Celebrate National Public Lands Day with Wild Connections Thompson Point Hike, a BLM Wildlands Outing Saturday, September 22, 2018 9:00 AM to 3:30 PM (Trailhead to Trailhead times)
Wild Connections Hike to Thompson Point Lookout. Photo Kate Spinelli.
Come celebrate National Public Lands Day 2018 with Wild Connections on a beautiful hike and learn more about your local public lands. Join us on an escape to the scent and shade of ponderosa pines in this multiple mountain complex that comprises Thompson point and surrounding BLM wild lands of BLM's Eightmile Mountain Lands with Wilderness Characteristics unit. Located northwest of Canon City, near Highway 9 and High Park Road, Thompson Point provides postcard quality scenery of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains draped above central Colorado’s rugged canyon country. This moderate 7-mile hike will begin at Deer Haven Trailhead and traverse the higher elevations of Thompson Mountain up to Thompson Point. We will then loop back to the trailhead via an alternate route. The overall elevation gain for this hike is approximately 750 feet.
Plan on packing a lunch and snacks, plenty of water, layers of clothing, rain gear, sturdy boots, and your standard hiking essentials. This trip is sponsored by Wild Connections, Pikes Peak Group Sierra Club, and Central Colorado Wilderness Coalition. Maximum 15 participants. For more trip and carpool information and to register, contact John Sztukowski at 817-939-4239 or john@wildconnections.org, by 5:00 PM, Friday, September 21.
2018 Colorado Wilderness Act
Congresswoman Diana DeGette introduced the 2018 Colorado Wilderness Act on July 24, 2018 at the Outdoor Retailer Show in Denver, CO.
The Colorado Wilderness Act began as the Citizen’s Wilderness Plan, developed by a group of concerned citizens and organizations, including Wild Connections, who inventoried federal lands throughout the state to identify pristine lands that met the criteria for Wilderness designation.
The proposal was modified after discussion and was presented to Congresswoman Diana DeGette. She agreed those lands required protection and introduced a bill to designate the areas as Wilderness, which is the strongest level of land protection in the country. The need for this protection has only grown as more people have moved or traveled to Colorado to enjoy the natural splendor here.
Congresswoman DeGette has introduced the Colorado Wilderness Act in every Congress since 1999. The new bill reflects the efforts of grassroots activists to update the inventory of Colorado’s lands with wilderness characteristics. It aims to protect lower-lying BLM lands that have historically been less of a focus than the higher, alpine-zone areas for which Colorado is more well-known.
The 2018 Colorado Wilderness Act designates 31 areas in Colorado as Wilderness and two areas as Potential Wilderness, totaling more than 740,000 acres! Many of the proposed areas are mid-elevation ecosystems that are underrepresented in currently designated Colorado Wilderness, and they provide valuable habitat for a staggering variety of plants and wildlife. These areas include stunning red cliffs, winding river-ways, and steep, rocky ridges.
The proposed wilderness areas in our region include Browns Canyon in the Upper Arkansas River Valley, Badger Creek, Table Mountain, McIntyre Hills, and Grape Creek in the Arkansas River Canyonlands, and Beaver Creek, located between Canon City and Colorado Springs.
Click to Download our June 2018 Landscapes Newsletter.
Wild Connections' June 2018 Landscapes Newsletter is available for download. See Karl Ford's article on how climate change might affect Colorado's natural ecosystems.
Click the image or here to view or download the PDF.
Wild Connections' mission is to identify, protect, and restore wildlands, native species, and biological diversity in the Upper Arkansas and South Platte watersheds.
