A few years ago, Shaun Howard, who was the Jeffco Open Space Ranger lead at that time, wrote this post to help all Open Space Park visitors understand a little more about how to enjoy winter activities in the Parks. It’s time to republish as a reminder.

Our parks are “primitive” parks. Don’t expect the trails to be groomed for you. Make sure you have micro-spikes with you, just in case you need them. Be prepared for any type of weather, especially as you gain in elevation. Know before you go.

Temps have dropped and winter winds lick the landscape of the Jeffco Parks. Although the winter season has arrived, the parks are still great places to visit. Read on for essential winter safety tips.

Parking: Many believe winter is the “off” season in our parks. While visitor numbers may be less, on sunny winter days expect people to want to enjoy the outdoors. As with other seasons, if you find a full lot, be patient and wait for a legal parking spot, or better yet, look for less busy parks by downloading the mobile Lot Spot App https://www.jeffco.us/964/Parks. Additionally, winter storms may make park roads and lots impassable.

Avoid parks during snowstorms. Here are some tips if you arrive at a parking lot covered in snow:

• Lots may not have yet been plowed. Have good snow tires. Many park roads are on hills and vehicles often get stuck.
• Use respectful etiquette while staff are plowing. If you encounter a plow, give it room. A backing plow is likely to not see your vehicle. Try to park near other cars, so the plow can clear the rest of the lot.

Wildlife: The winter season is an especially difficult season for wildlife. It’s hard staying warm. When resources are scarce in winter, wildlife must conserve energy to survive, find food and stay warm. Please give wildlife distance, and especially leash your dog! Stress from off-leash dogs can cause wildlife to burn excessive calories which can end their lives. Additionally, look out for wildlife on roadways. With shorter days, vehicle collisions increase. Look for movement and eye-shine on the side of the road. If you see one deer/elk, more are in the area. Rather than flee, expect them to run in front of your car in a flurry of panic. Lastly, park curfew is an hour before sunrise and an hour after sunset. Our wildlife are used to seeing visitors during the day. Give wildlife a break and respect park curfew hours. Additionally, risk of injury to you, and emergency responders increases greatly after dark. Plan accordingly. Be safe and respect wildlife, start visits early and be out of the park before sundown.

Dogs: Like the hot, dog days of summer, winter can also have safety impacts on dogs. Prevent dogs from running off by leashing them. Additionally, many dogs are not built for winter temps or icy trail conditions. Leave the dog at home during extreme conditions. For milder winter days, booties or salves that protect the dog’s feet are a must. As always, even in colder temps, make sure you and your dog are well hydrated. Bring water for both of you, and be sure to take breaks to drink.

Trail Conditions: Winter trails can range from icy to muddy. Deeper snow creates a harder workout while hiking. Additionally, snow-covered trails are harder to delineate. Bring a map and know where the trail is and do your best to prevent eventual vegetation damage by staying on the trail. Assume trails will be icy until spring. In icy conditions, trails are nearly impossible to negotiate safely. Wear micro-spikes or other traction devices. Front Range winters vacillate between warm to snowy. You might encounter muddy conditions when the trails melt in between storms. If you do, stick to the trail. Going off trail to avoid the mud increases vegetation damage and the unnecessary widening of trails. Remember, these boots were made for walkin’… through mud too!

Are you prepared? Park emergencies often occur from lack of preparation. For any venture in the Jeffco Open Space Parks, being prepared helps make a safer and enjoyable experience. Pack your bag with the 10 Essentials:

1. Map/Compass
2. Extra clothing (dress in layers, have a water repellent layer)
3. Extra food
4. Extra water (for both you and your dog)
5. Sun protection
6. Flashlight/headlamp (don’t rely on phone flashlight as phone batteries drain quickly, especially in the cold)
7. First aid kit
8. Matches/lighter (Be careful with fire and use ONLY if it’s an emergency and you need to stay warm overnight).
9. Tools or repair kit for any gear you are bringing (I use a multi-tool)
10. Emergency shelter (emergency blankets or even plastic bags make great emergency shelters)

I hope you take the opportunity to enjoy our Open Space Parks in winter! They truly are spectacular places to visit! Happy Trails!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shaun Howard, former Ranger Lead, Jeffco Open Space

Miss Mountain Manners extends great thanks to Shaun Howard for her hard work and wise words on how to deal with winter weather in our beloved Open Space Parks.  And as always, fellow Park visitors, stay safe.

The post Take Notice — Winter Is Here! appeared first on PLANJeffco.

This article was initially published in 2014. Between then and now, the link to the full document was lost. Thankfully, we’ve just been able to recover a copy of the document, thanks to generous efforts by the USGS. We’ve embedded the document in our own library, for safekeeping. This repost will lead you to the full story of the geologic history of Jeffco’s Open Space Parks, as they were in 2014.

