ASPEN — Will double the racing on Independence Pass near Aspen with this year’s USA Pro Cycling Challenge mean double the impacts on the fragile landscape at 12,095 feet?The professional bicycling race that made an enormously successful debut last summer doesn’t return to Colorado until August, but a multitude of agencies have been working for months already on virtually every detail associated with the multistage race, including how to manage what could be a much larger crowd on Independence Pass with the event’s second running.This year’s Pro Cycling Challenge tour takes place Aug. 20 to 26. Aspen will be the only stop to host both a stage finish and a start.Stage 3, a repeat of last year’s Queen Stage, brings riders from Gunnison to Aspen via Cottonwood and Independence passes on Aug. 22. Stage 4, on Aug. 23, takes riders from Aspen to Beaver Creek via Leadville. They’ll again climb Independence Pass as they depart.Last year, an estimated 3,000 people gathered on the pass summit and spilled down the east side to watch racers make the climb. The Colorado Department of Transportation decided a week before the race that it would allow car camping on Highway 82 over the pass within 24 hours of the race. When other spectators invariably set up tents atop the pass, Forest Service officials urged them to stay close to the highway instead of chasing them off the sensitive tundra, where diminutive, high-altitude plants require years to take root in the harsh environment.With the USA Pro Cycling Challenge committed to staging the Colorado event for at least five years, Scott Snelson, Aspen-Sopris ranger with the U.S. Forest Service, is bracing for the possibility that the race route will make use of the pass in each of those years. He’s worried about the cumulative impacts of the crowd that gathers there.

Read more about what may be done to protect the fragile landscape.