Jacqueline Hart Gibson, Golden Gate Canyon. Every year, Memorial Day weekend kicks off the summer tourism season in Gilpin and surrounding counties. Although it is the first significant travel day of summer for the area, it is usually far from the busiest. This year stay at home orders enacted in March due to Covid-19, have apparently sparked more travelers to seek mountain refuge sooner in the season, creating more tourist traffic and business than usual. 

According to Colin Chisholm, Senior Ranger at Golden Gate Canyon Park, both Friday and Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, saw more visitors to the park than any Memorial Day weekend in the past. “On Saturday (May 23) every campsite and parking spot was full by 10:30 a.m. Cars were overflowing out of parking spots and parked illegally along the county road running through the park.” Chisholm explained, “Usually Memorial Day weekend we will see some campers and day travelers. We will start to get busy. But we never see this kind of traffic on Memorial Day. Lots used by day travelers, like hikers, don’t overflow with visitors until September, during leaf looker season. This kind of influx, at this time of year, is unheard of.” 

During the stay at home order, Chisholm says that park rangers were required to remind travelers they were required to engage in recreation within ten miles of their home, and were not supposed to be at the park, if they didn’t live near it. He stated, “We were getting a lot of blow back when we were enforcing that. Now the recommendations are wearing a mask, don’t socialize in groups larger than ten, stay six feet apart, and people don’t want to hear it anymore.” 

Chisholm said in the campgrounds many groups were families meeting other families, they already know. Although rangers would attempt to educate campers in large groups and remind them of the guidelines, visitors were often resistant saying, “Oh no, these are our friends. We practically live with them and see them every day.” Senior Ranger Chisholm said that convincing these groups if they don’t live with the people in their group then six foot social distancing still applied, fell on deaf ears. Rangers are no longer in a position to enforce the guidelines. They can only educate and remind people of suggestions.  

According to Chisholm, the park is expecting further guidelines from the state so they can open the visitor center. The expectation is transparent plastic shielding at customer service counters and a limited number of visitors inside at a time. 

Basecamp Campground, at 661 CO-46, was closed to campers for one week during the stay at home order. They began accepting campers again the weekend of May 16, 2020. According to Russ Coshow, who works most night shifts at the campground, Basecamp visitors have been resistant to accepting the guidelines as well. He reported that although campers are informed of the rules at check in he was forced to remind people to put out fires repeatedly, due to the current stage one fire ban. “I had to break up a group of around thirty standing around the cabins.” The six foot guidelines for social distancing are observed at Basecamp. 

Coshow continued saying, “I have to wear a mask and gloves, according to the Governor. The gloves don’t make sense, unless we change them every time we touch something. There aren’t enough gloves available for us to do that.” He added, “The customers don’t have to wear masks.”  

Unlike Golden Gate, Basecamp has cabins, bathrooms, and showers available. Coshow said that the sterilization of the entire facility has increased. All of the surfaces inside like; bathrooms, atm’s, counters, freezer and refrigerator doors, etc., must be wiped down hourly. 

There is a ten customer limit in the store at Basecamp, at a time. Coshow said it was difficult to enforce the limit over the weekend because people didn’t want to hear it. “Mostly it was just more hectic. The kids don’t want to listen to that, so I have to keep after them. It’s always been my job to keep the peace, when I’m here. 

“Reservations have blown up in the last couple weeks. Before that, everyone was timid about committing to a date to reserve.” Coshow said Basecamp was booked all weekend for Memorial weekend, and they will continue to be booked to capacity for the next six weeks, according to reservations scheduled at this time. 

Although the snow on Sunday reduced the number of travelers, clear skies and sunshine attracted tourism to the area again on Monday.

(Originally published in the May 28, 2020, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)