Saving Red Lady

Mt Emmons, better known as Red Lady, looms large in the conscience of our community – figuratively and literally. It can be seen from almost anywhere in town and holds a place of honor across from Crested Butte Mountain, looking up Elk Avenue. It’s a local favorite for backcountry skiers and hikers alike, and for almost five decades, our community fought to remove the threat of mining on its flanks. In 2024, Crested Butte’s longest-running conservation effort was completed. Red Lady was saved. 

In 1977, the multi-national mining corporation Amax had plans to extract molybdenum, a mineral used in steel manufacturing, from Mt Emmons, affectionately nicknamed “Red Lady” by the community. The Town of Crested Butte and concerned citizens, who would become the High Country Conservation Advocates (HCCA), came together to fight the mining threat on and around Red Lady. Amax abandoned its plans in 1981, leaving a mine water treatment plant to protect the Gunnison River headwaters. The community continued to rally together over the years to counter other mining companies and their threats to Red Lady. In 2015, the tides turned when Freeport-McMoRan and its subsidiary, the Mt Emmons Mining Company (MEMC), assumed responsibility for the mine, including the water treatment plant. 

The Crested Butte Land Trust, in partnership with the US Forest Service, Town of Crested Butte, Gunnison County, HCCA, and the Coal Creek Watershed Coalition, negotiated the terms of a land exchange, a conservation easement, and a mineral extinguishment agreement with MEMC to forever prohibit mining on Mt Emmons. This proposal marked a critical step toward fulfilling the decades-long community efforts to permanently protect Red Lady, the upper Gunnison River watershed, and our community’s conservation legacy.

In the Mt Emmons Land Exchange, MEMC transferred private property in Gunnison County’s Ohio Creek headwaters and in Saguache County to the US Forest Service. In exchange, MEMC will acquire land surrounding the water treatment plant and related road infrastructure at the historic Keystone Mine site on Mt Emmons. 

As part of the exchange, the Land Trust and MEMC agreed to a conservation easement that forever prohibits mining on Mt Emmons while preserving recreational opportunities. Additionally, the easement established permanent non-motorized public recreation access to Red Lady Bowl and prohibited future commercial and residential development on MEMC-owned lands, aside from activities required to remediate the impacts of past mining and to clean the water that flows into Coal Creek. 

The Mt Emmons Land Exchange, conservation easement, and mineral extinguishment agreement were completed on August 29, 2024. In partnership with the Town of Crested Butt and Gunnison County, which have some third-party enforcement rights, the Land Trust’s role in the care of Red Lady will continue through monitoring the property to ensure the terms of the easement are met in perpetuity. This conservation easement adds 885 acres to the Land Trust’s 6,000-acre portfolio of protected lands, but more importantly, it ensures the public’s winter access to a beloved backcountry ski area and protects a standard of the Gunnison Valley forever.