Trails, commercial permitting and recreation management around popular reservoirs on Pikes Peak are under a review recently launched by Colorado Springs Utilities.

The agency has posted an online survey, gauging enthusiast’s interests and ideas for the future of North Slope Recreation Area. That’s the area of three reservoirs off the Pikes Peak Highway: Crystal Creek and North and South Catamount reservoirs. Frequented by anglers, paddlers, hikers and mountain bikers, Utilities considers the reservoirs “essential to the city’s water supply system.”

While dam construction has closed much of the area — a reopening is targeted next summer — Utilities is looking ahead and seeking solutions to concerns expressed at a recent meeting. The meeting was led by Otak, a consulting firm hired to lead the summer-long review and present recommendations toward the end of this year.

“There’s a lot of conflicts that happen on some of the switchbacking, windy roads between utility vehicles, public vehicles and people,” the firm’s Mandi Roberts said at the meeting. “Is there a way to make that safer? Can we look at some alternative routes through there?”

Some in the audience pressed for specifics on conflicts. The aim is to be “proactive,” said Mark Shea, Utilities’ watershed planning supervisor.

“As we’re seeing more visitation occurring up there, that potential (for conflict) is growing,” he said.

Officials see potential to move trails off service roads and “away from utility infrastructure,” as presented at the meeting. Maps were also presented, highlighting “areas of focus” that include Catamount Trail and several other paths around the North and South Catamount reservoirs.

A portion of the long-envisioned Ring the Peak Trail follows a service road, one advocate at the meeting pointed out. He recognized the experience would be better off the road.

“Is there an opportunity where we can get that access off the service road, develop some good, high-quality trails and improve the recreational experience?” Shea said. “This seems like a great win-win.”

Indeed, said Cory Sutela with mountain biking group Medicine Wheel Trail Advocates: “We’ve been pushing for that for quite a while.” 

But if trails were realigned, onlookers wondered about them stretching into adjacent U.S. Forest Service land — requiring environmental analysis by the federal agency that is largely keeping its local focus and funds on fire mitigation. Shea mentioned “discussions about strategies for doing that type of analysis as efficiently as possible.”

The Forest Service is “very resource-constrained,” he said. “So how or what that would look like is an open question, but we recognize there could be a need to do that.”

Another question regards commercial use at North Slope Recreation Area. Over the years, officials have noticed guides taking clients to the reservoirs without permits. That has prompted questions about how businesses should be regulated or allowed at all.

A 2023 survey found “opinion is split about whether commercially guided activities affect the quality of the general public’s experience or should be allowed,” Utilities reported. “If commercially guided activities are permitted, the public calls for the process to be managed fairly and for outfitters to help with staffing costs, litter cleanup, stewardship education and other amenities.”

This summer’s review seeks broader answers to funding and management.

Recreation is managed by city enterprise Pikes Peak-America’s Mountain, which collects Pikes Peak Highway tolls and sells various passes, including specifically for North Slope. About 25,000 are sold every summer, said Pikes Peak-America’s Mountain Manager Skyler Rorabaugh. That’s not counting some of the highway’s total visitors, about 450,000 every year, who might stop along the drive.

In thinking bigger about the mountain’s potential, Rorabaugh has imagined North Slope as “the rec hub of the future that branches out to other areas along the Pikes Peak Highway.”

At the same time, he said he worries about sustainability. Utilities officials say they want ratepayer revenues dedicated to infrastructure and watershed protection, not to recreation. 

“We don’t want to propose a bunch of big, pie-in-the-sky ideas that can’t be funded and can’t be maintained over time,” said Roberts, with the consulting firm.

Collaboration was needed, said Becky Leinweber, executive director of Pikes Peak Outdoor Recreation Alliance.

“How can we leverage the strengths of one another?” Leinweber said. “I’m optimistic, but there are still challenges for sure.”

For the North Slope survey and more information, go to: tinyurl.com/4vbjryez