NEWS Thursday, May 21, 2026
Moab land managers open hundreds of miles of trails to e-bikes as Colorado proposes even more access
Plus: The Grand Traverse vs. the great melt, more public land for the Decalibron Loop, helping CAIC hone messaging, remembering Gregg Bagni
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Sneak Peek of the Week
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Singletrack access expands for powered mountain bikes
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A cyclist rides at the Lunch Loops trail system in Grand Junction on Sept. 18, 2019. Despite a Department of Interior 2019 proposal to expand e-bike access to all BLM land, local land managers have kept the e-bike ban at Lunch Loops while opening trails for e-bikes on BLM land around Fruita. (Barton Glasser, Special to The Colorado Sun)
“A jerk is going to be a jerk no matter what kind of bike they are pedaling.”
— George Gatseos, owner of Fruita’s Over The Edge bike shop
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| 220 miles |
Proposed expanded access for e-bikes on BLM land in Eagle, Garfield and Pitkin counties, up from 18 miles |
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Brian Martinez recently went out for a pedal near his home in Moab. He was on his traditional mountain bike and saw a grandfather on an e-bike pedaling alongside his son and grandson.
“They had found that fleeting sweet spot where the grandkids were old enough to rip and grandpa could still hang. It is such a small nexus and if we can do anything here in Grand County to extend that time, I’m all for that,” says Martinez, a Grand County, Utah, commissioner who has long advocated for expanding access for e-bikes.
Land managers in Moab, the national epicenter of off-road wheeled fun, this month began to open more than 200 miles of mountain bike trails to e-bikes. It’s one of the largest expansions of e-bike access in the West. And that crown might not last long as the BLM’s Colorado River Valley Field Office vets a plan to open 220 miles to e-bikes, up from the current 18 miles.
The BLM opened the popular 18 Road area outside Fruita in 2019 to e-bikes and expanded e-bike access to 29 miles of trails to the North Fruita Desert in 2022. The moves came with all sorts of angst.
George Gatseos, who has owned Fruita’s iconic Over The Edge bike shop since 2010 and managed it since the 1990s, compares that e-bike angst to all the mitten-wringing over snowboards 30 years ago. It all ended up OK.
“There were a lot of perceived negatives, with people saying it was lame that there were bikes with motors on our trails and other people saying it was lame to exclude them. It ended up being better for everyone and nothing really changed,” Gatseos says. “Because, you know, a jerk is going to be a jerk no matter what kind of bike they are pedaling.”
>> Click over to The Sun next week to read this story
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In Their Words
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The Grand Traverse race from CB to Aspen confronts warming winters
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Skiers reach the top of Taylor Pass during the 2023 Grand Traverse race as dawn breaks. Taylor Pass is about halfway through the 40-mile race between Crested Butte and Aspen. (Eric Phillips, Special to The Colorado Sun)
“It always comes down to whether we can put 400 of our friends on this slope in the dark and feel like it’s a smart decision.”
— Jake Beren, snow safety director for the Grand Traverse
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| 6 |
Times Grand Traverse race organizers have deemed conditions too dangerous to send athletes to Aspen and reversed the course as an out-and-back from Crested Butte |
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There are few ski races that tax athletes more than the Grand Traverse. Carrying heavy packs, skiers leave Crested Butte at midnight and climb more than 6,800 vertical feet over 40 miles on their way to Aspen, following a historic route mapped by hardy mailmen nearly 150 years ago.
Lately, the challenges have moved beyond the physical. Warming winters are exposing hazards, spiking avalanche danger and melting swaths of snow.
Last year race organizers for the first time were forced to cancel the historic race due to bad snow. This year the race, which began in 1989, will likely include a decent stretch of skiers walking on a dirt road. Organizers are beginning to wonder about the future of the race as record-high temperatures bake the hills.
“The character of the race is very tied to the Crested Butte-to-Aspen journey,” Hedda Petterson, executive director of the Crested Butte Nordic Center that organizes the race, told Sun freelancer Havalin Haskell. “Once we move too far away from it, I think it becomes something else altogether.”
A warming climate is hindering race organizers, but unpredictability has always been part of the Grand Traverse as weather, avalanche hazards and ever-shifting conditions are part of the appeal for racers.
“It’s really amazing when you think about how many years the Grand Traverse has run, and how many of those years we’ve actually been able to safely make it all the way to Aspen,” Pat O’Neill, who has competed in the race every year since it began, told Havalin. “I don’t bank on anything until the gun has gone off and I’m up Warming House Hill.”
>> Click over to The Sun on Friday to read Havalin’s story
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The Outsider has a podcast! Veteran reporter Jason Blevins covers the industry from the inside out, plus indulges in the fun side of being outdoors in our beautiful state.
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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Breaking Trail
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Another section of the Decalibron Loop Trail added to public lands
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Kendall Chastain, conservation coordinator with Colorado Mountain Club, snaps a photo of a no trespassing sign she installed on an illegal trail heading to the summit of the privately owned 14er Mount Bross on July 21, 2022. (Jason Blevins, The Colorado Sun)
“It made sense to do this.”
— Miner John Reiber, who has sold nearly 700 acres in the Mosquito Range around Mounts Democrat, Lincoln and Bross
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| 15,000-20,000 |
Annual hiker days on the Decalibron Loop Trail in 2024, according to the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative |
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The Conservation Fund this week transferred about 480 acres of mountaintop mining claims in the Mosquito Range above Alma to the U.S. Forest Service. The federal acquisition marks yet another piece of a several-year effort to connect public lands across to summits of four 14ers along the Decalibron Loop Trail.
