If a professional bike race charging through Colorado National Monument is the key to the rugged red-rock landscape and its treasures in western Colorado being redesignated as a "national park," then it's time to end the discussion over a name change.
The contention by U.S. Sen. Mark Udall and Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper that running a stage of the 2012 Quiznos Pro Challenge through the monument "can significantly add to the stature and profile of the effort to designate the Monument as a National Park" is shortsighted and seemingly shows a failure to fully appreciate that which the monument preserves.
Within its 20,534 acres Colorado Monument offers visitors not just the soaring beauty of rock monoliths reaching into the sky and intriguing and fragile cryptobiotic soil crusts essential to life on the Colorado Plateau but also tombs of fossilized dinosaur remains and their footprints and puzzling traces of prehistoric cultures. All set against a colorful ruddy sandstone backdrop.
No doubt, it would be a dazzling backdrop for television cameras following more than 100 elite cyclists during one stage of their seven-day run through Colorado. But the impacts and disruptions it would have on the monument alone make it unsuitable. Superintendent Joan Anzelmo says the race would require the monument to be closed to the public for at least 12 hours during the monument's high summer season, and during the race aircraft would hover overhead the peloton while support vehicles and caravans carrying VIPs snake along Rim Rock Drive behind the racers.
While professional bike racing is exciting to watch, and the red-rock beauty of Colorado Monument a breathtaking postcard for not just Colorado but the entire National Park System, the two don't belong together. Yosemite National Park officials back in 2009 reached a similar conclusion when they declined a request to allow a professional bike race to weave through the Yosemite Valley.
Commercial activities that prevent use of the park by visitors have no place in NPS areas. To contend that such a race is necessary to heighten the prospects of redesignating Colorado Monument as a national park is terribly myopic and undervalues the wonders that exist there.
If generating more tourism dollars for the surrounding area is what really is driving Mr. Udall and Mr. Hickenlooper, a much more lasting and stronger driver would be the "national park" imprint, something Mr. Udall can advance through legislation that rightfully stands on the well-established merits of the monument.
Comments
This is just about as disgusting an idea as when the National Parks Foundation sponsored Jeff Corwin's reality TV show 'Race To The Moment' series in Joshua Tree National Park..
Kurt
"What would you think if you were driving, say, from Rocky Mountain National Park to Canyonlands or the Grand Canyon, and you planned on stopping at Colorado National Monument and Mesa Verde along the way, but when you pulled up to the gate of the monument they said, "Sorry, we're closed today so we can host a bike race"?"
I would feel the same as I do seeing access limited elsewhere. The difference here is it would be a tangibly large crowd I could actually see. Whereas a flower, insect or even a BIRD can shut down an entire area and never actually be seen.
I'm with Kurt on this one. Look at how the thousands of current visitors to our national parks abuse them; walking anywhere but on designated walkways or trails, tossing garbage wherever they feel like, starting fires because they feel as if it is their right (even though the hire fire danger warnings are up), etc.
I can just picture bikes crashing, people walking and vehicles pulling off the road where they want. Have you ever seen the garbage tossed at the NYC marathon? Takes days to clean that up.
The last thing I want to see in a national park is all those TV antennas extended as far as they can go. Would look great, don't ya think?
People go to parks to think, walk, hike, climb and commune with nature not hundreds of bikes.
That comparison isn't even remotely the same thing. We're talking about all the paved entrances to an NPS unit with no means for visitors already inside to get out. I know your main concern is about ORV beach access, but a 12 hour closure of all entrances to Colorado NM is not the same as seasonal closures of beaches at Cape Hatteras.
National Park Ranger and other staff at each location have a duty to protect and preserve by having a bike race though Colorado it not close the monument for the day for visitors but also would put at risk all the natural wonders and the reason the monument was created. Remerber that we want the monument to still be there for future generations.
For Anonymous (February 22, 2011 - 11:58am), I don't know if you'd necessarily get the same problems with a professional bike race. The NYC Marathon has about 50,000 participants, while a professional stage race has only 128 racers. They've got professional support vehicles and cleanup would be nowhere near as difficult as a major foot race.
You should see what happens every year at Badlands NP around the time of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. Groups of loud motorcycles pass through for a visit on the way. I hear the NPS brings in law enforcement from other parks just in case.
As for designated walkways, off trail travel is actually legal at many NPS units unless it's posted otherwise. I had a ranger at Yellowstone who said they encourage dispersed off-trail travel except for geothermal areas where it can dangerous. However - the key is **dispersed** such that the effects aren't concentrated in certain popular visitor areas.
The 2012 Quiznos Pro Challenge through the monument "can significantly add to the stature and profile OF THE EFFORT to designate the Monument as a National Park"--weird sentence. Does an "effort" really have stature and profile? Why not raise the "profile" of the monument by highlighting ITS "stature," which has nothing to do with a bike race.
My remark was intended to the fact of showing up at a park and having it closed... That is it. Nothing like driving 6 hours to find six new plovers nested overnight successfully blocking the remaining access. This is why I bring my boat to Cape Hatteras now so I may bypass the NPS all together on my own little sandbar.