Permitting & land use

Who owns the ground

Around Leadville the course will touch, in rough order of how much of it you'll use:

• U.S. Forest Service — most of the passes and mining roads sit in the Pike-San Isabel National Forests & Cimarron and Comanche National Grasslands (PSICC). The relevant office is the Leadville Ranger District, 810 Front Street, Leadville CO 80461, (719) 486-0749.
• Bureau of Land Management — some lower stretches and connectors cross BLM land, handled through the local BLM field office via a Special Recreation Permit.
• County roads — Lake County (Leadville), and depending on route, Park, Chaffee or Gunnison counties. County road-use and any road-closure or traffic-control needs go through the county.
• CDOT state highways — e.g., Independence Pass is State Highway 82. Racing on an open state highway generally isn't permitted; either avoid it, use it neutralized/transfer only, or arrange a CDOT special-event review with certified traffic control.
• Private land — the Sugarloaf Mountain Ranch (1,000 acres) is the ace: on private ground you need the owner's agreement and your own insurance, not a public land-management permit. It's the one part of the course with no agency queue.

The USFS special-use event permit (your critical path)

The Forest Service issues special-use permits for organized, temporary recreation events — the category explicitly includes bike races. A permit is required for groups of 75 or more and for all commercial activity (a paid-entry event is commercial), so a stage race clearly needs one.

How it goes

1. Pre-application conversation with the Leadville Ranger District. Bring a route map, dates, expected field size, and your safety/sanitation plan. They'll tell you feasibility and what review level applies.
2. Application (the FS event proposal / SF-299 for the use) with route, schedule, participant numbers, and operating plan.
3. Environmental review under NEPA — often a categorical exclusion for a low-impact event on existing roads, but that's the district's call and it takes time.
4. Operating & mitigation plan — Leave No Trace, sanitation (toilets), trash, marking that's removed after, resource protection, and coordination with other permit holders and the public who also use these roads.
5. Fees — expect a land-use fee (a percent of adjusted gross, or a per-participant basis) plus cost-recovery for the agency's processing/monitoring time. Get the number in writing early; it feeds the budget.
6. Insurance — the FS will require you to name the United States as additionally insured at a set liability limit (see Sanctioning & insurance).

Everything else, in parallel

• BLM SRP — if any stage crosses BLM land, file a Special Recreation Permit with the field office; similar cost-recovery + fee model, own timeline.
• County — road-use permits, and for any closure or flagging on county roads, coordinate with the county road department and sheriff. Some counties want a special-event application of their own.
• City of Leadville / Lake County — start, finish, expo and any street use in town; venue use at county facilities.
• Private ranch — a written use agreement with the owner, your certificate of insurance naming them, and a plan for gates, cattle and stewardship.

Sequencing — do it in this order

1. Call the Leadville Ranger District first and get the real lead time; that date drives everything.
2. Lock a candidate route good enough to permit (see Course design), knowing it may shift to satisfy land managers.
3. File USFS + BLM + county applications together so their reviews run concurrently, not back to back.
4. Secure the ranch agreement and the in-town venues.
5. Bind insurance and sanctioning so you can name the required insureds on every permit.

A month-by-month timeline

Work back from race day. This is a realistic first-year cadence for a multi-day event on federal land; a district with a heavier review can push it longer, so start at the early end.

The operating & mitigation plan

Every land manager wants a written operating plan before they'll issue. Build one document you can hand to all of them, covering:

• Route and schedule — maps, GPS files, stage times, expected field size and waves.
• Sanitation — toilet counts and placement at start, finish and aid; grey-water and trash plan; a policy on human waste on remote sections.
• Leave No Trace — marking that is installed and fully removed, with an assigned removal crew per stage and a post-event sweep.
• Resource protection — no cutting switchbacks, wildlife and livestock coordination, cultural/historic-site avoidance (the mining district is full of them).
• Public coexistence — these roads stay open to others; the plan shows how you keep the public safe and informed, and how you yield.
• Traffic control — flaggers and signage at road crossings, coordinated with the county and sheriff.
• Emergency plan — cross-referenced to the medical & safety plan and the communications net.

Fire: burn areas, restrictions and alternates

The 2026 Willow Fire started June 28 about six miles west of Leadville and burned roughly 7,200 acres on the Leadville Ranger District. It forced the 2026 Leadville Trail 100 MTB to drop Hagerman Pass Road, Sugarloaf Mountain and Powerline and reroute along the north side of Turquoise Lake. Our candidate Hagerman stage and ranch day (the ranch near Sugarloaf and Turquoise Lake) sit in or next to that area.

