A sweeping document offers bold ideas for outdoor recreation, conservation and collaborative management across the Pikes Peak region.

It’s titled the Outdoor Pikes Peak Initiative Vision Plan, a collection of data, summaries and proposals spanning 600-plus pages. The document is more than three years in the making, following several surveys and meetings hosted by nonprofit Pikes Peak Outdoor Recreation Alliance.

Held across El Paso, Teller and Fremont counties, the meetings aimed to capture shared interests and concerns across a complex landscape overseen by local, state and federal land managers. The vision plan is intended to be “a road map.”

One proponent and prominent corporate and civic leader, Toby Gannett, recently spoke to the Colorado Springs City Council, comparing the vision plan to historic initiatives that brought water, the Air Force Academy and the Olympic and Paralympic Committee to the city.

Those were “forward-looking projects that took the bull by the horns and led to a strategic destination,” Gannett said.

He described an “absolutely critical” moment for the region’s outdoors. “I often say we do not want to become Everest basecamp where trash has been piled up for generations,” he said.

It’s been a complicated era of recreation on Pikes Peak. Is a new era on the horizon?

Advocates have long worried about sustainability amid a growing population and a multi-jurisdictional patchwork lacking resources and synergy. The patchwork predominantly factors what’s seen as a strained U.S. Forest Service. A potential solution floated earlier this year: for Colorado Parks and Wildlife to take on some increased role in recreation management in Pike National Forest.

It’s an idea backed by Gov. Jared Polis, who was in Colorado Springs alongside Pikes Peak Outdoor Recreation Alliance (PPORA) leadership last month to launch the Colorado Outdoors Strategy. Leadership with lottery-funded Great Outdoors Colorado was also on hand to announce a five-year, $50 million grant program to achieve objectives of regional partnerships statewide. 

PPORA Executive Director Becky Leinweber called it “seed money.” 

“It won’t cover everybody’s projects,” she said, speaking to the 30 listed in the Outdoor Pikes Peak Initiative Vision Plan. “But it’s a huge lift, and it’s a great commitment from the state of Colorado to local communities such as ours.”

Now the state would be looking for local investment to leverage those funds, Leinweber recently told the City Council. Conor Hall, the director of Colorado’s Office of Outdoor Recreation Industry, also implored councilmembers.

“I strongly encourage you to support PPORA in the fullest sense,” he said. “They will really be at the tip of the spear to take advantage of this $50 million fund for the implementation of this strategy.”

On the other side of Pikes Peak, Cripple Creek has pledged financial support.

“We’re at the precipice,” said Jeff Mosher, the city’s special projects director. “It’s time to move forward and make a big leap into what we can do with the Pikes Peak region.”

Ring the Peak, a trail looping the mountain decades in the making, is one of the vision plan’s 30 projects that have been in the works. Others: renewed access to the Waldo Canyon area closed to the 2012 wildfire and the COS Creek Plan, which is reimagining Monument and Fountain creeks adjacent to downtown Colorado Springs.

Other recommended projects: a downhill mountain bike course of the sort envisioned at the under-reclamation Pikeview Quarry; “a regional OHV training facility”; and a camping plan “to enhance visitor experiences and meet growing demand.”

The vision plan details several collaborative models in the state and beyond.

The Arkansas Headwaters Recreation Area, for example, was created by Colorado Parks and Wildlife and Bureau of Land Management to be a destination for rafting, fishing, hiking and camping. CPW has pointed to that as a possible model for Pikes Peak. 

Western Colorado’s North Fruita Desert Recreation Area is listed as another example where upkeep and funding is shared between the BLM, local government and mountain bikers. And the plan suggests the Pikes Peak region could learn from White River National Forest, the state’s busiest national forest, where “partnerships have led to successful management.”

The vision plan recommends an annual “land manger summit.” Meetings of the sort have been underway, Leinweber said.

“To think about how to build bridges,” she said, “how to build those relationships and build trust, so we can work together on our very complex challenges.”

The vision plan is posted at ppora.org/oppi. The website includes a “data hub” and mapping that identifies conservation concerns and “areas of opportunity” — meant to serve as “a community resource for planning and project development.”