The Camp Hale Continental Divide National Monument’s Tenmile Area includes federal lands in Summit County, which, in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service, Breckenridge, Blue River and other stakeholders, recently completed an access study for the area.

Summit County government resource specialist Jordan Mead explained to the Summit Board of County Commissioners at a May 27 work session that White River National Forest lands in the southern part of the Tenmile Area need reimagined access.

“Use on the White River (land) grew over 50% from 2017 to 2022, to almost 18 million visits,” Mead said. “Of those 18 million, almost half of them are occurring here on the Dillon Ranger District in Summit County.”

Areas with high summer usage are not designed to accommodate the level of visitation they have seen in recent years, Mead said. The study, initiated in April 2024, provides initial planning for how to better manage access to these public lands, which Mead said are accessed by county- or town-owned lands and roads.

The Volpe National Transportation Systems Center conducted the access study and produced an access plan and management framework. 

Project objectives include reducing traffic and parking impacts on residents, balancing high visitation with sustainable management, creating appropriate amenities for current visitation levels, providing free access wherever possible, ensuring clear and consistent messaging and more.

The project examined the Quandary Peak, McCullough Gulch, Blue Lakes and Spruce Creek trailheads. The access plan calls for changes to parking, permanent bathrooms, updated signage, the addressing of dispersed camping and trail improvements at all sites.

Mead mostly discussed the changes to parking at each site. At the Quandary Trailhead, he said the plan calls for adding more marked parking spots and keeping the shuttle and paid parking systems already in place.

“One really important component to this is maintaining a vegetated buffer between any expanded parking and nearby neighborhoods so that we can try to reduce impacts on our neighbors,” Mead said.

The expanded parking at Quandary would be targeted at McCullough Gulch users. Mead said usage of McCullough Gulch has decreased since the shuttle and parking program started at Quandary, and adding spots at Quandary could help balance usage between McCullough Gulch and Spruce Creek.

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When people reserve a parking space at Quandary, it includes a shuttle ride up McCullough Gulch Road to the trailhead, Mead said.

At Upper McCullough Gulch, the plan would move the shuttle turnaround and drop-off closer to the trailhead, Mead said. The current turnaround space would be turned into around 12 reservation-only parking spots, which Mead said would cost money normally but may be free when the shuttle is not running.

The new spots and potentially free parking would help people access McCullough Gulch during the fall, when visitors have to make a 4-mile round-trip hike to get to the trailhead without the shuttle, Mead said.

“Access to McCullough Gulch in the fall is the most frequent call we get,” Mead said, “Probably in the range of like three to five calls per day on our lines to say, ‘How do I get to McCullough Gulch? What’s the right way to access it this time of year?'”

Mead said adding parking could increase revenue and reduce or eliminate shuttle fees for Quandary and Upper McCullough in the future, but he recognized the downsides to building too much parking.

“We definitely see the need to balance the number of spaces with revenue and shuttle demand,” Mead said. “We don’t want to eliminate demand for the shuttle by building out this parking lot to the size that wouldn’t necessitate that any longer.”

At the Blue Lakes Trailhead, Mead said the current parking lot is unorganized, so the plan would create designated spots, resulting in a capacity of around 45 cars. The trailhead, Mead said, is an unofficial one right now, so the plan would add basic signage and amenities it currently lacks.

“There’s no official trail, no recreation information, so we’re seeing a lot of social routes and resource damage,” Mead said. “Basically every single person I engaged (at Blue Lakes) was like, ‘Where am I supposed to go? What am I doing here?'”

Blue Lakes would not have parking reservations because visitors stay for short periods — about 90 minutes on average — and the planned capacity would be able to meet current usage, Mead said. Road conditions make a shuttle service less viable as well.

The last trailhead Mead discussed, Spruce Creek, sometimes has over 300 vehicles per day visiting. Mead said the high use made it the most difficult part of the study.

“Neighbors told us about the issues with that volume of traffic, as well as speed, parking along the road — above and below the trailhead — (which) can cause issues for emergency access,” Mead said. “This is one of those locations that has no set capacity for visitation right now.”

Plans at Spruce Creek would create paid reserved parking during the summer, close the existing parking area, build a new one and eliminate roadside parking. The Spruce Creek plans received more support than any other in a public survey, Mead said.

Volpe created the management framework with several guiding principles, and Mead highlighted a few, like management adapting to usage, the county maintaining current shuttle operations and contracts, the system being self-sustaining financially and all fees, parking and shuttle reservations being on one website run by one operator.

Mead explained three management options to the board. The Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act would have the Forest Service manage sites on federal land while the towns and county would manage sites on their land. Mead said setting up that management model would take time.

The second option would be to hire a private company to manage the areas as a concessionaire. Mead said the downside of this option would be that the company would keep most of the money collected in fees as profit, so less would get reinvested in the sites.

Finally, Mead discussed the management option Volpe recommends — issuing a special-use permit to a local government. He said this model is used elsewhere in the county, like the Frisco Peninsula Recreation Area.

“The great thing here is the permittee gets to set the fees and kind of adjust those, and it can be issued quickly,” Mead said.

Volpe recommends using the special-use permit method at first, with plans to eventually move to the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act model so the Forest Service manages sites on its land.

The project needs to go through an approval process with the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires federal agencies to assess the environmental impacts of proposed actions. 

That process takes about a year, Mead said, and there will be Forest Service funding available for this project in 2026, so the groups involved want to start the National Environmental Policy Act approval process soon. 

The commissioners said they would be willing to partner with the White River National Forest in the National Environmental Policy Act process, which Mead said would streamline the application, public input and approval process as a whole.