The Pole Mountain area of the Laramie Range between Laramie and Cheyenne is gaining steadily in popularity. And all that heavy recreation traffic is starting to show with many new unapproved roads causing damage to the landscape. That’s a problem since the area is also the source for the city of Cheyenne’s water.
Aaron Voos is a spokesman for the Medicine Bow National Forest and says that’s why the Forest is hosting a series of public meetings about how to best deal with the increased traffic around Pole Mountain.
There will certainly be differing opinions as far as how people think the Pole Mountain area should be used and what it should look like.
“We’re not heading into this with a secret map somewhere in the office here of what we think that Pole Mountain road system should look like,” he says. “It’s something where we want to hear from the public and from the other agencies, adjacent land managers, private land owner.”
He says he expects a lot of strong opinions on the subject.
“There will certainly be differing opinions as far as how people think the Pole Mountain area should be used and what it should look like. You know, should we add motorized trails, should we not add motorized trails? Are there enough access points for non-motorized recreation, should we add more?”
He says they’ll host another meeting tonight, July 15 in Laramie’s Civic Center South Gym from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. He says if you can’t make it, you can also use an interactive website to pitch in ideas about where to add or scale back the number of roads at Pole Mountain.
Voos says follow-up meetings in August will start focusing in on the biggest problem areas. He says a decision about the road system will be made sometime next year.