Outdoor Pikes Peak Initiative · Article 10 of 24
In January 2023, OPPI held 11 community listening and working sessions across El Paso, Teller, and Fremont counties, plus five online meetings. More than 300 people came. They left more than 1,500 comments. Comments were sorted into five bins: natural-resource challenges, natural-resource opportunities, recreation challenges, recreation opportunities, and ideas and solutions. Frequency counts narrowed the pile to 18 topics, then to five themes, which became the subcommittees.
Three sentences from the room
The plan prints comments as speech, county by county. From Teller: “The management approach of the land needs to be open minded and work together.” From Fremont: “We need conservation for natural resources in the face of climate change and its ramifications including drought, water shortages, population increases in wild areas, wildlife, etc.” From El Paso: “There is a need to build awareness among user groups and an opportunity to educate users to reduce overuse or misuse of recreational amenities.”
The survey that followed
A region-wide survey was pushed through visitor centers, chambers, email, social media, and the initiative site. Outreach reached more than 40,000 people and returned 650 responses, including more than 340 unique comments. Ninety-two percent of respondents had not been at the January sessions. Seventy-nine percent lived in the three-county region, 16 percent were from out of state, and 5 percent were from elsewhere in Colorado. Trends matched the listening sessions: conservation, recreational management, and connecting trails.
Five themes, then seven
The five themes that survived the count were recreation, management, funding, natural resources, and education. Funding did not get its own focus group, because it ran through all of the others. Four groups — recreation, management, natural resources, and education — each met three times, twelve meetings in all. They used the green-yellow-red consensus method from Colorado’s Outdoors Strategy: support it, can live with it, or object. Consensus meant nobody was on red. Blue dots then picked the top three strategies. The seven strategic areas that came out of that work are management, partnerships, recreation, communication, connectivity, natural resource conservation, and funding.
The 2024 check-back
In June 2024 the team brought the draft back. Six in-person sessions — Colorado Springs twice, Monument, Florence, Woodland Park, and Cripple Creek — drew more than 80 people. Two virtual meetings drew nearly 15. Stations covered the values plus the data-hub map. Overall feedback was positive. Recurring notes: partnerships are necessary, but how and who are still open; people want trails connected to communities, and social trails recognized where that makes sense; invasive species, fire, and water worry them; recreation is a people-management problem; communication should include youth and a single message; views on a single managing entity were split; and participants wanted time with the maps.
Source: Outdoor Pikes Peak Initiative Vision Plan 2025, prepared through the Pikes Peak Outdoor Recreation Alliance as the local Colorado Outdoor Regional Partnership, with support from Colorado Parks and Wildlife and Great Outdoors Colorado. Project team: PPORA, Trails and Open Space Coalition, N.E.S. Inc., Bachman PR, and the University of Colorado Colorado Springs Geography Department. The plan was written across a four-year process and released in 2025; some statistics reflect a point in time before publication. Phase 2 summary and community engagement, pages 70–74 and 83–85 and 90–91.
