Friends of Fourmile Memorial Day Survey Results

Friends of Fourmile has been conducting a survey on the Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend for 17 uninterrupted years. The primary recipients of this information are the Salida District of the San Isabel National Forest and the BLM’s Royal Gorge Field Office, who share management of what’s known as the Fourmile Travel Management Area.

As a preview, it appears that in 2025  there was a significant decrease from 2024 in 6 of the 7  parameters we feel are most indicative of visitor use on this busiest weekend of the year. This follows  decreases in 2023 after what seems to have been a two-year “spike” in use during the 2020-2021 pandemic years.

As some of you are aware, since approving its camping management plan in 2024, the BLM has already begum implementing designated  dispersed campsites and closing some dispersed ones. For the Fourmile area, the dozen or so BLM designated sites were already in place before Memorial Day 2024. The 2024 survey documented that  in the first year, compliance was not very high; the 2025 survey revealed compliance was  high on BLM, suggesting the transition is having its intended effect. Dispersed camping still is allowed throughout the FS lands in Fourmile, but with the FS camping plan nearing final approval it is anticipated designated camping will gradually be implemented throughout Fourmile over the next several seasons, beginning in 2026.

THE BROADER PICTURE

The simplest way to present major findings in terms of trends is in the  graph below titled Selected parameters of use in Fourmile. We have extended last years’ graph to now include the 17 straight years we have done the survey, from 2009 through 2025:

To accomplish the survey, the roughly 160 miles of system roads and over 400 vehicle-accessible campsites in the 100,000-acre BLM and USFS-managed Fourmile Travel Management Area is divided into 5 separate routes. GARNA Friends of Fourmile Volunteer teams drive their respective routes typically on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, spending from 5 to 8 hours in data collection, which also includes visitor contacts, distribution of maps, answering questions, and liaisons with patrolling public land managers. At least one member of a team has been assigned the same route for several years and is familiar with each of the route’s 80-90 sites, including its history of establishment and expansion.

Although five routes are surveyed, and their data is recorded – and analyzed – separately, the graph above represents the data from all five routes combined. There are some differences in visitation on the different routes, as discussed later, but the combined data provides the broadest picture of overall trends.

The major observation based on the combined data illustrated in the graph (5 routes aggregated) is that peak use which occurred in the first two Covid years 2021-2022 has declined significantly over the last three to four years.

In the 2025 survey six of the seven selected parameters considered most indicative of the type and intensity of recreational visitor use declined. 

Perhaps most significant was a 17% drop in overnight camping units. (An “OCU” is defined as any RV, camper trailer, sleeper van, slide in camper, rooftop tent or ground pitched tent in which one or more people stay overnight. Measuring OCUs has been considered the best indicator of overnight use.) Street vehicles in campsites and on roads showed a lesser decline (5%) but is also an indicator that fewer visitors were in Fourmile, although this parameter includes both day and overnight use. Documented campsites were also down (10%) but this is explained by the BLM’s closure of more than 25 sites and the State Land Board’s closure of sites in Chubb Park, which in 2025 we stopped including in the survey. ATVs+UTVs (down 5%) and motorcycles (down 30%) suggest significantly fewer OHVs were on Fourmile’s roads and trails. Occupancy rate (the number of sites occupied divided by the total number of sites counted) was down by 14%, also an indicator of lower use. (Not included in the graph is the number of new dispersed sites encountered, down from 21 in 2024 to 9 in 2025, perhaps indicating that lower visitation provides less motivation to create a new site.) The only one of the seven parameters to show an increase was mountain bikes (up 33%). Our survey technique is not an accurate method for counting mountain bike use since most cyclists are using non-motorized trails which our teams do not cover; other anecdotal information suggests that the use of the expanded non-motorized trail system is continuing to rise without a downturn.

The survey is not designed nor intended to capture information on what factors may influence upward or downward use years or trends. Based on the FoF’s long involvement in observing visitor activity within the TMA (and to a lesser extent elsewhere on the public lands in Chaffee County) on Memorial Day and at other periods, here are some factors to consider. These relate to 2025 but are likely operating in earlier years.

• • Whether or not a visitor chooses to come to Fourmile is influenced by availability of other public land destinations. For example, in 2025 Cottonwood Pass was open before Memorial Day, meaning OHV-related visitors could choose popular Taylor Park roads and trails.
  • The May 24-26 timing of the 2025 MD weekend was a week earlier than in some years and this may have influenced decisions to delay visiting Fourmile.
  • Weather forecasts for Chaffee County prior to the weekend were not favorable, and although most of the weekend locally had fair weather (Front Range had extensive rain as predicted) some visitors may have decided not to chance the possibility of bad weather.
  • Anecdotal evidence over the past several years suggests that weekend non-local visitors are coming to Fourmile earlier than the traditional Memorial Day “start of summer” tradition. One possibility is this reflects recognition of crowding on MD in Fourmile and a shift to another weekend, which may lead to reduced use on MD.
  • Up-side use increases associated with the covid pandemic were significant in 2021, 2022 and to some extent in 2023, and decreases thereafter may reflect a return to a more “normal” pattern. It’s tempting to suggest that current 2025 levels are about what would have been expected had there been no covid spike.
  • A factor which we consider very unlikely, but could be at work, is that interest in public lands recreation is decreasing generally. Other indicators are that is not the case, and that Fourmile as well as the Upper Arkansas Valley are destined for continued increases for years to come.

Report complied by Alan Robinson, Friends of Fourmile