Before I got on board, Adam had spoken with a few people in Silverton about the process of getting approval to build on our property. They started to tell us about how, in the past, the county commissioners had rejected lots of projects like ours because they really didn’t want vacation rentals outside of the city of Silverton. The main reasons given for this included safety issues with access and disrupting scenery.

One nice lady that helped us out quite a bit to told us that out of towners buying land in the mountains and thinking that they were going to actually build something was a big part of the local economy. The rich out of towners buy up some land, start paying big bucks to local government and local firms for all the necessary permits, safety studies, environmental studies, etc… that are needed to build, only for years to go by waiting to get everything together. By the time they actually get everything together, they’re old and sick and end up selling the property to the next dreamer, and the cycle starts again! This was starting to sound alot different than building in Southern Utah, where it seems like anyone can build anything they want anywhere they want! The only tough part about building in Utah is getting water rights, which in Colorado way up in the mountains turned out to be not a bid hurdle.

From the very beginning, we were told by county people that this was probably not going to get approved, but we had also heard that there was a newly elected county commissioner that seemed more open to back country vacation rentals, so we decided to try.

The main issue with where we wanted to build was that CR 33 passes through a known and very obvious avalanche path. As you’re driving along this road, through the forest, the big trees give way to little trees on the hillside you’re traversing and the hillside becomes really steep, a classic avalanche path. I was also made aware that the road crosses other, less obvious avalanche paths on the way up to our property. This sounds pretty crazy but let me give you a little context. Alot of the houses in Silverton are in avalanche paths. When the avalanche danger is high, you can’t go certain places in town, and the highway in and out of Silverton will close due to avalanche danger. At the same time, avalanche deaths do happen, so it’s just a real danger that everyone that lives there has come to terms with. What the county commissioners were concerned with was that someone from Kansas would book our place on Airbnb in the winter, having no understanding of the dangers involved in accessing the property in the winter, and get himself into trouble.

Part 3 next week…..