't want to miss it. We're doing our annual offroad recovery equipment demonstration and trail skills training aka "Jack It Night." Meeting starts at 6:30 p.m. (early) Click here for all the details.

save the gulches lawsuit

nuclearlemon

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windy wyo
core and trail defenders have finally realized the only way to get the gulches fully opened is through litigation and they have started a go fund me to raise money. i know marcus from core very well and he is a dedicated four wheeler and all around great guy. if you've been to 14erfest, he's one of the folks instrumental in getting that event going. core also is very active in adopt a trails in the bv area. i will vouch for him and his mission 100%

 

jps8460

Cruise Moab Committee
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Donated. Thanks for sharing Ige
 

J1000

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Morrison, CO
Paid my dues! The courts system is one of the only ways to get lasting change in this country so let's do it!

edit: just saw that Patrick McKay is on this gofundme. He is a good friend of mine from my early DIY drone/UAV days he was dedicated to fighting the FAA and overreaching authorities to help hobbyist keep flying our drones and maintaining our rights. He was instrumental in stopping the state of Colorado from passing anti-drone legislation. He's the man! He does have a Jeep though...
 

J1000

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Get your hat and sticker pack and help the defense at the same time!


HatFundraiser.jpg
 

AimCOTaco

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Donated, ordered, and staying tuned!

Thanks all!!
 

DaveInDenver

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Grand Junction
It's sad that things have devolved like this but dueling lawsuits and high priced lobbyists are it seems necessary for any user group who wants to have their voices heard by Congress and the Executive.
 

Hulk

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I donated as well.

@nakman @MountainGoat - can Rising Sun make a $1,000 donation to the cause? Let's make this happen!
 

MountainGoat

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I donated as well.

@nakman @MountainGoat - can Rising Sun make a $1,000 donation to the cause? Let's make this happen!
We can't use club money without a proper vote, but we can use CM proceeds. As the CM Committee Chair you can approve the use of those funds. As the CM Treasurer I would opine that we can do so without adversely impacting next year's event. If anyone on the Committee or otherwise disagrees they should speak up. Otherwise I will send the money tomorrow.
 

nakman

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We can't use club money without a proper vote, but we can use CM proceeds. As the CM Committee Chair you can approve the use of those funds. As the CM Treasurer I would opine that we can do so without adversely impacting next year's event. If anyone on the Committee or otherwise disagrees they should speak up. Otherwise I will send the money tomorrow.
I'll object. I feel like this should go through the proper motions in our Philanthropy committee, then presented to the club for approval. Doesn't mean I oppose the donation, or that we can't act quickly on it, but we shouldn't set a tone of making somewhat kneejerk donations here. CM proceeds are allocated by committee, of which we're (@Hulk, @MountainGoat) members of. let's just do it right.
 

MountainGoat

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I'll object. I feel like this should go through the proper motions in our Philanthropy committee, then presented to the club for approval. Doesn't mean I oppose the donation, or that we can't act quickly on it, but we shouldn't set a tone of making somewhat kneejerk donations here. CM proceeds are allocated by committee, of which we're (@Hulk, @MountainGoat) members of. let's just do it right.
I see your reasoning Tim. Technically, the Philanthropy Committee directs Cruise Moab "profit" after expenses and seed money set aside for next year's event. We don't have any profit as of now, so these funds would come from the seed money for next year's event.

The Cruise Moab Committee Chair and Treasurer have determined that we can allocate $1,000 of next year's seed money to philanthropy. Now it's over to you as the Philanthropy Chair. Can you put up a poll in the Philanthropy Committee forum? Ideally the committee would decide and then it would go to the club for a vote. We can get it moving on the proper channels that way. Thanks for pointing this out. (y)
 

Hulk

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Philanthropy committee makes proposals, RS club votes on it. If the rest of the philanthropy committee thinks this is a good idea, we can do an online vote. I think RS bylaws stipulate the vote must remain open for 7 days to club members. Our donation will still be accepted in 7+ days, so this isn't a problem. I'm just thinking we should act somewhat quickly to help out.
 

AimCOTaco

Cruise Moab Committee
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While our club works to add funds formally, I wanted to bump this and remind everyone about it.

As busy as our outdoors have become we simply can't afford to lose more ground or more trails, don't hesitate to take action as a volunteer or donor alongside the clubs efforts.

Thanks all!
 

