SUMMIT COUNTY, Colo. — Starting Friday, hikers can once again bag four fourteeners in a day using the DeCaLiBron loop, a trail that a private property owner closed this spring over concerns about his own liability if hikers got hurt.
John Reiber, who owns the land, helped install a new sign at the trailhead Thursday. The sign comes complete with a QR code directing hikers to sign a waiver before starting along the trail, a compromised reached by Reiber and a large list of groups including the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative, the Colorado Mountain Club and Park County.
“We put that sign up to allow people who want to hike the DeCaLiBron Loop to have a method of doing that and still help protect me as a landowner from liability,” he said. “It would be just as easy… maybe easier to just leave it 'no trespassing,' but I’ve had the opportunity most of my life to be up there. I always appreciated being up there, and I think most other folks do as well, so...I work to try and figure out a way to make that happen.”
Reiber’s concerns were sparked by a 2019 federal appeals court decision that awarded $7.3 million to a cyclist who was injured by a pothole on a trail near the Air Force Academy. Reiber said that decision made him invest in liability insurance for his property.
The first year’s insurance premium was $6,500. He said last year that premium more than doubled to $15,000. So, earlier this year, he made the decision to close down the trail entirely.
“It’s a decision I don’t make lightly,” he said. “I just said it’s not worth the challenge any longer to leave myself exposed to that kind of liability.”
The closure had a huge impact on the town of Alma below the trailhead, according to Alma Mayor Saam Golgoon. Golgoon said in the month of June, only 50 vehicles bought day passes to head up the mountain. In July, a total 223 vehicles bought passes.
“What we did in a month, for example this year…we would do that in a day,” Golgoon said. “Those folks are stopping in our local stores, they're staying in our local hostel, and those businesses are seeing the impacts,” he said. “If anything that we have in our small mountain town for being a tourist attraction, are those trails right up there.”
He said he was thrilled the trail was reopening and happy that Reiber found a temporary solution to the problem.
Reiber also agreed the solution is temporary, calling again for support of an effort to change state law, waiving liability for private property owners for any injuries hikers sustain while crossing through their land.
In the meantime, he knows there will be some hikers who won’t sign the waiver.
“We’ve done everything to let folks know there’s no trespassing and we’ve given folks and avenue…and to the extent that someone were to sue, the position I would take is … hey… they knew.”
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