BLM recreation work highlighted at chamber luncheon

Members of the Bureau of Land Management Cody Field Office staff led by Outdoor Recreation Planner Rick Tryder provided an update on regional projects during a presentation at the Lovell Area Chamber of Commerce general membership luncheon last Monday, July 20, at the Mustang Café.

Tryder began by emphasizing the role the BLM plays in developing recreation, working through a detailed PowerPoint presentation.

“Often, when people think of the BLM, they automatically think of grazing or oil and gas leases or mineral exploration,” Tryder said. “But we actually have a really robust outdoor recreation program. We also have lots of wildlife. We work pretty closely with our wild horse and burrow specialist. He’s also our wildlife biologist. But we have a fisheries biologist, as well. We have an archaeologist that works at our office, a geologist and a paleontologist.”

The BLM manages around 245 million acres of land in the United States, most of it in the western states, Tryder said. The Cody Field Office alone manages 1.1 million acres from the Montana line south to the Greybull River and from the Big Horn Mountains to the Absarokas west of Cody.

Much of Tryder’s work, and that of his staff, involves administering the BLM’s Special Recreation Permit program, which he said is designed to “increase and improve access for recreation” and provide “enhanced visitor experiences on public land, increased accessibility for people with disabilities, public outreach, building partnerships and recreation site management” he said, adding, “That’s our trailheads, campgrounds, boat ramps, fee collection, travel management and rec.

“We’re administering all the permits for all the hunters, outfitters, river guides, people that do wild tours and viewing tours,” Tryder said. “There is one over at Five Springs. We actually have an ice climbing guide that’s permitted to climb both ice and rock over in that area. We have OHV tours. We have a gentleman out of Cody that does guided hiking trips. We also do a lot of permitting race events -- bike races, foot races. We just had the Tour de Wyoming come through.

“It’s lots of different race events that we have throughout the year, any kind of organized group events. Sometimes we’ll get some people that want to go up to Five Springs Falls Campground and have a wedding ceremony. So the permitting program is pretty robust, especially in this area.”

Site updates

Tryder presented slides of many of the sites in the area that the Cody recreation crew has worked on. First up was the Rainbow Canyon site east of Lovell near the turnoff to Five Springs (just west of the turnoff). In recent years the rec crew has improved parking at the site, installed picnic tables, put in a bridge across Five Springs Creek, installed an information kiosk and fossil table for kids and improved the trail.

Future development will include more trail work with a goal to make the entire trail fully accessible, benches along the trail, shade shelters and more interpretive signs. He said a crew of volunteers will work at Rainbow Canyon on National Public Lands Day – Saturday, Sept. 19.

He next noted the development of the Big Horn River Blueway Trail – a river trail from the Wedding of the Waters south of Thermopolis to the Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area.

“It’s a huge project,” Tryder said. “We’re working with lots of different partners, working with a lot of different community members.”

He said a community float is taking place this Saturday, Aug. 1, from Red Rim Meadows off the Crystal Creek Road to the Eagle Nest site in the southern portion of the Yellowtail Wildlife Habitat Management Area south of the ML Ranch. The float begins at 10 a.m. 

 Bighorn Canyon Interpretation and Education Manager Christy Fleming said participants can meet at the Taggart Visitor Center at 8:30 a.m. and carpool to the site or just travel to the Red Rim Meadows site on their own. She said it’s about an eight-mile float and will take about three hours. People should bring water and have sun protection, Fleming said.

“Our focus for the Cody Field Office is mainly from Greybull all the way up to the Yellowtail Habitat Management Area,” Tryder said. “There’s lots of public land throughout this area, but it’s really hard to access either due to terrain or some of the private land out there. We’ve identified a couple key locations to pursue access, and so hopefully we’ll open up that river a little bit more to the public, get them out. It’s really pretty through some of those areas with lots of great spots to fish and view wildlife, enhancing visitor experience on public land.”

Darnell Hills

Tryder said the BLM has partnered with the Wyoming State Trails program to improve the visitor experience at the Darnell Hills off-road vehicle site northeast of Lovell. He said a grant from Yamaha helped kick start the program around five years ago. Site work includes gravel to improve the access road and campsite development.

“We started installing some campsites out there,” he said. “We wanted to make Darnell Hills like a friendly family area where people can bring their families out, learn, teach them how to ride dirt bikes and four wheelers and have a spot to camp. … It’s a really cool area. We’re really looking forward to investing some more time and money into this site, just to have a nice spot where people can bring their families and ride a ride.

 “It would be great spot to host events. We do a motocross race over in Cody every other year, and they’ve had interest, maybe doing something similar out here at this site. We actually had a grant from the Office of Outdoor Recreation to get some shade shelters installed out there, and so we’re working through the contracting process of getting some shade shelters at each one of the picnic sites, and we’re currently working on a proposal to get a vault toilet installed out there, as well.”

Tryder also provided site updates for the Hogan and Luce Recreation Area north of Cody and the Outlaw Trails Recreation Area northwest of Cody near Newton Lakes.

BLM Recreation Technician Zach Cowfer explained some of the recreation site management and maintenance work the BLM performs on some 20 recreation sites in the Cody Field Office region, from fully developed areas to simple picnic sites. The agency also manages four campgrounds plus trailheads, comfort stations, trail systems, river access sites and the Spirit Mountain Cave west of Cody and Horsethief Cave on Little Mountain east of Lovell.

The only fee site is the Five Springs Falls Campground east of Lovell at $7 a night for camping. The site includes 19 developed camping sites with fire rings, camp pads, picnic tables, garbage cans, bear boxes, two vault toilets, electricity and water. Cowfer mentioned the popular hiking trail to the falls with benches along the way for rest.

Both Cowfer and Tryder noted the work the members of the Conservation Outdoor Recreation Education program have done at Five Springs, plus other volunteers in the region who have done great work cleaning up sites. Cowfer said in 2024 volunteers took 30,000 pounds of garbage and items from public lands to the Park County landfill.

In his report on campgrounds in the region, Cowfer also noted the Cottonwood Canyon Campground at the entrance to the canyon east of Lovell, which contains six camping sites, a toilet, fire rings, picnic tables, information kiosks and trails, including the trail east into Cottonwood Canyon.

Young employees Anthony Camiccia and Camille Scott also spoke about how they got started with their BLM careers.

Cottonwood Canyon bike trail

Cottonwood Canyon will be the head of the Cottonwood Canyon Mountain Bike Trail System, and Tryder said field work for the cultural resources and paleontological site survey should begin in August, with the contractor now selected for the work.

“That’s huge,” he said. “Anyone that’s ever done any kind of project in the BLM, getting the cultural and the paleo surveys done is one of the biggest hurdles and often the lengthiest time. There might be some tribal consultation for that area. There’s a lot of historic sites throughout that area, so it’s great that that’s able to hopefully happen next month, and so once those inventories are complete and we get that data back, that’ll allow us to start crafting the actual NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) for that based on their findings.”

The Town of Lovell recently received a $300,000 grant from the Wyoming Outdoor Recreation and Tourism Trust Fund board to begin construction on the trail system, and Tryder praised the town for the collaborative work done on the project.

“I’m super excited for the work that’s being done here, and especially Jed (Nebel, town administrator),” Tryder said. “It’s night and day from what was done at Outlaw (Trails) to what’s done over here, and I can’t speak highly enough of how things are being done over here. The public meetings, the input, the support has been great.”