Roaring Fork Valley Horse Council

The Roaring Fork Valley Horse Council is involved with the BLM and other partners in building a 12 mile horse and hiking only trail, the beautiful “Crown Jewel Horse Trail”. This spectacular trail will connect the Glassier Parking Lot off of Hooks Spur Lane in Emma and will traverse Crown Mountain to the Divide Parking Lot at the top of Prince Creek Road and West Sopris Creek Road. The views are breathtaking, there are looped rides if you prefer a shorter distance and the parking is easy to access, safe and excellent. This trail is not open to bicycles or 4-wheelers.

We are pursuing various avenues for grants, and no matter our source of funding the Horse Council will provide a minimum of $3-5000.00 this year adding to the $4000.00, which we spent last year on trails. We are proud to announce that we worked with partners Rocky Mountain Youth Corps; the RF Outdoor Volunteers; and the Roundup Riders of the Rockies; with additional supporters Pitkin County Open Space and Trails; Bob and Sue Pietrzak; Diana and Howard Vagneur and Western Adventures Inc.

Aspen Fire is excited to coordinate a Large Animal Rescue class taught by experts coming up from the Front Range area.The training is scheduled to be held on August 6-7-8, the classes are to help train and equip a valley-wide Large Animal Rescue response team.
This class was initially brainstormed by both law and fire agencies in response to multiple large animal incidents. They will be training a multi-disciplinary team consisting of not only law, fire and EMS responders but also Veterinarians from the valley.


They will be offering two courses. The First Course is targeted at the Awareness/Operations level responders that will be an evening class on how to operate around large animals to keep the responders and animals safe. The Second Class is a two-day hands-on Technician Level Training that will likely be attended by
representatives from all law and fire agencies in the valley, the DOW and Forest Service.


BACK STORY: There have been a number of large animal calls in Pitkin County recently and want to be more prepared as a valley to respond to these incidents whether it’s a horse stuck in an overturned trailer, an elk stuck in a pond, a large animal stuck in the mud or an animal injured on a trail.

Glenwood Vet Clinic and Zoetis will give away 40 vaccines, bringing awareness to our valley about the CoreEQ vaccine that inoculates horses against Rabies, Eastern Equine Encephalitis, Western Equine Encephalitis, Tetanus and West Nile Virus. These are all diseases that we do not want in the RFV valley and can be transmitted via vectors or other animals.

The RFVHC asks all our members to reach out to your friends that own horses to tell them about this offer of free vaccines. We will be holding a Zoom educational meeting in September 2020 to answer many questions. Stay tuned for details.