Colorado Unit 80/81 Beetlekill pines

[Dwnorton1]

I am wondering if anyone spent some time this summer in 80/81. I've elk hunted up there past few years. It has become more progressively treacherous due to the beetlekill. It almost forces you to camp out in open for fear of waking up dead under a 4' diameter pine tree. The real work is the blowdowns that are getting harder to to get over or around.
I swore that I would not go back due to this fact. There were some enormous beetlekill still standing, in fact most of the biggest were still upright, if and when these giants start falling, it is going to be impassible. Hence this thread.
If anyone was up there did you experience same?
Are all other units in Colo experincing the same?

Zoom in on the pictures, amount of dead trees is astounding

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[backcountryshaffer]

Looks about right. The only way you're really going to get away from it is to hunt areas that have more quakies or don't have susceptible evergreens. You can find areas where there aren't as many down, or areas where the lodgepole are almost all down.

These picks from this year you can see a lot of brown, those are standing dead spruce-fir similar to what you're seeing in 80.

 

[Daniel0307]

Yep I was up there in July close to the divide in 81, it’s bad and they are only getting worse...

 

[Poser]

Historic Avalanches should have taken out some of it on slopes steeper than 30 degree and terrain below avalanche terrain, though that also piled up it significantly in places.
The Rio Grande side is particularly bad for Beetle kill. I rode up the Middle Frisco Trail Just North of Del Norte recently and everything was dead. Around the CD, it’s all been dead so long that the new growth is beginning to overtake the dead trees, but deadfall is severe. I haven’t hunted up there but I’ve learned to wait until there is a solid snowpack to do any Backcountry snowboarding, else the blowdown can be dangerous. The problem can be localized, but it has jumped the CD to the San Juan side so expect that to get base in coming years. Overall, I expect a lot of guys will be complaining more about avalanche debris this year than beetle kill. It’s difficult to comprehend until you see it: patches of aspens down by the thousands and rocks the size of cars and houses.

 

[Dwnorton1]

Ouch, I had not even thought of avalanches. Last year one of my favorite places was only accessible up one nasty chute. It was surrounded with dead giants. Not good. If they went down and are piled at bottom, I am not sure you could get around it. Guess I'll worry about it about 3 weeks.

 

[LIWolverine]

81 two years ago. Dead as far as the eye could see.


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[LIWolverine]

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