Sneak Peek of the Week

Breaking the rules to help a mountain town “get unstuck”

Sometimes the best way to turn a vision into reality is to have a chorus of naysayers screaming you can’t do it.

That chorus reached a fevered pitch when dads and youth cycling advocates Jesse Seavers, Sam Ovett and Rex Madden announced they wanted to build a pump track in Nederland for kids who need more to do in the summer.

Sure, Nederland is an outdoor nexus.

It sits at the base of the Continental Divide just a quick RTD ride up Colorado 119 from Boulder.

Yes, it’s home to Eldora ski area.

And yes, miles of mountain bike trails lace through the woods surrounding the town of around 1,400 residents.

But when it comes to safe outdoor options for kids, some think amenities are lacking. There’s a park with a grassy field where summer soccer camps unfold, a fishing pond for 12-and-unders that they’re not supposed to go in, a skate park Tony Hawk sponsored in 2009 and a teen center that runs field trips to places like Elitch Gardens and Water World for middle schoolers.

A pump track seemed like a perfect addition to the mix. It’s a purpose-built park with dirt features that users can bike ride, skateboard or scooter around using their body weight to “pump” along rather than pedal. Over the years, a few options had been presented. The first would have sat on the opposite side of the skate park at the teen center. But the community didn’t want it. Then Seavers, Ovett and Madden proposed building one at Chipeta Park, where the kids learn soccer and fish for trout using marshmallows as bait.

They gathered 450 signatures from supporters, but when it came time for the residents to vote, it was roundly defeated, says Giblin.

Several Nedites, including him, say that’s indicative of what’s happening to Nederland when it comes to town improvement in general. And it left Seavers, who owns an excavating company, Ovett, a marketing entrepreneur, and Madden, a materials engineer consultant, scratching their heads.

Madden has kids and co-coaches the high school mountain bike team. He also lives in Rollinsville (about 5 miles away) and said he has been coming to Nederland for his “entire life.”

“But I was just sort of seeing, the town, I don’t know, seems stuck.”

As he’s traveled for work and mountain biking, he’s seen many rural towns that have embraced their biking culture with things like purpose-built bike parks and pump tracks that support bike shops and other businesses. Many have done more to establish themselves as tourist hotspots than Nederland, which suffers out the winter watching bumper-to-bumper traffic inch through town on the way to Eldora. Many of those other towns are now also looking around at the tourism monsters they’ve created and are correcting course.

Madden had “been wanting to do what I can to try and encourage the town to embrace that sort of an attitude towards biking.” He thinks promoting Ned as a bike town will be to the benefit of “most of the people.” So he’s all for Ned’s biking community “organizing ourselves” and embracing Ned’s future “in a way that we get a say in the direction of where Ned is going” because if they don’t, the town “will do whatever they want.”

That mindset is what led to the dads taking the construction of a pump track into their own hands after it was defeated on the ballot.

If you want to know how they got the job done, without a permit and with the help of an 84-year-old developer who has a reputation for being bullheaded when it comes to adhering to building codes, tailwhip over to The Sun next Wednesday.

Spoiler alert: It’s about a lot more than just a pump track. It’s about Nederland’s future.

In Their Words

Arapahoe Basin Ikon Pass holders still get 5 to 7 days

Alterra Mountain Co. bosses promised they would listen to Arapahoe Basin skiers and administrators when the company announced plans to acquire The Legend earlier this year. Locals fretted the new owner might open up unrestricted access to its Ikon Pass skiers.

Arapahoe Basin’s longtime manager Al Henceroth said he would push the ski area’s planned new owner to keep Ikon Pass skiers limited. The unrestricted weekend crowds that flocked the ski area during its partnership with the Epic Pass were detrimental to the Arapahoe Basin experience, Henceroth said in 2019 when he pulled the plug on a 10-year Epic Pass partnership with Vail Resorts.

Henceroth this week told his loyal skiers that access would remain unchanged for 2024-25, with Ikon Pass skiers getting seven days and Ikon Base passholders getting five days.

While the final acquisition has yet to be finalized, Henceroth in his blog Tuesday said the holding pattern caused by the prolonged deal — which requires approval by the U.S. Forest Service — “has caused a lot of uncertainty.”

