Share your CORE Act Story
Sheep Mountain Alliance is collecting stories from areas in the CORE Act within the San Juan Mountains. We want to hear your hiking stories, your backpacking stories, or how you grew up visiting one of these areas! Add your story or photo, or both below. You'll be featured on our CORE Act page, and on our social media posts throughout the summer. Email vista@sheepmountainalliance.org with any questions.
Sheep Mountain Special Management Area
“I realize this area is at the heart of the Northern San Juans and deserves to be protected as such.”
The winter opportunities provided within the proposed Sheep Mountain SMA are unlike any other. Bordering the small hamlets of Trout Lake and Ophir, I’ve found myself frequently exploring in the Sheep Mountain SMA. The remote, jagged peaks offer stunning backcountry skiing. Winding my way through dense forest, hoping to see a lynx, and emerging above treeline, I realize this area is at the heart of the Northern San Juans and deserves to be protected as such. With important wildlife habitat corridors and a range of ecosystems this area in the CORE Act must be protected for the future of our wild places and future generations of visitors. -Mason Osgood
Former Senator Mark Udall and friends of Sheep Mountain Alliance survey proposed CORE Act areas
McKenna Peak
The relaxation, reflection and solitude one can find near McKenna Peak and its surrounding sagebrush arroyos and juniper groves is perhaps a beneficial result from the name of the road by which you drive to access it: Disappointment Road. It roughly follows Disappointment Creek, through Disappointment Valley from a turnoff a long way from anywhere on CO-141 through Southwestern Colorado’s underappreciated desert (or, as my friends and I call it, Moab-lite). Coming into the neighborhood from the south as I do the juniper and pine forests rather abruptly yield to alkali flats and not-quite-brown, not-quite-red soil that stretch beyond Disappointment Valley and into the adjacent and equally Martian Big Gypsum Valley. The Dolores river, with its stunted flows and spectacular canyons, meanders somewhere to the west, and no matter what time of year you are in this corner of the state the sun always manages to set over the looming La Sal Mountains.
“Please protect McKenna Peak, and other quiet places that have few voices speaking for them.”
As an outdoorsperson who spends weekends and off seasons finding the underappreciated crannies between popular trailheads and scenic viewpoints, there was little disappointing to me the first time I drove towards McKenna. It is a nook between the high peaks of the western slope and the famous recreation hot spots of Southeastern Utah. It is a nook that straddles two overrun regions of our area, and for those who drive through these canyons they are often regarded as a nice windowside view on the way towards destinations more exotic. It is the epitome of a quiet place, bereft of the bustle and human impact found in mountain biking hubs or climbing crags. It is a quiet corner in a quiet part of our state; nature unobstructed, unmolested and not-for-profit, and that is incredibly valuable. For each swath of land that gets lost to privatized, for-profit industries, we get funneled into fewer locations where we can commune with the great outdoors and spend a dollar while we’re on the way there. This concentration of wilderness and places to recreate outside is causing congestion, and it seems to me that many of us choose to be outside because traffic is hopefully far from the mind.
McKenna Peak and its surroundings serve as a beautiful, quiet respite from more crowded areas nearby for living beings of all kinds, humans included. With permenant protection of this area, all those who visit will discover the secret that disappointment is only in the eyes of those who seek to extract from this land, instead of simply being there, with the land.
Please protect McKenna Peak, and other quiet places that have few voices speaking for them. -Elliot Baglini