City of Rocks has new plans to update camping, parking

The City of Rocks National Reserve has big plans for its big challenges.

Chaotic, congested and messy might be kind words for some of the parking and camping during a busy weekend for visitors at City of Rocks near Almo.

But hope is on the horizon in the newly released General Management Plan by the National Park Service. The finalized plan was presented this week.

“The general management plan is sort of the marching orders and the Bible for how the park will be managed in the next 15 to 20 years,” said Wallace Keck, superintendent at the City of Rocks.

Keck said most of the plan calls for reorganizing campsites, parking areas and some high-tech aids, but there is also a perk for horse people.

“We are looking at creating an equestrian trailhead that’s on the north side of the reserve,” he said. “It’s been promised to the equestrian user groups for a long time. Now we have the property and the planning to go forward on that. That will be exciting.” Keck said the new equestrian parking lot will accommodate six to eight horse trailers.

The park’s 64 campsites will be changed up to remove conflicts with hikers and day users and eventually total 70 campsites. New vault toilets will also be added.

“We’re going to reconfigure camping and parking so that people at major trailheads aren’t competing with the campers and campers aren’t getting invaded by the trailhead day hikers,” Keck said. “We’re trying to separate those users. We’re going to create more campsites and new campsites in some places, but also removing some others. There will be a no net loss of campsites.”

Parking, a bugaboo for years at the City of Rocks, also gets special attention in the new plan.

“If you were here three or four weekends ago, we were at 120 to 130 percent capacity,” Keck said. “People were parked along the county road. There was literally nowhere to park.”

He said special attention will be made to improve the parking at Parking Lot Rock and Flaming Rock.

“Those are all going to get reorganized,” he said. “They’ll have wheel stops and people will know how to park to maximize the parking lot and where not to park.”

Keck said most of the improvements will occur in the next five to six years.

The park also plans to give visitors online/phone apps to aid in navigation and other information in real time.

“But it takes someone behind the scenes,” Keck said. “We will shift some of our face-to-face employees to behind the scenes to package together some of the kinds of information that visitors want. They’ll have it at their fingertips. Things like maps, history, frequently asked questions, so they can have it when they want it.”

Keck said he expects to be following the new general management plan for the rest of his career at the City of Rocks.

In the future, the park plans to update its climbing management plan.

“We will be looking at a climbing management plan rewrite, a trails plan, and things that have been neglected for 30 years,” he said. “The climbing plan was written in about 1997. That’s too old. Climbing has really evolved at City of Rocks, and we want to make sure we are reflective of our policies on highlining, on bouldering, sport and trad, and other things that seem to keep popping up on the grid. That’s another plan that will go through the public process.”

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