Free Land Holder group that fenced public land shows similarities to sovereign citizen movement

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Sneak Peek of the Week

Is the Free Land Holder group that fenced Forest Service land outside Mancos connected to the sovereign citizen movement?

A quick update on the Free Land Holder folks who fenced a portion of the San Juan National Forest around Chicken Creek north of Mancos. The group, which claims historic deeds and treaties give it ownership of the Forest Service-managed land, has not installed any new fencing since meeting with land managers and the Montezuma County sheriff earlier this month.

But locals have pulled out every bit of fence the group quietly erected in recent weeks.

The Free Land Holder group has not said much publicly after posting placards around the Four Corners region claiming ownership of the land. Both the Forest Service and local officials say the group’s ownership arguments will be heard in federal court.

Montezuma County Sheriff Steve Nowlin said the group presented historic documents they say support their right to the lands.

The documents — read them here — include:

• The Articles of Confederation from 1777 that governed the new country before the Constitution went into effect in 1789.
• The 1814 Treaty of Ghent that ended the War of 1812 between Great Britain and the U.S.
• The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the war between the U.S. and Mexico.
• A March 1927 deed that transferred land owned by Fred C. Hallar in Montezuma County to the United States for $3,650.

The Free Land Holder Committee includes Patrick Leroy Pipkin, who signed the Free Land Holder Committee posters announcing the claim to the land with a dash and colon in between his three names. The use of that kind of punctuation in names is common among members of the “sovereign citizen” movement, which is a loosely affiliated band of anti-government groups that believe they are exempt from the authority of established institutions, including courts and law enforcement.

A phone number on the Free Land Holder Committee posters traces back to Shawna Cox, a Utah woman who was part of a militant group that took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in 2016, demanding the federal land be handed over to locals.

The sovereign citizen movement encourages members to “abuse the court system with indecipherable filings,” according to the Southern Law Poverty Center.

A Colorado grand jury in 2017 indicted eight members of the sovereign citizens movement on charges of conspiracy, extortion, failure to pay taxes and influencing public servants. The so-called Colorado Eight were members of the self-appointed “People’s Grand Jury in Colorado” and targeted dozens of elected officials, a judge, prosecutors and cops who were involved in rulings the group did not like. The leader of the group was convicted on 34 felony counts and sentenced to 38 years in prison in 2018. The sentences of other members ranged from 22 to 36 years.

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Breaking Trail

Lou Dawson and Chris Davenport deliver insight into backcountry safety, mindsets

Two of Colorado’s most influential mountaineers — Lou Dawson and Chris Davenport — recently gathered at the Arts Campus at Willits in Basalt for an enlightening chat as part of Aspen Public Radio’s inaugural Backcountry Symposium.

Dawson was the first to ski all the state’s 14ers, finishing the feat in 1991. His dog-eared guidebook is on the shelves of most Colorado high country mountaineers. The 4,000 posts on his wildsnow.com blog is a quarter-century timeline — with 2 million words! — tracking the evolution of backcountry skiing. Davenport is an international ski guide, ski film star and two-time world champion big mountain skier who in 2007 was the first person to ski all the state’s highest peaks in less than a year.

The two Roaring Fork Valley fathers — Dawson has one son and Davenport has three sons, all of them expert skiers — hail from a county where avalanches have claimed more lives than any other in Colorado, which leads the nation in avalanche deaths.

Davenport, calling Dawson “a shaman in the mountains,” led the discussion that revolved around Dawson’s new memoir, “Avalanche Dreams.” The 72-year-old Dawson’s perspective is invaluable. He’s been buried and battered by avalanches as he learned and lived in the backcountry, forging a snowy track for countless skiers.

“If you live a long life and have time to experience these things,” Dawson said, “life is a series of phases and cycles. There was a season of avalanches and now when I’m in the backcountry, I prefer it not to the season of avalanches. But you need stories to illustrate the cycles and learning.”

“Avalanche Dreams,” which Dawson released in April, has a lot of those learn-from-my-mistakes stories.

“Humans learn a lot more from mistakes than doing things right,” Davenport said. “Sometimes you have to screw up out there to learn.”

Dawson is a deeply faithful man, he said, and “the wilderness and the mountains are really manifestations of my higher power.”

“To me, that higher power is all about love, but it’s a tough love,” he said.

While the discussion roamed into gear, the future of backcountry skiing (hint: Davenport said the future of uphill will involve skier-hauling drones) and the forever ache of losing friends in the backcountry, the two mountaineering veterans discussing the voices of the mountains resonated most deeply.

“Listen to the mountains speak to you,” Dawson said. “It behooves you to listen to your feelings and listen to this subtle voice.”

Davenport calls this fluency, not unlike learning a foreign language. The mountains don’t hide their message, he said.

“All the signs and signals — all we really need — are really right in front of us,” Davenport said.

When asked about the trove of safety tools available to backcountry skiers — maps, apps and airbags as well as mandatory stuff like beacons, shovels and problem poles — the two suggested “a thought experiment.”

Find some low-angle terrain and go on a tour without any safety gear.

Davenport has done that “just to see how my mind reacts to that experience and it’s powerful,” he said. Dawson started backcountry skiing before beacons even existed.

The lack of any kind of safety backups — in a low-risk zone, of course — can tune our ears to the language of the mountains.

“Operate by the mountains’ rules, not your own,” Dawson said. “We need to somehow learn about the mountains’ rules and keep telling ourselves over and over again what those rules are and then operate within that sphere.”

Last year only two people were killed in avalanches in Colorado, well below the longtime average for a state that accounts for about a third of the nation’s annual avalanche fatalities.