• Burn-area closures. The Forest Service issued a series of Willow Fire area closure orders in 2026. The version in effect from August 21 closed National Forest land south of County Road 4 and Hagerman Pass Road (NFSR 105), including Mount Massive trails and a segment of the Colorado Trail, through September 30, 2026 unless rescinded. Whether any closure carries into 2027 is not known. Pending
• Post-fire (BAER) conditions. After a large fire, a Forest Service Burned Area Emergency Response team assesses the burn for threats to life and property, such as flooding and debris flows on burned slopes, and fire-weakened hazard trees along roads and trails. Its findings can keep roads and trails closed, or open them with conditions, well after the fire is out. Lake County has warned of flood risk below the burn. Ask the district early what post-fire work and restrictions are planned for the Hagerman and Turquoise Lake area in 2027.
• Plan alternates now. Design a non-Hagerman version of the Hagerman day and a version of the ranch day that avoids the burn, and put both in the permit application so a closure doesn't sink the week. Proposed
• County fire-restriction stages. Lake County, through the sheriff as fire warden, declares Stage 1 and Stage 2 fire restrictions, generally aligned with the Forest Service. Stage 1 limits campfires to approved rings and restricts smoking; Stage 2 bans open fires, outdoor smoking and spark-producing work such as welding without mitigation. For a race this touches basecamp fire pits, generators, camp cooking, support vehicles parked on dry grass and any spark-producing repair work. Write the plan for each stage into the operating plan, and check the current stage daily during race week.

Sharing the ground with other permit holders

Hagerman Pass Road and the Sugarloaf area are part of the LT100 MTB's usual routing, and the Leadville Race Series holds its own permits on these roads every summer. Outfitters, grazing permittees and other events also hold permits on the district. The Forest Service will ask how a new event coexists with them.

• Ask the district which permit holders use each road on and around the candidate dates, and set dates that don't overlap on shared roads.
• Coordinate directly with other event organizers on road use, signage and removal so two sets of course marking never sit on the same road.
• Coordinate staging, parking and support-vehicle traffic with outfitters on the same roads, and with ranchers on gates and cattle.

Grand Tour Gravel is independent and not affiliated with Life Time or the Leadville Race Series.

Media: commercial filming and drones

The event permit covers the race, not every camera on it. Under Forest Service rules, filming that simply documents a permitted event, with no resource damage, generally doesn't need its own permit. A larger production does: a crew of about six to eight may qualify for a no-fee de minimis authorization, while nine or more people, or a shoot that could affect forest resources, needs a commercial filming special-use permit with a land-use fee and cost recovery. The Forest Service asks for proposals two to three months ahead and needs at least six weeks to process one.

• Drones. A commercial drone on National Forest land needs Forest Service authorization on top of FAA rules: the pilot holds a Part 107 remote pilot certificate, the aircraft is registered, and flights follow Part 107 limits such as visual line of sight and 400 feet above ground. The Forest Service does not authorize commercial drone use in wilderness, and a temporary flight restriction can cover active fire operations. Include the pilot certificate, registration and flight plan in the filming proposal.
• Credentialed media. Tie media credentials to these permits so every accredited crew is covered (see Media & production). Proposed

Your first five calls

1. Leadville Ranger District (PSICC) — the anchor permit and the timeline.
2. The BLM field office — if any stage touches BLM land.
3. Lake County (and any other county on the route) — road use, closures, sheriff.
4. The ranch owner — the private-land use agreement.
5. Your insurance broker — so you can name what every permit requires.

Sources & contacts

• PSICC Special Use & Event Permits — fs.usda.gov/r02/psicc (Special Use and Event Permits)
• Leadville Ranger District — 810 Front Street, Leadville CO 80461 · (719) 486-0749
• BLM Special Recreation Permits — blm.gov/programs/recreation/permits-and-passes/special-recreation-permits
• Willow Fire: PSICC updated area closure, InciWeb, Lake County Willow Fire page; LT100 reroute: Velo, Vail Daily
• Burned Area Emergency Response: USFS BAER program
• Lake County fire restrictions: Fire Danger & Restriction Information, Leadville Herald on Stage 2, and the tourism office's fire bans and alerts page
• USFS filming and drones: Filming and Photography, Commercial use of UAS on National Forest System lands; FAA: Part 107 operators

Specifics (fees, review level, exact forms) vary by district and route and change year to year — confirm every number directly with the Leadville Ranger District and the BLM field office before you rely on it.