The number of days hikers spent scaling Colorado’s tallest peaks in 2024 is about the same as it was a decade ago. And that slow increase in traffic on Colorado’s 14ers in 2024 — estimated at 265,000, up 1.9% over 2023 — is a good thing.
“I think 260,000 to 300,000, that seems like where the natural boundaries are at the moment,” said Lloyd Athearn, the longtime boss at the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative, which, since 2014, has deployed trailside infrared counters to estimate annual traffic on the state’s highest peaks. “There is a sense we are hitting an equilibrium point. We have an awful lot of people out there hiking 14ers, but we are not overwhelmed by it.”
The Colorado Fourteeners Initiative formed in 1994 and has built 40 trails on 37 of the state’s 58 highest peaks. Those trailside counters — 23 of them now on trails leading to 22 14er peaks — counted 415,000 hikers on alpine trails in the summer of 2020, when the pandemic drove record numbers of people outdoors.
That was a big year for 14ers. Maybe too big. In the years since, landowners have closed access to popular 14ers and communities have clamped down on trailhead parking. Efforts to limit crowds and manage access — combined with slower population growth and changing demographics in Colorado — have tamped down 14er traffic. The 2024 numbers mirror those from 2015.
public.flourish.studio/visualisation/24674292The transfer of nearly 300 private acres atop Mount Democrat to the Forest Service cleared access hurdles for the popular Declibron Loop, increasing traffic in the Mosquito Range by more than 50% in 2024, which offset declines on other peaks.
And again, that return to a typical 14er hiker’s pace — slow and steady — is nothing to worry about, Athearn said. Nearly 40 years ago Colorado’s then-Gov. Dick Lamm warned we were “loving our 14ers to ruin.”
Athearn points to a growing list of reasons behind the decline. Timed reservations at Rocky Mountain National Park to access Longs Peak and the same limits on the road up Mount Blue Sky curtailed heavy crowds on the popular 14ers. Land managers are working to limit roadside parking around the trailheads for Mount Bierstadt and Grays and Torreys peaks. Baby boomers aging out 14er hiking while younger generations deal with families, jobs and homes. Communities feeling overwhelmed by crowds. (For example: Breckenridge requires Quandary Peak climbers to use a shuttle to reach the trailhead of the 14er that draws 25,000 to 30,000 annual hikers.)
“I think there was a shock with people seemingly everywhere in 2020 and we are seeing more communities working to better manage crowds,” Athearn said.
The Colorado Fourteeners Initiative had a budget around $2.4 million last year, which is up from less than $150,000 when it formed in 2004. About 10% of that comes from the federal government. Still group deploys nearly two dozen seasonal trail builders and later this month will open a new section of trail on Mount Shavano after four summers of work on trails leading to summit land the initiative purchased in 2016.
“It is federal land but most of the money to protect it comes from individuals and communities who recognize the value and importance of these lands,” he said.
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