Mount Elbert Reopens as Willow Fire Closure Shrinks

The Forest Service cut the Willow Fire closure area down on August 20, and Colorado’s highest peak got its standard route back. Mount Massive did not. Here is what reopened, what didn’t, and how to read a fire closure like a local.

Colorado’s highest mountain is fully back in play. On August 20, the Leadville Ranger District shrank the Willow Fire closure area, reopening Halfmoon Road and the North Elbert Trail for the first time since the fire broke out in late June. If your Mount Elbert plans have been on hold all summer, this is your green light.

But read the whole order before you load the car. One drainage north, Mount Massive remains closed, trailhead to summit, along with its entire wilderness area. Two 14ers that share a road now sit on opposite sides of a closure line, and that line is worth understanding.

What reopened on August 20

Per Forest Order 02-12-01-26-36 and the running closure tracker maintained by Visit Leadville Twin Lakes, the following are open again:

• Halfmoon Road (FS 110), the access road for both Elbert and Massive
• The North Elbert Trail, Mount Elbert’s standard northeast ridge route
• Hagerman Pass, along with the Windsor Lake Trail and the Colorado Midland/Hagerman Tunnel Trail

The South Elbert Trail out of the Twin Lakes side stayed open through most of the closure, so Elbert now has both of its main routes available again. That matters for one practical reason: the reopened north route is where the crowds and the parking pressure will return first. If you want Elbert quieter, the south side is still the move.

What’s still inside the Willow Fire closure until September 30

The updated order runs through September 30 unless it’s rescinded early, and the closed area still covers a lot of terrain that shows up in September trip plans:

• Mount Massive Trail #1487 and the entire Mount Massive Wilderness
• The Colorado Trail/CDT across Massive’s east slope, between Hagerman Pass Road and Halfmoon Road
• Highline and Native Lake trails, and the Willow Creek Trailhead
• The Halfmoon Road campgrounds: Elbert Creek, Halfmoon East, and Halfmoon West
• South Turquoise Lake Road (CR 4) between the Abe Lee fishing access and Hagerman Pass, plus FS 105 and FS 110A and B
• The Leadville National Fish Hatchery and its trail system, including the Rock Creek and Kearney Park trails

Note the trap hiding in that list: Halfmoon Road is open, but its campgrounds are not. You can drive in and climb Elbert, but you cannot camp at Elbert Creek and walk over to bag Massive the next morning. Nothing on the Massive side of the creek is legal right now, and Lake County is asking visitors to skip dispersed camping in the area entirely while the fire is active.

The fire behind the line

The Willow Fire started in late June about six miles west of Leadville and grew to more than 7,100 acres, according to InciWeb. It was human-caused. At its peak, the response involved more than 400 personnel, 48 evacuated residents, and a line of threatened structures that crews managed to keep at zero losses.

As of the incident team’s final update in early August, containment stood at 67 percent, and that number is the whole reason Massive is still closed. The uncontained sections sit inside the Mount Massive Wilderness, where steep terrain and wilderness rules make direct suppression slow and dangerous. Firefighters are still working in there. Hikers are not invited.

And it is not over: Stage 1 fire restrictions just began

One day after the closure shrank, the Pike-San Isabel National Forests entered Stage 1 fire restrictions, effective August 21 across six ranger districts including Leadville. In short: campfires only in developed sites with permanent fire grates, and check the order for the full list of dos and don’ts before your trip.

The sequence tells you everything about where the season stands. The fire that closed Elbert is winding down while conditions for the next one are getting worse. Late August and September are historically Colorado’s driest, most fire-prone stretch.

How to read a closure like a local

The Willow Fire closure has now changed shape at least three times this summer, and every version spawned a wave of secondhand summaries, some of them wrong. Here is how to get it right before any trip near an active fire:

• Find the forest order itself, not a screenshot of it. Every national forest posts current orders on its alerts page, with a map attached as Exhibit A.
• Read the boundary, not the headline. “Closure reduced” told you nothing about Massive. The map did.
• Check the date. Orders are updated, superseded, and rescinded all season. The one you read in July is not the one in force today.
• Treat the line as law, because it is. Entering a closed area is a federal violation, and it also puts rescuers and fire crews in a bad spot.
• Have a backup peak. Mount Sherman and the peaks east of Leadville sat outside every version of this closure.

Elbert is open, the aspens turn in a month, and Leadville’s businesses have had a hard summer and would love to see you. Go, but go informed.

Photos by The Next Summit. Closure map courtesy of the U.S. Forest Service. Reporting from the U.S. Forest Service, InciWeb, and Visit Leadville Twin Lakes. For current conditions, check the PSICC alerts page before you go.