Massive surge of unwanted visitors expected at event in Colorado forest, officials say

The U.S. Forest Service is calling up its “national incident management team” to prepare for thousands of visitors to arrive for an unpermitted gathering in northwest Colorado.

The event, a 50th anniversary gathering of the Rainbow Family of Living Light, is expected to attract up to 10,000 visitors, which will have a significant impact on “traffic, communities, local resources, residents, and visitors,” the Forest Service said in an April news release, adding that businesses may see an influx of customers and roads may become congested or experience closures

The Rainbow Family of Living Light is “a loose-knit group of people” from around the world who convene annually at a national forest, the agency said. The group had their first gathering near Strawberry Lake in the Arapaho National Forest in 1972 and has hosted the gatherings in different forests since then, the release said.

This year’s gathering will be near Adams Park in the Routt National Forest. Participants have already begun arriving, and the gathering will overlap with the Fourth of July weekend, the Forest Service said in another release.

“It’s kind of a group of like-minded people that like to live off the land, sometimes off the grid,” Hilary Markin, the U.S. Forest Service public information officer for the gathering, told the Steamboat Pilot. “This gathering is the group’s annual get-together. They do have international ones as well and many forests across the country experience local gatherings.”

Members of the group say they also unite around the values of peace, love and community, CBS Denver reported.

The gatherings have been controversial in the past. In 2006, the group held another gathering in Routt County, where officials issued hundreds of tickets for drug violations and illegal camping, according to CBS Denver.

The Forest Service has also cited members of the Rainbow Family for past gatherings for failing to obtain a special use permit, which is required for groups of more than 75 people to conduct a meeting or event on National Forest System Lands. The group has refused to comply with the rules because it claims to have no leaders or representatives who can sign a permit on behalf of the entire group, the agency said in a release.

To prepare for the gathering, forest officials are mobilizing a “national incident team” that will work with law enforcement agencies and other members of the community to “protect the health and safety of everyone involved, and to lessen environmental impacts to the site by providing information and enforcing laws,” the release said.

“We understand there are concerns about the impacts to nearby communities, businesses and our neighbors,” Russ Bacon, Forest Supervisor for the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forests and Thunder Basin National Grassland, said in the release. “We have already begun working with our partners to minimize any negative effects to local communities and the environment as much as possible.”

The Forest Service also put together a plan to make sure that sensitive resources in the forest are protected during the gathering and that environmental damage is kept to a minimum, the release said. The plan stipulates that the Rainbow Family cleans up the areas they gather in afterward and rehabilitate “the incident location,” the release said.

This story was originally published June 23, 2022 at 12:34 PM with the headline "Massive surge of unwanted visitors expected at event in Colorado forest, officials say."