Popular open space park in Colorado set to close to mitigate fires in July

One of Jefferson County's busiest and largest open space parks, Elk Meadow, which dominates the Evergreen area, will experience major closures on July 8. The closures will mean fire mitigation, AKA forest health management, as well as trail improvements and a redo of one of the main entrances.

“We love running here. It's so beautiful,” Taylor Jackson said. But the population is worried about the scale of the work. “I hope they don’t overdo it,” her husband Jace said. “I'm not the only one who thinks they may have overdone it a bit there on 3 Sisters.” Cutting down trees in some areas is a radical change.

“It's going to be very different. It's going to be shocking. And it's going to take a little while for that recovery to happen, and we understand that,” said Steve Murdock, natural resources team leader at JeffCo Open Space . .

The Evergreen region has been listed by the United States Forest Service's Freshed Registry as one of the areas of greatest concern in the Rocky Mountain West. There are homes and businesses on three sides of the more than 1,600-acre park, particularly on the east.

“Schools, nursing homes, drinking water reservoirs, anything that would be negatively affected by a wildfire,” Murdock said. The forest area has filled in over the decades with many more trees per acre than there are naturally. “And a lot of that is due to fire suppression over the last 150 years,” Murdock noted.

Not the entire park will be mitigated, but several hundred acres will be. This will mean removing more than 90% of small trees to allow larger trees to thrive. Larger ponderosa pines are more resistant to fire because of their thick bark. Their upper branches are usually away from grass fires, which burn more quickly on the ground. But the presence of smaller trees can serve as a ladder to direct the fire up to the treetops. With the wind, it is the most dangerous fire and spreads quickly.

“Ultimately what we're trying to avoid is a crown fire,” Murdock said.

But clearing and chipping small trees can leave a stark landscape for a while.

“We estimate that all of our forest management projects will take about three to five years for the grass to start growing back,” Murdock said.

In some areas there are currently low grasses, but Murdock points out that these are not getting taller due to competition for water. Younger trees that compete with each other have the same problems.

Ultimately, the areas should look more like they did years ago, when old photographs showed Bergen Peak, once known as Mount Independence, with far fewer trees.

Trails at the north end of the park will remain open, including the Too Long Trail. Some trails like Elk Ridge JeffCo Open Space will work first and then perform trail maintenance. They hope to be able to reopen it by mid-September.

They hope to reopen most of the other trails by the end of the year. The Lewis Ridge entrance as well as access to the Buchanan Red Center area will remain open, but the Stagecoach Boulevard entrance and nearby trail will remain closed for about a year as the restrooms move closer to the road, which the parking lot is enlarged and there is better access for pedestrians. level crossing installed at road level.