With the summer tourism season on the horizon and businesses slowly reopening across Colorado, national and state parks are also working on plans to reopen.
The National Park Service announced last week it will allow some parks to increase access and services in phases on a cases-by-case basis, as long as parks comply with state and local public health orders.
“Health and safety is the No. 1 thing,” said Sandra Snell-Dobert, spokeswoman for Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, said in a phone interview. “Can we keep this restroom clean? Can we open these spaces keeping them safe and clean? Those are the kinds of questions we are asking.”
National parks began to close or limit access in late March across the United States as COVID-19 spread across the United States. As local and state governments enacted travel restrictions, Mesa Verde National Park announced it would close to help limit spread of the virus between visitors and employees. Black Canyon of the Gunnison also closed inner trail routes after concerns were raised about the health of its staff and local residents.
Trails in state parks, such as Navajo State Park and Mancos State Park, have remained open for hiking and fishing, but recreation activities such as camping have been closed.
Snell-Dobert said it’s a tough balancing act for national parks to maintain consistency when different states are developing different timelines to reopen.
“It’s that delicate dance between what the county can handle and what makes sense,” she said.
With strict social-distancing measures still in place, national parks like Mesa Verde and Black Canyon are short-staffed because they haven’t been able to rehire seasonal workers from outside of Colorado.
And in the inner part of Black Canyon, “they are not really trails, they are routes,” Snell-Dobert said. Parks like Black Canyon are concerned about their ability to perform rescues if they are needed.
National parks are urging visitors to recreate within their ability and to be extra cautious. Places such as Black Canyon will also need to send park rangers out to check routes for any new hazards.
“We are working on dates, and hoping to have something in the next few days,” Snell-Dobert said.
Some parks, such as Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon, remain closed, while others plan to reopen and accept overnight reservations for the summer.
But as of two weeks ago, Mesa Verde was canceling tour reservations all the way into August.
Betsy Stevenson Henry, a resident of Arlington, Virginia, had planned on traveling with her oldest son to Utah, where he will be attending college, in August. The family wanted to stop at Mesa Verde along the way to see a 40-foot sculpture that depicts an ancestral Puebloan climbing a cliff face that Henry’s uncle was commissioned to create for the park.
“I totally understand this is unprecedented,” Henry said. “But I was surprised to wake up in April and get a cancellation for mid-August.”
Henry hopes the park will reach out to those whose reservations for tours were canceled before making those tours available online again for the public.
“I appreciate a more cautionary approach because of the close contact on the tour,” Henry said, referring to the opportunity to go inside the ancient cliff dwellings. The tour also requires activities such as climbing ladders, meaning people would be constantly touching the same surfaces.
Stacy Jack, a resident of Elizabethton, Tennessee, and her family also hoped to visit Mesa Verde and a number of other national parks out West for the first time in July.
“I totally understand their reasoning, but my concern is you have to be online and ready to get your tickets once they are available, and I’m afraid I’m going to miss it,” Jack said.
But a rush to reopen too quickly could complicate Colorado’s efforts to contact-trace between people with the virus and sources of new cases.
Mesa Verde is working on risk assessments for each operation in the park to protect worker safety, such as the visitor’s center, maintenance, law enforcement and firefighting, said Superintendent Cliff Spencer.
“We attract, like Rocky Mountain National Park, people from around the country and even international travelers,” Spencer said. Parks like Mesa Verde are a significant component of Montezuma County’s economy, but if it reopens too soon, it could cause COVID-19 case numbers to spike.
“Infection rates are still high in places less than a day’s drive away, that’s the issue,” Spencer said.
In the meantime, Mesa Verde is using the shutdown to conduct inspections of visitor facilities and repair damage from the winter.
“We can only go by what we hear from the U.S. Public Health Service,” Spencer said.
Emily Hayes is a graduate student at American University in Washington, D.C., and an intern for The Durango Herald.
An earlier version of this story erred in saying Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon never closed.
