Boulder park rangers must turn away hikers amid critical fire weather
City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks rangers spent their afternoon turning people away from the trails at Chautauqua Park. The chance of fire was too high to risk it, so the city and county closed all trails west of Highway 36 on Saturday.
"This is a result of extremely heavy and high winds. Our low moisture level, as well as super dry fuel. So not only will fire start quickly, but it will spread quickly," said Jamie Barker, the Public Information Officer for Boulder Fire Rescue and the Office of Disaster Management.
One of those hikers is Christine Feeley. She flew in from Maine to visit and do some hiking, but had to take Saturday off.
"We came out and hiked yesterday, and we were allowed to go up in the trails. And we came back to do a different trail today and saw that they were closed off," said Feeley.
The trails weren't the only things shut down. The power was also out to a large portion of Boulder County. Xcel Energy says it's to protect its customers.
"This is where we use strategically de-energized lines prior to these wind events coming in to ensure that we limit the opportunities for ignition that could create a wildfire," said Andrew Holder, Director of Community Relations and Local Government Affairs for Xcel Colorado.
He says with winds this strong across the Denver metro area, everyone should be prepared in case they lose power.
"The likelihood of outages to occur is high due to the fact that we're going to see 65 to 70 mile an hour winds," said Holder.
That means Feeley must change plans and try her hike again on Sunday.
"We're going to go get some lunch and walk around and do some other things in Boulder, but I didn't know about that," said Feeley. "We're planning to come back tomorrow and do the hike that we couldn't do today."
