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Adoption Status: NOT ADOPTED
13,415 acres (20.9 square miles)
How to get there
Lower Piney roadless area is about 8 miles NE of Wolcott.
- From
Wolcott, travel north on State Highway 131 for about 2 miles. Take Eagle County
Road (CR) 6, which turns into FS 701
near Muddy Pass. From the pass, taking FS 744 to FS 406 to the east brings you
near Marma Lake. Here you can catch the trail up Piney River (1884) into the
Eagles Nest Wilderness. FS 701 continues along the southern boundary of the
unit and continues all the way to Vail.
- To
reach the northern portion of the unit, go east on CR 6A and turn onto FS 445.
This is a 4WD road. After about 6 miles, turn right on FS 444 on Piney Ridge.
Three miles later, turn right on FS 401, and make subsequent forks onto FS 784,
and FS 449. You are now on Piney Ridge. At the end of this road, look for Big
Park Trail (1892) for access to the interior of this area. FS road 401 can also
be reached from the Sheephorn Creek area to the NE.
- The
USGS 7 1⁄2' quads for Lower Piney RA are Lava Creek, Piney Peak, Edwards, and
Vail West.
Setting
The Lower Piney roadless area occupies a large portion of
the Piney River drainage. This river begins at Piney Lake, north of Vail, and
flows into the Colorado River at State Bridge. The north portion of the unit is
on Piney Ridge, which separates Piney River from Sheephorn Creek. Many wooded
tributary drainages dissect the landscape, which ranges in elevation from 7,800
feet on the Piney River to 11,107 at Chimney Rock. Spruce/fir forests dominate
the hills, with lodgepole pine and aspen in the drainages.
What’s special about it?
The area supports a large herd of elk, as well as many deer,
and provides an important corridor between the Eagles Nest Wilderness and
lower-elevation BLM and state-owned rangelands in the Kremmling area, and to
the northern Gore Range. The area acts as a buffer to private lands and
wilderness and is rarely used for recreation, although use by hunters is quite
heavy here in the fall. Piney River supports an impressive diversity of native
plants, and provides wonderful fishing opportunities.
Potential threats
There is potential for development on private inholdings in
the Lower Piney area. Road improvement and increased traffic would
substantially alter the character of this unit. During hunting season, some
off-road motorized use occurs, damaging forest resources. The Big Park Trail
(1892) is a legal motorized trail bisecting the area. The is currently hosting
a population explosion of pine bark beetles that are causing a lot of Lodgepole
pine mortality. Many believe that something must be done - meaning cutting
trees - a response that is completely unsupported in the scientific literature.
All the roads that would be required for any timber treatments would cause
soils damage, introducing noxious, silt streams, usher in greatly expanded
human uses, and generally destroy roadless area values.
Other info
Lower Piney is the largest 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)! In addition to acreage
identified by the USFS, conservation groups have identified an additional
10,048 roadless acres associated with this unit, mostly to the north and
northeast.
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