Owners of properties where Coloradans hike and play in the outdoors had hoped to feel better about allowing that access after a hearing this month at the state Capitol.

Instead, some are feeling more worried than ever.

That includes Patrick Schilken, who has long held land along the base of 14,000-foot Mount Sherman in Park County. It’s not a popular area for climbers, but Schilken has still often come by lost or ambitious types.

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He’s an attorney, knowing all too well about what he and others have seen as a gaping hole in the Colorado Recreational Use Statute opened by a court ruling in 2019, which awarded a mountain biker more than $7 million for injuries sustained on a ride around the Air Force Academy.

“From that point on, we’ve been fighting pretty fervently to try to limit our exposure” to liability, Schilken said.

By “we,” he means other landowners who were joined by more than two dozen statewide recreation groups, water managers and government agencies in support of an amendment to the Colorado Recreational Use Statute. Senate Bill 103 was shot down by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The response was immediate from John Reiber, who owns mining claims along the trail skirting mounts Lincoln, Democrat and Bross. With his posted closure, the multi-peak route known as Decalibron is no longer available to the tens of thousands of people who venture it every year.

Leading up to the judiciary committee’s hearing, Reiber said his insurance carrier had notified him of dropping his coverage.

“That, combined with no real relief regarding liability from the Legislature, that made me decide that, boy, I really need to protect my family,” said Reiber, who has mostly kept his mountain swaths open for decades.

That’s been against suggestions from attorneys in recent years, he said. “I’ve been advised more than once that the best thing I could do is make my land ‘no trespassing.'”

That’s what Schilken is planning to do at his side of Mount Sherman. It’s as he heard an associate say: “‘If I was advising anyone, I would tell them to close it down.’ I think he’s right.”

It could be the thinking of more landowners spotting Colorado’s recreation landscape, advocates say.

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Mark Baisley, the Republican senator from Teller County who sponsored Senate Bill 103, said he has heard from several concerned individuals who have allowed people to fish or boat streams through their properties, or hunt or ride horses through their pastures.

“I think the dominoes will keep falling,” Baisley said. “I think you’ll see people putting up no trespassing signs everywhere.”

Boulder Climbing Community is among groups that supported the proposed amendment and signed an online petition to continue the push. The organization’s board chair, Anneliese Steel, in a letter listed several crags at potential risk of closure under the current Colorado Recreational Use Statute: areas in Boulder Canyon and along Eldorado Mountain, as well as routes on the west end of Clear Creek Canyon.

“That’s over 250 routes in some of the most popular climbing areas in Colorado,” Steel wrote.

She added of the proposed amendment: “This may sound like a small change, but it has big consequences for public access.”

The proposed change centered on the word “willful” in the statute.

The law exposes landowners to lawsuit if they demonstrate “willful or malicious failure to guard or warn against a known dangerous condition.” In 2019, a federal appeals court determined the Air Force Academy knew about a washed-out trail that resulted in mountain biker James Nelson’s injuries.

That was “the only case of its kind in 26 years,” Kari Jones Dulin, representing Colorado Trial Lawyers Association, said in her opposition to Senate Bill 103 before the judiciary committee. She started her testimony by saying: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

The statute, Jones Dulin argued, “has worked to both protect the landowner and those that enjoy the land for recreational use.” And the word “willful” was important, she said.

“All that it asks of a landowner is, if you know something is dangerous and likely to cause harm, either guard against it or warn against it, which is to say: If you know something, do something. … Isn’t that just basic human decency?”

The committee voted 3-2 against the change on partisan lines; three no votes by Democrats, two yes votes by Republicans.

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In Colorado Springs, Trails and Open Space Executive Director Susan Davies said the decision was “heartbreaking.” Her group has led a decades-long effort to complete the Ring the Peak trail, a full loop around Pikes Peak. She said success will depend on private landowners allowing corridors — like fourteener-owning Reiber and Schilken, who feel their knowledge of inherent dangers in the backcountry makes them vulnerable.

“It starts with willing landowners,” Davies said of Ring the Peak, “and this is really a blow to securing willing landowners.”

Ring the Peak also involves Colorado Springs Utilities, which was listed as another supporter of Senate Bill 103. Denver Water, overseeing premier recreation areas like Dillon Reservoir and Waterton Canyon, was also monitoring the bill.

Denver Water declined to comment for this article, but in an email said it “didn’t have any immediate concerns.”

Anyone not concerned, advocates recognized, might have come away from the judiciary committee decision believing what the opposing trial lawyers said: that the Recreational Use Statute protects landowners, and that the Nelson case was an outlier.

But it appears some fourteeners will be off-limits this summer, and it’s likely other areas will be fenced off, said Nicole Budine, the Colorado Mountain Club’s policy director. “That’s a pretty clear sign that this is a problem now, that the Colorado Recreational Use Statute is not working as intended,” she said.

In recent years, the trail to 14,000-foot Mount Lindsey, crossing parts of Trinchera Blanca Ranch, has also been marked for no trespassing.

On land it owns along Mount Shavano, Colorado Fourteeners Initiative has posted several signs warning of dangers and unpredictable circumstances in the high alpine.

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“If we had a sign go missing from a rock fall or an avalanche or I guess somebody could steal it, does that mean we’re still liable?” asked Brian Sargeant, Colorado Fourteeners Initiative’s development and communications manager. The signs are high on hard-to-reach terrain, he noted, “and we don’t have cameras up there to see if (they are) up there every single day.”

Shavano remains open as part of the initiative’s overall vision of access across the fourteeners. But “there’s still concern,” Sargeant said. “We’re a small, little nonprofit. Going to court would put us in financial ruin pretty quick.”

Fees and waivers have long been the model of one fourteener, Culebra Peak. Back at mounts Lincoln, Democrat and Bross, Reiber expressed no interest in money; he said he struggled to envision logistics and how waivers would be managed and enforced.

“I don’t see that as a true possibility at this juncture,” Reiber said. “I don’t know what the end result is gonna be, but I sure wish we had some resolution to this.”