Main Elk Creek Roadless Area

Adoption Status: NOT ADOPTED

7,181 acres (11.2 square miles)

How to get there
The Main Elk roadless area is located about 7 miles NNE of New Castle and 10 miles north of Silt. Approach the area from New Castle via the Buford-Newcastle Road (FS 245).

• To approach the east side of the unit, about 4 miles northwest of Castle turn north onto Clinetop Road (County Road (CR) 243); this road becomes FS 603 at the forest boundary. When the pavement ends, at the first switchback, you will find two maintained trails. The left one is the Main Elk Trail (2157), which goes west up a side drainage and meets the Mansfield Ditch Trail (2291) that skirts the west edge of the unit. The right trail is Hadley Gulch Trail (1840) which ascends Hadley Gulch to the Clinetop Cow Camp. From this trail, the Zig-Zag Trail (1840.1A) climbs north out of the gulch up to Clinetop Mesa. Continue up the Clinetop Road (FS 603) past Clinetop Cow Camp to access the bulk of the Main Elk Creek area, which the USFS excluded from their roadless inventory.
• To approach the west side of the unit, stay on the Buford-Newcsastle Road (FS 245). Just before the forest boundary, you may park, and hike north on the Mansfield Ditch Trail (2291), which traverses under the bench above the west side of Deep Creek. The north end of this trail is on FS 820, a minor road that branches off FS 245. This trail provides great views of precipitous Deep Creek Point.
• Most of the actual Main Elk roadless area has been omitted from the USFS inventory. To reach the remaining “unofficial” roadless area, continue up the Buford-Newcastle Road (FS 245), finding FS Roads 830 and 822 that branch south along divides in this area. FS 822 is Clark Ridge Road, and provides access to several trails in the Deep Creek and Meadow Creek areas. Or turn right off FS 245 onto FS 601, and then right at Cliff Lake onto FS 823. Follow this to Meadow Creek Lake. From there FS 821 leads south to Meadow Creek Cow Camp and the Meadow Creek Point and Last Chance Trails. The former provides particularly good views of the Main Elk area.
• The USGS 7 1⁄2’ quads for the Main Elk RA are Rifle Falls and Deep Creek Point.

Setting
The Main Elk roadless area consists of a system of deep canyons that dissect mesa-like highlands that project like fingers from the White River Plateau. In this unit, Hadley Gulch, Main Elk Creek, Meadow Creek, Deep Creek, Clark Creek, and Mansfield Creek come together to carve through 2,000 feet of earth at Deep Creek Point. Together these drain a massive section of the broad, uplifted plateau.

The divides between creeks are generally flat-topped and coated in spruce/fir and aspen forest mixed with large open grassy meadows. The steeper slopes are thick with Gambel oak brush, and in many places the canyons are lined with sheer cliffs. Elevations in the unit range from 6,200 feet along lower Main Elk Creek, to 8,400 feet on the rim of Deep Creek Point.

What’s special about it?
The Main Elk roadless area features what is perhaps the most impressive canyon system on the White River National Forest. There is tremendous topographical relief here that has isolated long riparian corridors which lead to vast subalpine grasslands. The area within the USFS roadless area receives very few human visitors and has been identified by the Colorado Division of Wildlife as an area of extremely high priority habitat. The limestone cliffs in the canyons feature caves that provide habitat for rare bats. Big game use the area extensively, including bighorn sheep, and this is critical winter range for them.

Potential threats
The main threat to this area is the logic applied by the USFS in determining what a roadless area is. In this case, they have excluded all flat, upland areas from the unit, citing the lack of natural barriers to off-road vehicle incursion. They have also excluded huge sections of the drainages between flat divides. Their reasoning goes something like this: we can't keep illegal motorized users from creating roads in these roadless areas therefore we'll cede management of these lands to this lawlessness and only draw the roadless boundary around areas where it is too difficult for users to create illegal roads. As such, they only recognize 7,181 out of 46,254 acres of roadless area in their Main Elk roadless unit amounting to an 84% reduction in size! Even if the flat divides are excluded, the large and vital upper drainages of Main Elk Creek and Deep Creek should, without question, be included in this area!

Portions of the Main Elk RA are available for oil and gas leasing and development though no currently known leases exist in the area. Roadless advocates should request that the entirety of the roadless area be made unavailable for leasing. And, in the unfortunate event that leasing proceeds, advocates should urge the WRNF to impose non-waivable No Surface Occupancy (NSO) stipulations over the entire roadless area.  

Other info
As stated above, only 16% of this roadless area is under consideration for protection. Roadless advocates should be sure to petition the Colorado State Roadless Taskforce to consider protecting all the truly roadless acres in this unit, not just the small fraction improperly inventoried by the Forest Service.