The Conservation Fund last fall bought the mining claims on the south face of Mount Bross from John Reiber, a miner who in 2023 sold about 300 acres of claims atop Mount Democrat.
The Pike-San Isabel National Forests and Cimarron and Comanche National Grasslands acquired the land from The Conservation Fund. Park County and the towns of Alma and Fairplay supported the protection of the parcels as visitation to the easily accessible Decalibron Loop helps support the local economy.
“It made sense to do this,” said Reiber, whose family first began acquiring mining claims in the Mosquito Range in the 1950s, decades before the trail connecting mines around the summits of four 14ers became popular with peak-bagging hikers. “That is just not an area that I would probably do a lot with and I’d love for other folks to enjoy that land.”
The 480 acres is on the south-facing slopes of Mount Bross, but the summit of the peak is private property and remains closed to the public. The checkerboard of private mining claims on the peak includes the Moose Mine on the north side of Mount Bross, where, Reiber says, there are at least 17 tunnels accessing the silver mine that dates back to the 1870s.
“They moved a lot of soil and dirt and rock to get in there. Makes you wonder how that area can be safe,” he says. “I think a big issue for that mountain is safety.”
He is one of many investors in those summit parcels and he said he’s not sure if anyone wants to sell.
“Taxes keep going up, so sooner or later folks might say they don’t see a long-term benefit for that land and they might become interested in selling,” he said. “I guess we’ll see.”
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The Guide
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CAIC wants to know how backcountry travelers use avalanche forecasts
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Backcountry travelers took this photo of a slab avalanche that slid on a persistent weak layer near treeline Feb. 23 in the Cooper Creek drainage south of Aspen. (Courtesy, Colorado Avalanche Information Center)
The Colorado Avalanche Information Center is surveying backcountry travelers about how they made decisions in February, when avalanche dangers peaked for the season. Across the West, people were getting killed in slides. But not in Colorado. The 2025-26 winter was the first since 2003-04 that the CAIC had not counted one avalanche fatality through February.
The CAIC Snow Pool surveys are helping the center better communicate avalanche hazards and risks. There were three last season, capturing data from 1,200 online participants as part of the Avalanche Research Program at Canada’s Simon Fraser University.
CAIC’s inaugural spring 2024 survey presented participants with simple, but realistic, avalanche forecasts, asking travelers to assess the level of uncertainty around the forecast and how that information might impact their plans for traveling through avalanche terrain. Academic analysis of the 1,313 responses — more than 80% of them were backcountry skiers and snowboarders and most of them had avalanche training — suggested that explicit statements around the size and danger of avalanches had the most impact on traveler plans.
The survey responses also revealed that forecasters clearly noting their uncertainty around the dangers played a role in backcountry decisions. The analysis showed that when forecasters said they have “only a few observations from the field” or admitted it was “difficult to reliably predict” which slopes were most likely to slide on buried weak layers, backcountry travelers often altered their plans.
This February’s survey asks travelers how they viewed avalanche conditions and how they educated themselves about those conditions. The survey also asks how the conditions influenced their plans for backcountry travel.
“Your responses help avalanche forecasters understand how people interpret conditions and make decisions in the backcountry. This information helps improve forecasts, messaging, and safety information for the community,” reads the survey intro, which urges participants to sign up for the CAIC’s innovative Snow Pool community.
Click here for the February survey and here to sign up for the Snow Pool.
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Ack ack ack. A tip of the sock to the great Gregg Bagni.
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Gregg Bagni, a partner with White Road Investments and founder of Alien Truth Communications, promoted dozens of outdoor brands over a nearly 40-year marketing career. (Courtesy, Bicycle Retailer)
Chances were very high that if you heard people cackling with laughter on the floor of the Ski Show or Outdoor Retailer or Interbike, Gregg Bagni was fueling that giddiness.
The Boulder marketing guru had a gift. He could turn a phrase and spin a yarn like few others. You’d think he was joshing when he talked about being an alien. But that was no joke. He named his agency Alien Truth Communications. He told everyone he once saw a spaceship and it changed him.
That mothership has finally called Gregg home. He died last week in a snowboarding accident in the northern Selkirks of British Columbia.
The bike-loving pitchman behind the revival of Schwinn in the early 1990s — he hired 100 Elvis impersonators to march down the Las Vegas strip during the Interbike rally to celebrate the bike maker’s 100th anniversary in 1995 — championed brands like Yakima, Pearl Izumi, Clif Bar, Swix, Kodak, Giant bikes, Sierra Designs, Telluride Ski and Golf, Cannondale, REI and, of course, the True Mind Center for Traditional Chinese Medicine.
When he saw friends on the trade show floor, he would start digging through his backpack. He would dole out homemade cookies with alien faces, a host of alien stickers and special-made alien socks. An alien riding a unicorn. An alien sippy cup in a flying saucer. Tuxedoed aliens. Red, white and blue Uncle Samalien.
“Ack ack ack,” he’d say, with his own spin on Mork from Ork’s “nanu nanu.”
I’ve never not chuckled when I don his socks. That won’t stop now that he’s surfing the stars with his orbiting kinfolk.
Ack ack ack, my friend.
— j
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