As Wyoming’s recreation industry continues to grow, new trails and outdoor facilities are popping up all over the state to give mountain bikers, skiers, snowshoers and hikers more options for basking in the wilderness.
That includes the Happy Jack Recreation Area near Laramie.
Gigantic lodgepole pines tower at least 60 feet tall in Happy Jack, which is nestled in the snowcapped mountains of the Laramie Range. Its peaks sit in Wyoming and northern Colorado, where it eventually turns into the younger Rocky Mountain Range.
On a recent weekday, dark gray clouds whirled over the treetops like apparitions as the winter wind howled and moaned.
It was frigid out, hovering around 15 degrees Fahrenheit. Despite underwhelming snowpack levels in the season thus far, tree branches, fence posts and log cabins were dusted with snow, shimmering like riverbed gemstones.
“This is a gem up here, the Pilot Hill and Tie City [trails],” said Dan Lynn as he and his family hiked by. “We mountain bike in the summer and cross-country ski and hike whenever we can.”
Lynn and his family are out hiking despite the stinging, blustery wind, dogs included.
“This is Tesla,” he said, pointing to a muzzled hound at his feet. “The only Tesla we’ll ever own.”
“Mac,” said Beth Thacker, gesturing toward another, “and Winks, the one-eyed wonder. She has one eye, so we call her Winks.”
The new investments in outdoor recreation, one of the state’s fastest-growing industries, mean more memories for Wyomingites. That includes Lynn, who said he’s got biking memories of these trails he’d rather forget.
“I came around to a curve too fast and slid out,” he said. “My head was going for a log, and I knew, ‘This is going to hurt.’ But my helmet saved me, and I crashed on my right side.”
A couple minutes later, Laramie resident Don Jones cross-country skied by on the groomed trail with a Happy Jack crash-out tale of his own.
“I was [in] maybe either 4th or 5th grade,” said Jones. “The elementary school did a trip up here to go skiing. And I was pretty excited to show off how good of a skier I was. So while my whole class was going up the campground hill, I skied up to the top and then came down and tried to do a big, spectacular hockey stop right in front of everybody, and I just crashed right at everybody's feet.”
Right now, a snowshoer or a fat biker could voyage from the network of trails that starts at the prairie near Laramie all the way up to forested Happy Jack. That’s about 16.5 miles of shortgrass beauty, featuring old rock quarries, water towers, herds of pronghorn antelope and mule deer – and the occasional bull moose.
That connection is thanks to a new connector trail built by the nonprofit Wyoming Pathways, a group that helps communities in the state build trail systems.
“Going back to the 1990s, people were riding from town through what used to be called Cactus, which is now Pilot Hill and the School Yard,” said Michael Kusiek, the group’s executive director. “At one point, they had permission to go through a landowner's property to get up to the radio towers.”
That old route is what the new trail is intended to replace, he added.
There’s been a flurry of outdoor recreation projects just like that one built across the state. Kusiek credits the Wyoming Office of Outdoor Recreation for helping breathe life into the new connector trail.
“[They were] tremendous partners there,” he said. “They make available $50,000 grants that you can write to either repair existing trails or build new trails that are non motorized, and we've been doing that for years.”
After the last legislative session, state lawmakers on both sides of the aisle passed a bill that lays out how a new outdoor recreation trust fund will work.
It establishes a nine-member board that’ll meet to dish out its roughly $6 million of total funding for outdoors projects.
Those could include boat ramps, campground extensions or networks of crisscrossing trails, like Pilot Hill and Happy Jack.
It was quiet up in the mountains except for the creaking sound of the wind moving through the lodgepole pines, occasionally knocking off snow and creating great plumes of radiant white powder.
“The wilderness, getting outside, is so important for the psyche and the body, as well as the mind,” Lynn said earlier. “That’s why we’re here.”
This reporting was made possible by a grant from the Corporation For Public Broadcasting, supporting state government coverage in the state. Wyoming Public Media and Jackson Hole Community Radio are partnering to cover state issues both on air and online.
