Publish Date: 6/21/2006

Overturned concrete barriers lie on the side of Forest Service Road 501, which is closed to motor vehicles, near Yankee Doodle Lake on Rollins Pass west of Rollinsville on Monday. The Forest Service plans to close the route to motorists with metal gates set in concrete as early as next week.Times-Call/Richard M. Hackett

Illegal route gets shut down
Off-roaders continue to use Forest Service Road 501

By Brad Turner
The Daily Times-Call

U.S. Forest Service officials plan to seal off an illegal route used by off-roaders to bypass a blocked tunnel and drive from Rollinsville to Winter Park each summer.

Rollins Pass is impassable because a rockfall closed the Needle’s Eye Tunnel at the top of the pass in 1990, but the 32-mile dirt road accessing the tunnel remains open on both sides of it.

Forest Service Road 501 bypasses the tunnel. Officials closed the road in 1980, but off-roaders continued to use the bypass illegally.

Now Forest Service workers plan to seal off the road more securely by installing metal gates set in concrete next week, said Maribeth Pecotte, the Boulder Ranger District spokeswoman.

“The steps we have taken to close and lock it are not working,” Pecotte said. “It’s a contentious place. People want their access, and they’re willing to disregard the law.”

Officials barred motorists from using the bypass because it crosses a partially exposed gas pipeline and meanders into the Indian Peaks Wilderness, where no vehicles are allowed, she said.

Workers placed concrete barriers at both ends of the road, which crosses a forest ridge and alpine tundra, and posted signs saying the route was closed to protect vegetation and water quality. But vandals repeatedly ripped the obstacles out of the ground with winches and used the road anyway, Pecotte said.

Workers repaired the barriers almost every year since 1980, only to find them pulled down again later.

“When people are tearing down road signs and pulling down barricades on closed roads, the people who come after them don’t know the road is closed,” Pecotte said.

Karl Anuta, a Boulder Historical Society member and advocate of reopening Rollins Pass, said Forest Service Road 501 should be opened and managed by the Forest Service because the public wants to use the pass.

“If the tunnel is going to remain closed, I think that’s a logical option,” he said. “You have to go in there actively and say, ‘This is where you should go,’ rather than just saying no.”

County commissioners from Grand, Gilpin and Boulder counties are discussing the possibility of stabilizing Needle’s Eye Tunnel and reopening the pass. The pass winds through all three counties, but the tunnel sits in Boulder County.

Boulder County commissioners said last week they were hesitant to reopen the pass in part because increased traffic on the road could lead more off-roaders to explore unofficial side paths like Forest Service Road 501 and damage the forest. When the tunnel was open in the late 1980s, as many as 22,000 motorists crossed the pass each summer.

Rollins Pass allowed trains to cross the Continental Divide in the early 1900s. When railroad companies abandoned it in the 1920s, motorists began using the road.

The Needle’s Eye Tunnel on top of the pass collapsed in 1979. Boulder County officials cleared and reopened the tunnel in 1987. Another collapse in 1990 blocked the pass and resulted in a liability lawsuit that cost Boulder County taxpayers about $85,000.

Brad Turner can be reached at 720-494-5420, or by e-mail at bturner@times-call.com.