The slow, challenging job of paving the Pikes Peak Highway will be all downhill this summer – literally.

 

    But related work to correct decades of environmental damage caused by the road is proving an uphill battle.

 

    Contractors in August will roll asphalt onto the historic dirt road beginning at the 14,115-foot summit and downward just over a mile, said Jack Glavan, capital projects manager for the highway. The paving will end just before a section of the mountain called Boulder Park, a treeless, windswept hillside dominated by, well, boulders.

 

    Over the next couple of summers, crews will continue paving down the road, through the Bottomless Pit area to meet asphalt laid last summer in the Devil’s Playground and an infamous set of switchbacks called the W’s.

 

    That work will complete the paving of the uppermost part of the road. Crews will then start the final paving, a several-mile section of the highway from the Halfway Picnic Grounds to Glen Cove, which is expected to take two years.

 

    The paving of the upper 12 miles of the 19-mile highway began in 2001 and is expected to continue through 2012. The paving is expected to cost about $20 million.

 

    It was one requirement in the settlement of a lawsuit by the Sierra Club alleging the U.S. Forest Service and the city of Colorado Springs, which leases the highway from the federal agency, violated the U.S. Clean Water Act by putting tons of gravel on the road that sloughs off during storms, burying plants, choking streams, silting reservoirs and killing fish.

 

    The settlement requires construction of concrete culverts, small rock dams and catch basins to divert stormwater and capture sediment. The settlement also requires the city to revegetate areas along the roadway affected by erosion.

 

    Meeting those two requirements has proven more challenging than the paving, say those working on the mountain.

 

    Of particular concern are stormwater catch systems installed last year in the W’s, or switchbacks.

 

    Culverts laid under the roadway have been successful in diverting stormwater.

 

    But about a dozen small rock-and-concrete check dams, called weirs, were not able to slow diverted runoff during some major rainstorms last summer. The dams are supposed to channel the rush of water off the road to sediment ponds built below them.

 

    Glavan said he’s completed an analysis of the problem and will soon forward it to the Forest Service. He said he’s concluded the check dams in the switchbacks were built properly, but those in the steepest terrain are too small to slow runoff in the worst storms.

 

    They’re small, Glavan said, because there isn’t enough room to build larger ones in the cramped, vertiginous terrain below switchback corners.

 

    For example, he said one of the check dams has just 20 percent of the capacity recommended by the Colorado Department of Transportation.

 

    Glavan said he and Forest Service engineers will have to “look for a different solution.” That may mean improvements cannot be made this summer, he said.

 

    “Everybody is kind of learning up here,” he said.

 

    Jeff Hovermale, lands staff officer for the Forest Service’s Pikes Peak Ranger District, said revegetating some areas along the highway to stabilize the soil and stop erosion also has proven tough.

 

    Hovermale said the growing season on the peak is short and much of the “soil” is simply small bits of eroded granite. He said revegetating is labor-intensive and expensive.

 

    Glavan agreed, saying stabilizing and revegetating slopes has taken longer than expected.

 

    Glavan said workers have used techniques developed during the rehabilitation of old mining sites. But the peak’s elevation and decomposed granite soil are forcing tweaks to those methods.

 

    Hovermale said workers are experimenting with different high-altitude seeds, soil amendments and erosion-control mats. He said workers also have been harvesting native grass plugs and hope those will be successful after replanting.

 

    He said most of the area above Devil’s Playground is made up of natural scree slopes and not much re-vegetation can be done. But even at tree line, workers find the vegetative mat of dirt and fallen needles is so thin that plants have a hard time taking root.

 

    Despite the challenges, the Sierra Club is pleased with the progress on a soaring peak that, in many ways, defines this region.

 

    Jim Lockhart, conservation chair of the Pikes Peak chapter of the Sierra Club, said paving has progressed well. And he said the city and Forest Service seem committed to adapting techniques to re-vegetate eroded areas even in the face of a short growing season and a drought that has only recently lifted.

 

    “It is a learning process,” he said. “It’s a difficult process to undo that kind of damage,” he said. “But I think there have been major improvements.”

 

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0197 or bill.mckeown@gazette.com 

Barbara Swaby sorted through bins of books in her basement as part of her LOGO (literacy on the go) project. She started giving away books to area schoolchildren after Hurricane Katrina and so far has given out about 2,500. Photo by (CAROL LAWRENCE, THE GAZETTE)