Palisade Plunge Update

Winter has been a slow time as far as Palisade Plunge activities go. As we head into warmer weather and things are drying, this is a good time to share a couple of very important points.

Those are:

(1) - the TRAIL IS NOT YET DONE, NOR OPEN, with the exception of the lower most canyon adjacent to the Palisade Rim Trail area, and the two connectors, as pointed out in previous post.

(2) - the WILDLIFE SEASONAL CLOSURE is still in effect through the end of April.

One thing to understand is that the end of the seasonal closure does not mean that the trail is open, and that is true for ANY YEAR.  It just means that the wildlife closure has ended. 

Upper elevations of the trail will almost always still have physical limitations of mud and perhaps even snow until quite a while later than May 1.

Also, in this first year, the trail has not yet been finished nor declared open by the Federal Land Managers (BLM and USFS) - this means that it's NOT OPEN FOR YOU TO RIDE UP IT from the lower canyon area.  There may be some incremental opening of the route, more than just the lower canyon, when ground conditions allow, but we don't know that yet.  The USFS, which manages the mid-trail point of access, hasn't yet made a commitment to opening anything prior to full route completion.  So we'll keep you posted here on that status as it is made known.

We want to emphasize again that the trail is not open.  Practical ESTIMATE remains that late June to perhaps mid-July we may see the physical construction completed. So please respect the status - don't poach the trail.  Let the working group get the work done correctly and with all the partners working together as they should.  SO MANY folks want to see this trail completed, and this is the end-game part of the project.  Let's get it finished up strong.

An event is in the early planning stages for late July (Fri, 7/23, but date could change) - a recognition event, and a fiesta to celebrate completion of the project.  Put that on your calendar and think about raising a toast in downtown Palisade to COPMOBA and all of the partners in the Palisade Plunge project.

We're getting close.