Hulk

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Anyone part of CORE that might have an update on the Save The Gulches effort? @nuclearlemon?
 

Hulk

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Here's an update:

Marcus Trusty <marcus@keeptrailsopen.com>
Sep 29, 2022

Hi Matthew, thanks for the email. Great to hear from you and thanks again to the club for the legal fund support.

The Pike/San Isabel Travel Management Record of Decision was finally signed this Monday (26th). That decision did what we expected, and permanently closed The Gulches Trail system at the Teller/Park County Line. We are still going through that decision and we have been in contact with our attorney who has been working for us the past three years. We should have an announcement soon as to our next steps (probably a lawsuit) and the timeline.

We have been focusing most of our time currently on the Moab Travel Management Plan that is open for comments and the deadline is October 7th. Once that deadline passes it will be all hands on deck for The Gulches. Please pass this info along to the rest of the club.

Thanks,
Marcus

Moab Comment Video if you are interested:

 
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Hulk

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Here's the info in written form:

Motorized Recreationists Challenge Pike San Isabel NF Travel Plan
By Patrick McKay
Patrick McKay is a board member of Colorado Offroad Enterprise (CORE) and Colorado Offroad Trail Defenders.

In September 2022, the Pike San Isabel National Forest (PSICC) in Colorado published the long awaited final decision for its controversial new travel management plan. The final decision closed approximately 123 miles of currently open motorized routes, plus multiple other routes that were temporarily closed under previous actions that will now be permanently closed. While this amounted to only a 4% net reduction in total open route mileage, these closures were disproportionately concentrated in the three ranger districts closest to the front range cities of Denver and Colorado Springs and affected several of the most popular four-wheel-drive trails in the forest. Some of the closed routes had been featured in published guidebooks and regarded as destination trails for decades, yet the Forest Service deemed them to have no recreational value and closed them. As a result, the quality of motorized recreation opportunities in the region has been severely diminished.

The motorized recreation community in Colorado is extremely disappointed with this outcome and feels that our interests were almost completely ignored throughout the entire travel management process, which was driven from the start by extremist environmental groups and anti-motorized activists within the Forest Service itself. The Forest Service based its route designation decisions solely on inaccurate data that was gathered without public input in the 2015 Travel Analysis Process and on secretive ranger district input that was never disclosed to the public. All public comments that challenged the factual assumptions underpinning the forest’s analysis were ignored. While motorized advocates managed to save a handful of minor trails through the objection process, the Forest Service dismissed the majority of our objections regarding the most popular trails subject to closure. We were left with no choice but to challenge this flawed decision in court.

On February 14, 2023, Colorado Offroad Enterprise (CORE), of which I am a board member, filed a lawsuit challenging the forest’s decision to close 12 specific road segments. The complaint primarily focuses on five roads in Wildcat Canyon along the South Platte River, as well as seven other roads in the Kenosha Pass, Fairplay, and Rampart Range areas. You can download the complaint here and all exhibits filed with it here.

Our lawsuit is only the latest chapter in the long running controversy over the roads in Wildcat Canyon, the history of which I have described in a past blog post here. It is sad it has even come to this, as this situation was supposed to have been resolved back in 2004, when the Forest Service issued a decision allowing these roads (which had been temporarily closed since the Hayman Fire in 2002) to be reopened under county jurisdiction.

That decision was intended to be a compromise that would allow motorized users to continue using these popular trails while ensuring that they would be maintained to avoid negative impacts to the South Platte River. While easements were quickly granted for the roads in Teller County, the ink on the decision was barely dry before a group of activist staff within the South Park Ranger district (including the current district ranger) began working to undermine the deal. They delayed and ultimately thwarted its full implementation by convincing the Park County government to withdraw its application for an easement in 2015, after the South Park Ranger District had stonewalled it for seven years.

The result was that only half of the Wildcat Canyon trail network was reopened, while the other half in Park County remained closed, with its two major loops severed. While the roads in Teller County were well-maintained by motorized groups, the roads in Park County deteriorated because the Forest Service refused to allow any maintenance on them while their status was in limbo, even though they continued to be regularly driven by members of the public who were unaware they were closed at the county line. Those negative impacts were then cited as reasons to decommission the routes in the travel management process.

