DENVER – It might seem like every other person in Colorado is hiking a Fourteener on any given summer Saturday. While it might not actually be that crowded, the state’s highest peaks do count about 260,000 summit-scrambling trips every year.
All those feet headed to the 54 highest points in Colorado each year deliver $70.5 million in economic impact, with some hikers spending twice as much daily as a business traveler to Denver, according to the first study of the role Fourteeners play in the state’s economy.
The most highly trafficked peaks closest to the Front Range deliver some of the biggest bumps, according to the hiking impact report compiled by the nonprofit Colorado Fourteeners Initiative, which works to protect and maintain trails reaching up the state’s highest mountains.
“I think now we have a much more compelling case to take to local governments and trailhead communities that benefit from all these Fourteener hikers,” said Lloyd Athearn, the executive director of the 22-year-old Colorado Fourteeners Initiative. “There is a lot of money to be gained from people on these peaks, and just recognizing that helps us build these trails so we can continue to have these peaks as a great resource for people to come out and experience nature and find themselves and test themselves.”
The Colorado Fourteeners Initiative set up 10 compact infrared trail counters on the trails accessing seven of the state’s busiest peaks in 2015, up from five in 2014. This year the group added 10 new trail counters on trails accessing 10 peaks, reported The Denver Post. A Fourteener checklist compiled by more than 14,000 hikers on the wildly popular 14ers.com website helped calculate hiking trips on every other peak.
The results show a large portion of those annual trips are split among a handful of Front Range peaks – Mount Bierstadt, Grays Peak and Torreys Peak – that each saw from 20,000 to 25,000 hiking days last year. Mount Democrat and Quandary Peak near Breckenridge each hosted from 15,000 to 20,000 user days. The most trafficked high point in Colorado also is the state’s highest point: Mount Elbert. The study shows the 14,439-foot peak above Leadville hosted more than 25,000 mountain hiking days in 2015.
That doesn’t surprise Laura Downing, who owns the Mount Elbert Lodge and Cabins in Twin Lakes. For 22 years, Downing has seen a steadily increasing flow of hikers on Mount Elbert on the north end of the Sawatch Range, the 15-Fourteener strip of the Continental Divide that hosted about 95,000 hiking days last year, the most of any region in the state.
“We have people coming to climb it year-round,” Downing said. “The fact that it is the highest peak in Colorado is a huge draw, and the fact that is attainable by an average Joe from Kansas City because it’s not that difficult to climb makes it very approachable.”
Downing also isn’t surprised that hikers spend close to $275 for every trip up a Fourteener. That’s more than double the daily spending of a business traveler to Denver and close to the daily spending by the highly treasured out-of-state tourists coming to Colorado to ski.
“If you are going to hike a Fourteener, you typically want to start early and oftentimes that means you want a place to stay the night before,” Downing said. “You are starting early, so you want to stay close to the trailhead.”
Chaffee County, the three-town home of 12 of the Fourteeners in the Sawatch Range, harvested $82.4 million in spending from overnight visitors in 2015, according to research commissioned by the Colorado Tourism Office. That’s up from $44.9 million in 2000.
Not surprisingly, the study showed hikes are most popular on weekends from June to August, especially on the Fourteeners closest to Denver.
“It was eye-opening to me to see how many people climb the Front Range peaks on Saturdays,” Athearn said. “You can still, on so many of these high-traffic peaks, go up midweek and have a much more solitude-like experience. I guess I was surprised more people weren’t taking off during the week to beat the crowds.”
The study, which should be twice as rich next year when the data from 20 trail counters are compiled, is part of a growing trove of research compiled by the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative. Last year, the group released its first-ever “Fourteener Report Card,” a three-year inventory of trails accessing 39 Fourteeners. That report card showed the state’s Fourteeners in failing health, with trails in dire need of at least $24 million in repairs and reconstruction.
With the usage numbers, Athearn and his team can really nerd out on trail data. Already they are seeing that trail conditions are not necessarily tied to increased traffic. For example, a well-built trail can handle thousands of additional hikers, whereas a user-created trail trampled in by decades of climbers can quickly deteriorate with only a small increase in traffic.
“Now, we can see how trails change based on the positive work we are doing and we can see how use correlates with impact,” said Athearn, noting that the more precise numbers make it easier to solicit donations to support trail construction and maintenance. “Now, we can say, if you give us money, we can do this and this on a particular route that needs work and sees this much annual traffic.”
For the state, the latest research not only buttresses support for trail building but reveals mountain hiking as a viable draw for visitors worthy of promotion and investment.
“These reports help me not only with raising awareness but identifying ‘sector crossover,’ meaning Fourteeners were never looked at (as) a significant tourism driver, but with numbers like this, it’s pretty clear,” said Luis Benitez, the head of the Colorado Outdoor Recreation Industry Office.