New for 2024-25 is paid parking at Arapahoe Basin, with plans for $20-a-vehicle parking with required reservations from mid-December through early May and a limited number of $150 season parking passes. (The paid parking is part of a two-phase strategy to limit crowding at Arapahoe Basin, which began with a cap on daily lift tickets and a cap both Ikon Pass access and the number of Arapahoe Basin season passes sold.)

Section by Jason Blevins | Outdoors/Business Reporter

The Outsider now has a podcast! Veteran reporter Jason Blevins covers the industry from the inside out, plus indulges in the fun side of being outdoors in our beautiful state.

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The Guide

An abandoned dump becomes a beautified nature center

While clearing more than 30 tons of trash from 260 acres of Nederland’s Mud Lake open space in the summer of 2020, volunteers found a discarded boot within the clutter of kitchen garbage, mining waste and abandoned cars, washers and refrigerators. Then they found another shoe. And another.

Those leading the cleanup instructed everyone who stumbled upon old shoes to keep them. Now, they’ll become art in a small exhibit planted at a new nature center on five acres of land owned by the nonprofit that neighbors Mud Lake open space — a reminder of both the toll humans take on the environment and the ways they come together to beautify and protect it.

The new center, a $13 million project of longtime Nederland nonprofit Wild Bear Nature Center that will likely open by fall 2025, has been in the works for more than two decades with an ambitious vision: pull people away from their screens and reacquaint them with the outdoors.

Jill Dreves, founder of the nonprofit, and Justin Gold, a driving force behind funding for the new center, told Sun reporter Erica Breunlin they hope to show visitors how they can give back to nature while exploring it. That’s why they have designed the new building to generate more energy than it uses, largely through solar power.

“This nature center is a model for how humans can build ecologically sound buildings in mountain communities into the future,” said Gold, who also founded Justin’s, a Boulder-based brand of natural nut butters and peanut butter cups.

Dreves and Gold see the new center as a gateway to Colorado’s backyard where people can rekindle a relationship with their natural surroundings and overcome their fear of the forested unknown.

Section by Tracy Ross | Reporter

>> Click over to The Sun on Friday to read Erica’s story about the nature center

The Playground

In case you spent last week under a rock: Colorado has its first voter-approved wolf pup

Colorado Parks and Wildlife has confirmed a wolf introduced to the state in December has had at least one puppy, maybe more, in Grand County.

The agency made the announcement last week, after months of observation by biologists who first suspected the wolf was pregnant and establishing a den in April.

They confirmed the birth June 18, during routine wolf monitoring efforts, which included attempted observations from the air and ground, remote cameras and public sightings.

There are no photos or videos at this time but CPW says although biologists were only able to confirm one pup, it is possible that others may be present, as wolf litters commonly consist of four to six pups. CPW staff will monitor the animals to determine how many more pups are in the litter. This is the first confirmed Colorado-born wolf pup since the voter-approved wolf reintroduction in December.

The pup’s birth means its parents, itself and any siblings it may have are officially considered a pack the agency is calling the Copper Creek pack.

Biologists are continuing to monitor the area where the pup was discovered “while exercising extreme caution to avoid inadvertently disturbing the adult wolves, this pup or other pups,” CPW biologist Brenna Cassidy said.

Other cool wolf news we gleaned this week from Rachael Gonzales, CPW’s northwest region public information officer:

Sun: How big is the puppy?

Gonzales: At the age of this pup, wolf pups are 20-25 pounds.

Sun: When was it born?

Gonzales: Likely mid-April, when most wolf pups are born in the Rockies.

Sun: Is the den on private or public land?

Gonzales: The den is on public land. CPW is not providing an exact location of the den.

Sun: Why was it so hard to find them?

Gonzales: The Middle Park den is in an area that is very densely forested with mature conifers, so the ground is not visible. The surrounding area has lots of large willow/riparian areas and mature aspen with significant downfall and brush, making the ground still very difficult to see farther from the den site. Because of this, any actual den hole is nearly impossible to see from the air and ground. In general, when looking for a den from the air you only have 5-10 minutes to look for pups who, if there are any, may not even be in an area open enough to see from the air during that short time period.

Sun: Have they established a rendezvous site?

CPW: CPW has not confirmed whether the wolves remain at the den in which the pup was born or if they have established a so-called “rendezvous site,” to which pups are usually moved and remain, stay with access to resources like water and shelter, while adult wolves take turns watching them while other wolves venture away from the site.

Section by Tracy Ross | Reporter

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