The upper portion of the popular Rob’s Trail has been closed – due to the fact that it’s private property and could be dangerous during the winter months. KPCW’s Leslie Thatcher has more.
Basin Recreation Director Brian Hanton says the last 8/10th of a mile of Rob’s Trail will be closed through May 15th – leaving only the first mile of up and back hiking.
With this year’s abundant snowfall, the lessor of the property, Vail Resorts, is now clamping down due to safety concerns.
“With all of the trail easements we have with Vail, we only have access from May 15th through November 1st because a lot of their trails are on resort property and with their winter operation, we don’t want to inhibit anything they have going on. So, as we did the research, we found out that the top part of Rob’s Trail is on Vail property. And what we will be doing at the property line, we will be posting a trail closed sign at that location.”
The concern he says is safety. This is steep train and there’s potential for avalanche.
“Rob’s itself is actually kind of outside of the active ski boundaries but with it being on Vail property, they have concerns that there are some potential avalanche areas that they have concerns of. So, they just want to take a look at it. And we’re going to reevaluate everything this summer and see if there are some routes that we can do that don’t go into that area where that potential avalanche area is. So, we’re going be working with Vail over the summer hopefully creating some opportunity to go up some of that trail and maybe a reroute down - so it will be a little different experience in the future. But right now, we just have to just probably let the ski season end for Vail and then we’ll sit down and do some work and see what options we have.”
While downhill biking was banned on Rob’s this past fall - there will now be no uphill biking for the rest of the winter because there’s no other way to get down, than the same way up.
