DENVER — Hiking a portion of Colorado's DeCaLiBron Loop required paperwork -- until now.
The Conservation Fund announced this week that it purchased 289 acres of what has been privately owned land on Mount Democrat, one of the state's fourteeners, or 14,0000-foot mountains. The environmental nonprofit will transfer the property to the U.S. Forest Service later this year.
"Colorado Fourteeners are a national treasure and we are thrilled to protect Mount Democrat,” Kelly Ingebritson, Colorado project manager at The Conservation Fund, said in a press release. “Buying this majestic peak is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and a model for how conservation can solve America’s recreational access issues and benefit local communities.”
The DeCaLiBron Loop passes over four fourteeners: Democrat, as well as Mount Cameron, Mount Lincoln and Mount Bross.
This purchase will allow free access to the land controlled by John Reiber, who owned mining rights on the Mount Democrat property. He closed and reopened the trail at various times in recent years because of liability.
Reiber installed a sign at the trailhead in July telling hikers to scan a QR code and sign a waiver before starting out on the trail. It was a compromise reached by Reiber and a large list of groups including the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative, the Colorado Mountain Club and Park County.
“We put that sign up to allow people who want to hike the DeCaLiBron Loop to have a method of doing that and still help protect me as a landowner from liability,” he told 9NEWS over the summer. “It would be just as easy, maybe easier to just leave it 'no trespassing,' but I’ve had the opportunity most of my life to be up there. I always appreciated being up there, and I think most other folks do as well. So, I work to try and figure out a way to make that happen.”
Reiber’s concerns were first sparked by a 2019 federal appeals court decision that awarded $7.3 million to a cyclist who was injured by a pothole on a trail near the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Reiber said that decision made him invest in liability insurance for his property.
The first year’s insurance premium was $6,500. He said last year that premium more than doubled to $15,000. So, earlier this year, he made the decision to again close down the trail entirely.
The waiver made Reiber comfortable enough to reallow trail access, though he said at the time it was a temporary solution.
The announcement for the sale did not disclose the purchase price.
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