That’s despite the Colorado Avalanche Information Center recording more than 5,000 slides that caught nearly 120 people.

Listen to Dawson and Davenport’s chat here.

The Playground

Western Slope voters weight controversial infrastructure proposals in November

Infrastructure votes are not often controversial. A sales tax increase or an increase in debt to pay for road and traffic improvements rarely raise hackles.

But this is 2024 and just about everything stirs ire. Consider the raging debate around the Aspen/Pitkin County Airport, which is at the center of two competing ballot questions that will define the future of the runway, and an equally fiery fight over a proposed Interstate 70 interchange in Grand Junction.

At the root of both of these contentious issues is growth. Improvements around 29 Road in Grand Junction could ease future traffic and open access for new businesses. Or it could create more traffic and pile on debt that would slow investment in existing roads, parks and public safety.

Expansion of the Aspen airport — known as Sardy Field — could ease traffic and open up the flow of federal funds that could enable a climate-friendly overhaul of one of the busiest airports in the high country. Or it could just reward the jet-setting billionaires who really like Aspen.

Next month’s ballot is busy, with statewide votes including proposals impacting hunting and ammunition taxes that one Granby gun dealer described as part of “the cultural struggle that’s taking place between a supermajority and the urban center of the state deciding that they really know better how people should be living.” (That’s from a super compelling story on voter behavior coming Monday by The Sun’s Tracy Ross.)

But on the other side of that well-documented urban-rural divide are local issues and ballot questions that are somehow taking on characteristics of contentious statewide issues, which, in turn, reflect the discord in our national politics.

That’s not to say the arguments on both sides of the Aspen airport and I-70 interchange are not valid. In Pitkin County, one question asks voters to strip control of the airport from county commissioners. Another asks voters to affirm the commissioners’ ability to approve new plans for Sardy Field. In Grand Junction, a vocal opposition group is arguing that the $80 million interstate interchange project — $173 million with interest over the life of the debt — will delay other projects and investments in roads, parks and public safety.

It’s the trickling down of national frustrations into local issues that worries Colorado’s U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet.

He spoke about it a bit in June while visiting the West End of Montrose County to hear local and regional perspectives on the proposal to create a national monument around the lower stretches of the Dolores River.

“If you are living here, you are not spending all your day thinking about issues like a monument. You are thinking about whether your school is good. Are your kids able to get the teacher they need? Can you get a decent job that pays a decent living?” Bennet told The Sun. “And just like the rest of our politics, it’s all sort of thrashing on these potential points of friction that create more division and more distrust, and I think in the end, more dysfunction.”

The Guide

Artist Pat Milbery’s tunnel mural is part of a Frisco’s expansion of art and culture for community

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Pat Milbery was prepping the dark bike trail tunnel in Frisco for his vibrant paint earlier this month when a dad and son pedaled past. The boy was wearing the jersey Milbery designed for the Colorado Rapids, complete with the artist’s signature “Open Heart” emblem, a recurring element in his work reflecting his mission to spread peace through an embrace of the natural world and each other.

“The kid says he wears it every day because he loves it so much and the heart is his favorite part of the jersey,” Milbery said.

He told the smiling kid and his dad: “The universe connected us today talking about life and good energy and having fun and being outside and being active and enjoying this amazing Colorado moment.”

Milbery — a former pro snowboarder turned artist and advocate — has painted more than 500 murals, splashing prismatic colors across urban communities. The Frisco Arts and Culture Council chose him over 131 submissions to paint the pedestrian and bike tunnel beneath Colorado 9 connecting the town with the Peninsula Recreation Area, which draws some 165,000 visitors a year.

The mural is one of many in Frisco, where several hundred community members helped craft the unique 5-year Arts and Culture Strategic Plan. The arts strategy deploys installations, concerts, films and arts events not as marketing to lure tourists or thrill visitors, but to build community. It supports local artists while engaging and inspiring residents.

“Let’s delight, surprise, and make one another think,” reads the 79-page Frisco plan local leaders adopted in January 2023.

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Championing and celebrating mental health care in mountain towns

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Drew Petersen makes the most important ski movies ever filmed.

His films bridge the gap between stoke, with skiers shredding fantastic powder on steep slopes, and community by offering a glimpse into his mental health challenges.

At the Colorado Sun’s SunFest at the University of Denver last month, I got to sit down with Petersen and discuss his work to alleviate the challenges of people living in beautiful mountain towns while struggling with depression.

“My mental health struggles and the mental health and suicide crisis in the Rocky Mountain West and of mountain towns like my hometown — Silverthorne and Summit County, Colorado — it doesn’t invalidate that it’s an amazing place to live,” Drew said. “Because we live in these amazing places does not invalidate that we struggle. Struggle is a shared part of the human experience no matter who you are. On an individual level, a community level, a state level, a societal level. A big learning that I’m trying to embrace is multiple things being true simultaneously.”

The emotional discussion covered a lot of ground. Petersen was young when he first contemplated taking his own life. Then in a three-week span in 2020 two high schoolers at his former Summit High School died by suicide, and he veered from professional skier into mental health advocate. Today, he tours the county showing ski films and urging auditoriums to reach out to friends who are struggling and visit with therapists.

Petersen’s latest film, “Feel It All,” details his vision to run the Leadville 100 in less than eight hours. (And he also skis the peaks around the course.) The movie’s arc traces the training required for running 100 miles in less than eight hours alongside the professional athlete’s work to tear down the stigma around mental illness.

He’s touring “Feel It All” with the Quality Ski Time Film Tour as well as his own tour. Check out my chat with Drew here.

— j

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