Little blurb in MB that mentions that Boulder County is vying for 500 acres of BLM land. BOA is mentioned. Is this that plan for up around Sugarloaf? Forgot the name. S

Little blurb in MB that mentions that Boulder County is vying for 500 acres of BLM land. BOA is mentioned. Is this that plan for up around Sugarloaf? Forgot the name. S

I know the deal around Gold Hill has been in the limelight recently. I'm not sure if Boulder County has finished the land swap yet or not. There's already some good riding up there. Looks like the plan would be to connect a lot of it. It's a few months out of date, but check it out:

http://www.co.boulder.co.us/openspace/management_plans/gold_hill_rppa.htm

Thanks. I was looking for that link on the county website and somehow couldn't find it. That must be it since it's BLM. Would be great to have some new stuff up there. Then if they could just connect Heil and Hall! S

This is about a process using the Recreation and Public Purposes Act. It enables the BLM to divest properties they don't want to manage. The BLM's holdings in Boulder County are made up of abandoned mining claims scattered throughout the County. The parcels are small and weirdly shaped. And agency can apply for the land by filling out forms and producing a recreation plan for the property. If acceptable, the BLM give the agency a lease to the land for, say, 10 years. At the end of that period, the BLM reviews the application again and determines if the agency has fullfilled the terms of the recreation plan. If it has, the BLM patents the land to the agency.

Gold Hill was the first mining district in Colorado. Boulder County is applying to 725 acres of land to augment the land they've already bought in the area, I forget the acreage amount, but they spent around 2 million.

I have been to planning meetings. This could be a excllent riding area, but NIMBYs are screaming and showing up in large numbers to hearings. Boulder County's recreation plan for this area is thin on details and not even close to what it should be. The BLM will be scheduling hearings in the spring about this application. Boulder County has a reputation of putting the absolute minimum recreation on applications of this sort, and the BLM is none too pleased about it.

It's easy to rally the troops and get people to hearings when a trail is threatened to be closed. But how to you rally the troops when an area previously unavailable to the public is at risk of never being made available?

If you want to know more about this situation, I would direct you to the Boulder County Mountain Bike Avocacy thread I just started today. I will post this and other background info there.