Jefferson County straddles one of the most conspicuous and important geographic and geologic boundaries in western North America, the eastern flank of the Rocky Mountains. To the east you can travel 1,100 miles across Great Plains and Central Lowlands before you sight the western foothills of the Appalachians. If you travel in the other direction you will cross or skirt mountain range after mountain range until you sight the Coast Range near San Francisco, more than 900 miles to the west. Many of these mountains have different ages and origins than the Colorado mountains, but they are all part of the great mountain belt called the North American Cordillera that extends along the western edge of the continent from Alaska through Mexico.

What is the reason for the remarkably straight and abrupt eastern flank of the Colorado Front Range? The brief answer is that it marks the edge of a block of ancient metamorphic and igneous rocks that has been uplifted relative to younger flat-laying sedimentary rocks that underlie the plains to the east. During the uplift, the sedimentary rocks along the boundary have been uplifted and tilted eastward to form the discontinuous line of hogback ridges that parallel the mountain front. Erosion during and after the uplift has removed the sedimentary rocks that once lay above the harder rocks of the mountain uplift, carved the scenic peaks and mountain canyons in the hard crystalline rocks of uplifted block, and worn away the softer layers of sedimentary rocks of the plains, but left a few of the harder upturned layers along the mountain front as hogback ridges.

Jefferson County Open Space Parks, as well as other nearby parks and National Forest lands, offer marvelous opportunities to explore the geologic story behind this singular landscape. At first the distribution of rocks of different ages and types seems almost random, but careful study of the rocks and landscape features reveals a captivating geologic story, a history that tells of the building of the foundations of the continent, the rise and destruction of long vanished mountain ranges, the ebb and flow of ancient seas, and the constant shaping and reshaping of the landscape in response to the never-ending interplay between uplift and erosion. This historical account is constantly being improved and expanded as new evidence accumulates and new interpretations evolve.

To read the rest, please download the full PDF.

The post Trails Through Time: A Geologist’s Guide to Jefferson County Open Space Parks appeared first on PLANJeffco.

In 1971, Carol Karlin conceived of the idea of buying large swaths of scenic mountain property to protect it from development and build trails for public recreation. Shortly thereafter, PLAN Jeffco was formed, and months later, the Jeffco Open Space program was voted into reality. Read the full story here.

Since that time, nearly 58,000 acres have been purchased by Jeffco Open Space, lands that have become Open Space Parks and that have been incorporated into local city and park & recreation district trails and playgrounds. But purchasing lands is not the only way to preserve open space.

Conservation easements, voluntary, legal agreements that permanently limit uses of the land in order to protect its conservation values, are instruments that have protected and preserved some 2.7 million acres in Colorado alone, a number that represents over 6% of private lands in the State.

On National Wildlife Day, September 4th, 2024, Colorado Open Lands* launched a presentation on the value of conservation easements and how they help preserve wildlife. One of the many land trusts in Colorado, COL alone is responsible for preserving over 686,000 acres of private land and over 3200 miles of waterways through 715 projects in 50 counties, all through conservation easements.

Open land and open space conservation is not just for human recreation. Open lands/open spaces are home to myriad feathered, furred and finned critters. They’re home base to hundreds (if not thousands) of species of plants and the insects that pollinate and feed off them. If these open spaces are not protected, if they are not conserved, what is to become of the natural inhabitants of these lands?

See for yourself how important conservation easements are – what they are and how they work. View the YouTube video here.

*In the interest of full disclosure, your webmaster is a member of the Clear Creek Advisory Board of Colorado Open Lands.

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Wildfires in the mountain west have become less frequent but more intense.

Recently, the Denver Gazette published a short article on current research comparing historical versus contemporary wildfires in the America Southwest, with (to this reader) some rather surprising results.

The areas investigated in this study were primarily dry conifer forests dominated by Ponderosa pine and Douglas fir, very similar to our own forests in the Jeffco Front Range. Prior to 1880, wildfires used to sweep through these forests every 10 to 12 years. These were almost entirely low-to-moderate intensity fires that cleared out undergrowth and forest duff, burning off the lower limbs of the trees, but not devastating enough to kill the trees themselves. Typically, these low-intensity burns involved smaller areas, 5 to 250 acres. Despite the small size of these wildfires, the frequency and style of these fires were able to maintain forest health, even during prolonged periods of drought, when fires were started by lightning strikes and/or Indigenous forest stewardship events.

Fast-forward to the end of the 19^th century and the incursion of Anglo-European colonialism, and the prevalent mindset of preventing or limiting forest fires. This allowed for the buildup of dry fuel on the forest bed and the overgrowth of the forests themselves. The wildfires we’re seeing today are tree-killing, high-intensity crown fires that sweep through hundreds of thousands of acres, irreversibly altering entire ecosystems and destroying entire neighborhoods.

There appear to be two prevalent schools of thought regarding the severity of historical wildfire. One school, which draws from the General Land Office surveys, is of the opinion that high-intensity, tree-killing wildfires have always been and still are part of our western ecosystem, thereby negating the benefits of forest tree-thinning. However, recent studies are showing that these high-intensity wildfires that devastate the ecosystem, sterilizing the soil and preventing the ability of the forest to regrow, are something that has come of age since the 20^th century.

