Why access remains restricted at this 'amazing gem' in Colorado — despite it opening to the public 10 years ago (2024)

The scene comes back to Mary Burger like a dream: crystal-clear waters tucked between stream-lined meadows and forests and Pikes Peak’s granite shoulders, rising and falling around this glacier-carved basin above 10,000 feet.

This is Pikes Peak’s south slope, where Burger led volunteers a lifetime ago as a founder of nonprofit Friends of the Peak. They built a trail that would go from McReynolds Reservoir to the uppermost Boehmer Reservoir — a trail to meet the first visitors of South Slope Recreation Area in 2014.

Very few, if any, can be found on the trail today.

Ten years ago, the gate lifting at South Slope symbolized the end of a century-long wait to access the waters tightly guarded by Colorado Springs Utilities. Still today, the landscape feels out of reach for many — including for Burger, 73, who indeed describes it more like a dreamscape.

“I know a lot of people who wanted access,” said Burger, thinking back to negotiations more than a decade ago, “and they’re very frustrated we own the property but we don’t have access.”

Into its 11th season — typically the end of May through September — South Slope is open three days a week, Thursday-Saturday, to a limited number of people willing to pay for a $20 permit and make the long drive out on rough, winding roads outside Victor.

The isolation, the place out of cell service and easy reach of first responders, was one point of concern between Colorado Springs Utilities and the city’s parks department during talks that led to today’s management. Also in mind were the area’s bighorn sheep. Of utmost concern: fire, contamination and any other threat people might pose to the historic drinking water sources.

“Frankly just overuse, too,” said Mark Shea, the agency’s watershed planning supervisor involved in those talks over a decade ago. “That’s where as a community we need to have a balanced perspective on what we can accommodate on Pikes Peak sustainably.”

Utilities is marking the first 10 years of South Slope Recreation Area as a success.

Shea called it a “stable, sustainable arrangement” that “provides the type of primitive, outdoor recreation experience that stakeholders were interested in having.”

He added: “Is it everything everybody wants? No. But I don’t know if that’s balance.”

Becky Leinweber wonders about a greater balance.

She’s executive director of Pikes Peak Outdoor Recreation Alliance, the coalition of advocates, industry people and land managers. Leinweber also represents her family’s business, Angler’s Covey, the fly shop that once guided outings to South Slope.

Leinweber was sad to see that commercial access lost over the years. (“When we surveyed stakeholders, we heard that was not what they wanted as far as the recreational experience for South Slope,” Shea said.)

Leinweber was also sad to see a fourth day, Sunday, dropped from South Slope’s schedule. That was reportedly a cost decision by Pikes Peak-America’s Mountain, the enterprise that counts on permit revenues to pay for a gate-controlling ranger on site.

“What we found is we just didn’t have the numbers to justify continued operations on Sunday,” said Pikes Peak-America’s Mountain Manager Skyler Rorabaugh, who started at the enterprise in 2022.

In 2019, by the time Sundays were dropped, his predecessor reported about 40% of available permits were reserved in recent seasons. This summer, the sellout rate has been closer to 84%, Rorabaugh said — adding the caveat that reservations “take a dive once schools go back.”

He suspected more people are turning to South Slope this summer as vehicles have been barred during dam construction at North Slope Recreation Area, the much more accessible fisheries off Pikes Peak Highway.

At South Slope, Leinweber suggested the limiting factors were the imposed limitations themselves, not necessarily the isolation or lack of interest.

She pointed to pikespeakoutdoors.org, a project of Pikes Peak Outdoor Recreation Alliance highlighting the region’s destinations.

“One of the No. 1 page hits since (the website) started in 2018 has been for Mason and McReynolds reservoirs,” Leinweber said, referring to South Slope’s lower fisheries.

She knows them as “truly awesome,” where big and shiny trout swim in view along the alpine banks. South Slope “is an amazing gem in our system,” Leinweber said — a place that inspired one of Colorado Springs’ early, preeminent poets.

In 1882, a decade before the city started building its dams here, Helen Hunt Jackson wrote of steep ascents on horseback to the former chain of natural lakes. The area was known as Seven Lakes — viewed only by the brave and bold explorer, Jackson wrote.

“(A) spot that can be reached only in this method cannot be properly said to be accessible,” she wrote, “and, spite of the cross-trail, these beautiful lakes remained, summer after summer, almost an incognita aqua to the thirsty people living on the parched plain ...”

So the lakes remain.

“It’s really a shame,” Leinweber said. “We’ve got this amazing parking facility, all paved, beautiful bathrooms, a pavilion and picnic tables. And only a handful of people can use it three days a week.”

Questions quickly followed the city parks department’s initial investment toward South Slope Recreation Area. A few years after opening, an early leader with Friends of the Peak, Paul Mead, told The Gazette: “After sinking hundreds of thousands of tax dollars into that area, is this the best way it should be managed? I don’t know. I think that’s something worth discussion.”

The permits, limited days and ranger presence were all part of a compromise, said Friends of the Peak’s current president, Steve Bremner.

“Of course (Utilities) has a watershed which we depend on,” he said. “But of course, there are places such as Rampart Reservoir that are pretty much open to people.”

Shea, with Utilities, referred back to wishes expressed by South Slope stakeholders more than 10 years ago.

“Folks wanted that remote, primitive, backcountry feel,” he said. “Some of those protections we have in place now protect that experience.”

Leinweber has observed Utilities’ City Council-influenced stance toward recreation as unchanged for decades. In terms of recreation, the agency has emphasized the importance of land-managing partnerships in the absence of recreation-dedicated staff of the sort Denver Water has invested in over the years to oversee Waterton Canyon and reservoirs including Dillon, Cheesman and Antero.

Utilities’ “No. 1 goal is to serve their rate payers well, and that should be their No. 1 goal, and protecting our water resources for sure,” Leinweber said. But “their rate payers are living here for a reason, and part of that is enjoying the outdoors. ... I do think there’s a little more opening up about that discussion. Where it goes, we have yet to see.”

It could become more clear during construction at North Slope Recreation Area. During the vehicle closure expected to continue through 2025, Utilities aims to open up a larger conversation about the future of recreation there.

As for a larger conversation about South Slope, Burger isn’t counting on it.

The trail-building advocate at the start of the recreation area thinks of those days as being among “the accomplishment of my life.”

She’s getting older now, she said. She did her part.

“I wish we could have access, but I’m not terribly hungry for it anymore,” she said. “It’s other peoples’ wishes.”