As documented in our lawsuit, the same activist Forest Service employees worked to keep the forest from conducting any NEPA analysis on reopening the roads in the travel management process, ensuring that the ultimate decision to decommission them was predetermined. They also made multiple attempts to illegally decommission and obliterate the roads while the travel management process was still pending, being stopped only when other Forest Service employees pointed out their plans were unlawful. In the words of one such employee, “If our leadership wants to know why the motorized community does not want to cooperate with the forest service, this is a great example of why they don’t trust us. I don’t blame them for their outrage.”

One of the central themes of our lawsuit is the way the Forest Service abused the Travel Analysis Process (TAP) to generate unsupported and blatantly false route data which was then used to determine route designations in the travel management process with no public input allowed. According to both Forest Service policy, the Travel Analysis Process is supposed to be a separate process from travel management. It is intended to generate baseline data that can be used to inform future travel management processes, not dictate their outcomes. Forest Service policy requires rigorous public involvement in both stages of the process, and specifically requires that the public be allowed to be given input in actual route designation decisions.

In the case of the Pike San Isabel National Forest, each ranger district produced its own travel analysis report around 2015, in which they assigned a range of risk and benefit scores to each route segment evaluated. These scores, which included things like recreational use benefit and wildlife risk, were based largely off of GIS data and the personal knowledge of district staff. These scores were later run through a formula to determine the ultimate designation of each route in the travel management process, with high value routes being retained as part of the “minimum road system” and low value routes being closed.

Each travel analysis report was subject to a 30 day public comment period which was not widely publicized and received only a handful of comments, in contrast to the thousands of comments received during each of the comment periods for the travel management process. Because of the forest’s failure to seek the input of motorized recreationists who actually use the trails, the many inaccuracies in the travel analysis reports were only discovered during the travel management process. Yet the forest chose to ignore all public comments challenging route designations based on inaccurate travel analysis scores, stating that decisions based on the TAP scores were not open to revision. Moreover, any route-specific recommendations included in the TAP reports by ranger district staff were automatically adopted in the preferred alternative regardless of their merit, and all public comments calling for different outcomes were ignored.

As argued in our lawsuit, the PSICC essentially treated the TAP reports as a dispositive travel management decision rather than a preliminary information gathering step, and then attempted to unlawfully “tier to” those documents to avoid having to conduct any real NEPA analysis of the impacts of individual routes in the travel management process. District staff were able to use the TAP scores and recommendations to largely predetermine the outcome of the travel management process, in blatant violation of NEPA and Forest Service policy. In the case of the roads in Wildcat Canyon, activist district staff manipulated the process by giving the roads blatantly false recreational benefit scores, ranking them as low benefit despite explicit findings in two prior NEPA processes that these roads had extremely high recreational value. Most of the other roads cited in our lawsuit were likewise given absurdly low recreational benefit scores, dooming them to unjustified closure.

The proper way for forests to determine their “minimum road system” (MRS) as required by the Travel Management Rule has always been a murky question with no clear answer. The PSICC claimed in its decision that the MRS was essentially determined by the TAP, even though Forest Service policy states that it is determined by the travel management process. Should our case go to trial, it will be (to the best of my knowledge) the first time the extent to which the travel analysis process can be relied upon for travel management has ever been litigated.

We believe it is clear that the PSICC violated NEPA and NFMA in multiple significant ways, not the least of which involved road closures in Wildcat Canyon that the forest itself had previously determined would violate the forest plan. As we know from internal emails we received, even some Forest Service employees considered the shenanigans the forest was trying to pull regarding some of these roads shameful.

I’m interested to hear the thoughts of people in this community on the forest’s actions here. The underhanded way in which certain activist employees were able to rig the process to close a number of highly prized motorized trails should be concerning to all. Legalities aside, the forest’s actions have caused a total loss of trust within the motorized community that will make it considerably more difficult for them to obtain our cooperation in the future.

Source: https://www.keeptrailsopen.com/news
 

rushthezeppelin

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So that's why those roads are closed, was wondering about that looking on trails offroad. One of those leads to a really awesome rock climbing spot too called Big Rock Candy Mountain. It doesn't see much traffic but I wonder if part of the reason for that is the lack of maintenance. Talking with one my rock climbing buddies about that recently he commented on how that road was just about terrifying even with his buddy who has a pretty good rig (IIRC this was while he was in his current FJ Cruiser). I hope the shenanigans of those rangers is shot down in court, sucks that it takes litigation to stop underhanded craptivism like this. Hopefully the case isn't referred to some activist judge.
 