Tree-ring analysis is irrefutable evidence of fire frequency, severity, seasonality and extent. These records extend over centuries, for the life of the trees. Satellite observations and on-ground field observations, collected since the mid-1980s, are used to characterize modern-day wildfire intensity and outcomes.

A comparison of the two techniques shows that contemporary wildfires, tracked since the mid-1980s, are burning less frequently but with greater intensity than the very frequent, low-intensity fires of the 1700s and 1800s, and burning hundreds of times more acreage today than yesteryear. To sum up this situation in a few words, “The hotter the burn, the greater the kill”.

The bottom line: the fire regime in our Front Range is changing, and it’s changing our ecosystems. What used to be is no more, and we must adapt ourselves to the reality of this change. The study concludes that prescribed fire and controlled burns are really the best method to bring dry conifer forests back to a healthy state, but in today’s Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI), that’s not a practical methodology. The second-best method is tree-thinning (mitigation), and that’s what is happening in many of our Open Space parks today, especially those that are adjacent to human habitation.

If our forests are not thinned, the massively dangerous wildfires of today will cripple the ability of the land to regenerate the forests, and in the process, they will destroy entire neighborhoods.

Many people who live in the Front Range, especially those who are under 60 years of age, have rarely if ever seen a healthy Ponderosa forest; they’ve only been exposed to overgrown forests. This is what they’re used to, so when they encounter a Ponderosa pine mixed conifer forest that has been mitigated, the difference can be shocking.

While many might protest that JCOS is “killing” our Open Space forests with their forest health implementation activities, the truth is that the Jeffco Open Space Forest Health plans align with both TogetherJeffco’s Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) and the current research referenced above. Our Open Spaces are adjacent to residential neighborhoods (or, rather, residential neighborhoods have grown up around our Open Space Parks), so there cannot be prescribed, controlled, low intensity burns without the threat of these fires getting out of control. The only other option is forest thinning. This may be hard to watch as it’s happening, but in the future the forest, including the forest residents, will be healthier for it.

 

Want to dig deeper? Here are a few sources:

From the Denver Gazette: https://denvergazette.com/outtherecolorado/news/why-its-not-good-news-that-wildfires-are-becoming-less-frequent-in-the-american-west/article_f3661bd0-90b0-11ef-90a8-4b90c289a760.html

The referenced research article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01686-z

Contemporary fires are less frequent but more severe in dry conifer forests of the southwestern United States, by Emma J. McClure, Jonathan D. Coop, Christopher H. Guiterman, Ellis Q. Margolis, Sean A. Parks

 

What is a Fire Regime? A fire regime occurs in a particular ecosystem over an extended period of time. Scientists classify fire regimes using a combination of factors including frequency, intensity, size, pattern, season, and severity. Individual fires can vary greatly in severity, and the specific effects and risks caused by a fire will depend on the specifics of its fire regime. A classification system has been developed to describe the characteristics of a particular fire, determine which type of fire regime is common in a given ecosystem, and compare present fires with historical norms.” https://oregonexplorer.info/content/what-fire-regime

 

TogetherJeffco Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) 2024 Update, Wildfire History in Jefferson County, Wildfires prior to Euro-American colonization: “Wildfires and cultural burning heavily influenced Colorado’s Front Range before the era of fire suppression. Many Indigenous peoples utilized fire to steward the land, including the Cheyenne and Ute First Nations who hold much of the Colorado Front Range as their ancestral land (Wright, 2016). Frequent, low-severity fires were common in grasslands, shrublands, ponderosa pine and dry mixed conifer forests before European settlement in the 1850’s…”

Ponderosa pine mixed conifer species: Ponderosa pine, Douglas fir, aspen, juniper, white fir, Gamble oak

Typical elevation: 6,300 to 9,500 feet

Fire return interval: 7-50 years (frequent)

Fire severity: Low-to moderate-severity, with some smaller patches of stand-replacing fire where most or all trees die.

“Ponderosa pine mixed conifer forests are fire dependent. Historically, fire burned across the forest floor, controlling tree regeneration, removing lower limbs on mature trees, and creating large, open spaces between trees. Human management activities (grazing, logging, fire suppression) have resulted in unnaturally dense forests. During extreme weather, high winds can easily spread fire between tree crowns, resulting in very large high-severity wildfires where most trees are killed. This is not always the case but is a trend that has occurred more frequently in this forest type in the last few decades.” https://togetherjeffco.com/19989/widgets/88452/documents/61063

 

Jeffco Open Space Forest Management Plans and Current Projects: https://www.jeffco.us/3343/Forest-Management

Miss Mountain Manners wants to thank everyone who has taken the time to read this article, and especially those who have decided to dig a little deeper and educate themselves on forest health management. Our Western forests are not like the East Coast forests, which are thick and lush. Our Western forests are dry conifer forests that have adapted to our semi-arid climate. We need to respect that and follow in the footsteps of our Indigenous brothers and sisters, who understood how to properly manage them.

 

 

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