By Jim Gehres
The Colorado Mountain Club Foundation has made a
ten-thousand-dollar grant from the Gehres Fourteeners Fund to the Trust For
Public Land (TPL). TPL will use the money to acquire property rights needed to
reopen access to Silver Pick Basin and the southwest ridge of Wilson Peak in
the San Juans for climbing and hiking.
Wilson Peak
Access to Silver Pick Basin and the ridge has been closed
or substantially restricted for several seasons. There are not practical and
safe alternatives for the climb. TPL now has an option to purchase the two
hundred and twenty acres of privately owned mining claims in the basin and on
the ridge that must be crossed, but they are several million dollars short of
raising the needed money.
>Ultimately, the now-private acreage will be owned and
managed by the U.S. Forest Service and closed to mining and development.
Practical access to 13,913-foot Gladstone Peak, one of Colorado’s hundred
highest, will also be restored. Additionally, Silver Pick Basin always provided
a popular and viable access to Fourteeners Mt. Wilson and El Diente. P