Sporting sandals, swim shorts and baseball caps — and hopefully plenty of sunscreen — a cohort of state lawmakers hopped aboard several rafts on a hot June day to talk policy as they floated the Colorado River.
Splashing their way downstream from Kremmling, less than 60 miles from the river’s headwaters in Rocky Mountain National Park, the group of roughly a dozen politicians found themselves in a quintessential setting for their wide-ranging conversation on what outdoor recreation means for the state.
The June 19 trip was donated by the Grand County-based rafting outfitter Downstream Adventures and organized by public lands advocates and river conservationists, who joined lawmakers for the expedition.
Underpinning their discussions was a question that recreators, legislators and legal scholars have wrestled with for years: Who gets to enjoy Colorado’s waterways?
Advocates say the state’s murky laws around stream access leave the public in a legal gray area when it comes to river recreation. Past legal battles over river access have largely ended on the side of landowners, who’ve clashed at times with recreators who float or wade in privately owned sections of otherwise public streams.
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