HoneyBadger

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Pine
I knew it! I knew it! I knew it!
*rant warning*

-*sets up soap box*-

I've been saying, mostly in private conversations, for years that the forest service is out to close roads/trails on purpose and that they don't give a flying shit about the public losing access to these areas. The public being kept from these areas is THE WHOLE DAMN POINT! It's radical activist environmentalism embedded in positions of power and embodied in individuals rife with egotistic behavioral traits at their most poignant culmination. It's disgusting. It's blatant, it's god damned BLATANT and systematic closure of PUBLIC access to PUBLIC lands! They are straight up conspiring for the best means for closure!
For years the upper echelon at the FS have just been quietly working behind the scenes to systematically close access, ESPECIALLY to areas where there is decent access to clean water sources/natural food sources. I know, put on the tinfoil hats... but I'm telling you, there is something far bigger and more nefarious going on here. And it's not just in Colorado. This kind of egregious behavior is rampant in the national forests from one coast to another and I have a hard time believing their convenient excuse of "budget cuts".

Anyone remember the road out to the little cabin at Argentine Pass? Yeah, arbitrarily closed without public input. Just gone. Road bulldozed and fenced off. And for what?

This absolutely makes my blood boil.
This is our public land. These are our children's future recreational areas. Where are we going to be able to take our kids and grand kids if we keep allowing them to shut down motorized access and sacrifice our national heritage on the alter of the "all mighty environment".

As we here in this club intimately know, there is a large population of responsible Americans out there who are willing to help take care of these places. We instill the values of good stewardship into our children. We volunteer to clean, maintain, and educate. And for what? So some high and mighty self-righteous moron in a green uniform can arbitrarily just take our rightful and fair access away on a whim to satisfy their desire to be a environmental warrior for mother earth?

OMG! This makes me so angry!

something something something....I will not comply..... something something something...


(Justin is in the office laughing at me as I slam the desk and get more and more pissed off and rant about this.)
 
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HoneyBadger

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Messages
1,800
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Pine
I'm so glad that CORE is taking these scum bags to task on this. It's about time that the 4WD community starts hitting back in a meaningful way. Surely there's not a judge out there, with a functioning brain, that would look at this and not see the blatant actions to conspire for closures of legal and established roadways.
 

rushthezeppelin

Rising Sun Member
Joined
Oct 14, 2022
Messages
1,041
I knew it! I knew it! I knew it!
*rant warning*

-*sets up soap box*-

I've been saying, mostly in private conversations, for years that the forest service is out to close roads/trails on purpose and that they don't give a flying shit about the public losing access to these areas. The public being kept from these areas is THE WHOLE DAMN POINT! It's radical activist environmentalism embedded in positions of power and embodied in individuals rife with egotistic behavioral traits at their most poignant culmination. It's disgusting. It's blatant, it's god damned BLATANT and systematic closure of PUBLIC access to PUBLIC lands! They are straight up conspiring for the best means for closure!
For years the upper echelon at the FS have just been quietly working behind the scenes to systematically close access, ESPECIALLY to areas where there is decent access to clean water sources/natural food sources. I know, put on the tinfoil hats... but I'm telling you, there is something far bigger and more nefarious going on here. And it's not just in Colorado. This kind of egregious behavior is rampant in the national forests from one coast to another and I have a hard time believing their convenient excuse of "budget cuts".

Anyone remember the road out to the little cabin at Argentine Pass? Yeah, arbitrarily closed without public input. Just gone. Road bulldozed and fenced off. And for what?

This absolutely makes my blood boil.
This is our public land. These are our children's future recreational areas. Where are we going to be able to take our kids and grand kids if we keep allowing them to shut down motorized access and sacrifice our national heritage on the alter of the "all mighty environment".

As we here in this club intimately know, there is a large population of responsible Americans out there who are willing to help take care of these places. We instill the values of good stewardship into our children. We volunteer to clean, maintain, and educate. And for what? So some high and mighty self-righteous moron in a green uniform can arbitrarily just take our rightful and fair access away on a whim to satisfy their desire to be a environmental warrior for mother earth?

OMG! This makes me so angry!

something something something....I will not comply..... something something something...


(Justin is in the office laughing at me as I slam the desk and get more and more pissed off and rant about this.)
You will eat ze booogs and live in ze pod and not go into ze nature and you will be happy......All these craptivist nutjobs just want us to live in the megacities and never leave and be slaves in our cubicles while they go and enjoy their ski in mansion in Aspen.
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