Pikes Peak -- AP Story

[Jon Linkov <jlinkov@combriefings.com>]

Suit Over Pikes Peak Seeks a Road Less Graveled

By Robert Weller
Associated Press
Tuesday, September 8, 1998; Page A11 

CASCADE, Colo.—Pikes Peak, a beacon to pioneers and gold seekers in the Old
West, is
being wrecked by the gravel road that 300,000 sightseers use each year to
reach its 14,110-foot
summit, according to environmentalists.

The Sierra Club is suing the city of Colorado Springs and the U.S. Forest
Service to force
them to pave the 19-mile road. Currently, all but six miles up the famous
grade are gravel.

The nature advocacy group said the city is ignoring its own studies and a
Forest Service
recommendation that the road be paved to reduce environmental damage caused by
runoff from
the tons of gravel used to maintain it.

City officials said they do not have the nearly $15 million needed to pay for
the job.

"Perhaps it's appropriate that they call it America's Mountain, because like
so many other
things in America, they took it and trashed it," said Gail Snyder, a member of
the Sierra Club
and the Pikes Peak Advisory Commission.

The city, which assumed responsibility for the Pikes Peak road from the state,
disbanded the
commission after the lawsuit was filed last month, saying Snyder's presence on the
commission could harm the city's case.

"Pikes Peak or Bust" was the motto of gold miners in 1859. The man for whom it
is named,
explorer Zebulon Pike, first saw it from 150 miles away in 1806 and later
tried to climb it but
gave up, saying no man would ever be able to reach the top.

He was wrong, of course, and the view from the mountain's summit inspired
Katharine Lee
Bates to write "America the Beautiful" in 1893.

More than a century later, trees buried under gravel have died. One reservoir
below the road is
a sparkling blue, while an adjacent pool, apparently hit by the runoff,
sometimes seems almost
gray. At one point along the road, water from a culvert has cut a 17-foot-deep
gully in the
hillside.

The gravel slides down the slopes, damaging the hillsides that support the
road, said Snyder,
co-author of one of the city-ordered studies that recommended paving the road.

She said the city keeps stalling because sponsors of the Pikes Peak
International Hill Climb -- a
motorsports race -- do not want to change the flavor of the dusty race to the
top, fearing
pavement would increase speeds and make the competition more dangerous. The
city said the
race is not a factor.

The lawsuit was filed because the city refused to formally commit itself to
any time period for
the pavement project, Snyder said. The Sierra Club first urged paving the road
in 1972.

John Fredell, senior attorney for the city's utility administration, said the
Sierra Club wants to
"either close the highway or force the people of Colorado Springs to pay for
improving a
national asset."

The Sierra Club has criticized the city for crying poverty while proceeding
with plans to pay as
much as $15 million for a new visitors' center at the summit. But Paula Vickerman,
spokeswoman for Pikes Peak -- America's Mountain, defended the plans.

"Summit House is falling off the mountain," Vickerman said. "We have 40
hydraulic jacks
holding it up."

Fredell said the city is preparing to hire a consultant to determine the best
way to fix the road,
adding that if the road becomes too expensive to fix and maintain it might be closed.

No one is publicly calling for the road to be closed, but closing it would not
keep tourists from
visiting the top. A train carries 200,000 people to the summit each year.


                                       © Copyright 1998 The Associated Press