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Adoption Status: NOT ADOPTED
Freeman Creek: 971 acres (1.5 square miles)
Piney Lake: 910 acres (1.4 square miles)
TOTAL: 1,881 acres (2.9 square miles)
How to get there
The Freeman Creek and Piney Lake roadless areas are about 5
miles north of Vail. Approach these areas from Vail via Red Sandstone Road (FS
700).
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For the
Piney Lake RA, stay on Red Sandstone Road until it ends at Piney River Ranch on
Piney Lake. You will pass about 15 dispersed campsites on your right, along
Piney River. From Piney Lake, you can hike Trail 1894 and connect to the Lost Lake Trail (1893), or
you may also hike into the Eagles Nest Wilderness from here.
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Lost
Lake Trail (1893) travels through the Piney Lake RA. Its western trailhead is
at the junction of Red Sandstone Road (FS 700) and Moniger Road (FS 701), just
before FS 700 switchbacks. Or approach it from its eastern trailhead at the end
of Lost Lake Road (FS 786), beginning from Red Sandstone Road.
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For the
Freeman Creek RA, take Red Sandstone Road (FS 700) to Piney Crossing
Campground, a couple of miles from Piney Lake. You will pass about a dozen
dispersed campsites on your left along the way. From the campground, hike down
the Piney River Trail (1890), or take the closed FS 410 to East Meadow Creek.
Both of these trails enter the Eagles Nest Wilderness Area.
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USGS 7 1⁄2’ quad for the Freeman Creek and Piney Lake RAs is Vail West.
Setting
These small areas are essentially extensions to the Eagles
Nest Wilderness Area along Piney River. Piney River is the primary drainage
from the high Gore Range into the Colorado River. The areas are timbered mostly
with lodgepole pine, although Engelmann spruce, subalpine fir, and aspen may be
found as well. Freeman Creek features some large wet meadows. Lost Lake is a
natural lake in the eastern portion of the Piney Lake RA. The elevations range
from 9,000 feet at Freeman Creek to 10,200 feet near Lost Lake.
What’s special about them?
Piney Lake is a scenic natural lake that is a very popular
summer and fall destination. The area has extensive opportunities for camping,
hiking, fishing, mountain biking, horseback riding, and big game hunting. As
such, it is a vital recreational resource for the Vail area. These areas
probably feature the most popular dispersed camping in the Vail area.
These units are summer range for elk and deer, and moose are
known to frequent in the wet meadows around Freeman Creek. Freeman Creek also
contains a well-preserved lower-montane willow carr (wet shrub community). Lost
Lake is an unusual feature as it sits on a ridgetop.
Potential threats
These areas are under USFS management for wood fiber
production, as demonstrated by the clearcut areas on the southern boundaries of
each unit. Further harvesting in the area would have to occur very close to the
Wilderness boundary. Currently, there is a great deal of misplaced concern over
the effects of beetle kill in the area triggering a knee jerk response to do
something about it - which usually means cutting more trees - though there is
no evidence that anything can actually be done about it. The potential for
further development of private parcels in the Piney Lake area is very high, and
traffic to the area will continue to increase making it all the more compelling
to preserve unspoiled roadless lands in the area.
Other info
In addition to the acreage included by the USFS,
conservation groups have identified 1,359 more acres of roadless area
associated with these units. These occur to the south of each unit, around
closed roads formerly used for timber extraction, and in the case of Freeman
Creek, include important subalpine wet meadows. Freeman Creek and Piney Lake
are two of 12 roadless areas that are contiguous with the Eagles Nest
Wilderness area, which together form a roadless complex of over 168,000 acres
(262 square miles)! |
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