Kricket Olin pulled the side-by-side ATV over to a cluster of off-highway vehicles and leaned over the door, sticking her head in the neon helmet out the window.

“Hi I’m Kricket, an alpine ranger with the sheriff’s office. Wondering if you’ve seen a parked, navy RAV4?” she said. “We’re trying to locate a camper.”

Sensing the confusion, she pulled off the helmet and hopped out of her unmarked vehicle. She stuck out her hand, introducing herself, and began chatting with the first driver, gently asking to see her registration.

Then the others began to approach with their registration cards and questions for Olin.

“Is Imogene Pass open?” asked one of the visitors from Texas. “How do you get there from here?”

“What’s your job?” asked a young boy. Smiling, she explained that she gets to spend her time educating people like him about how to protect themselves and the outdoors. She grabbed him a junior ranger sticker from her back seat before buckling back in.

After tallying the number of vehicles in the group on her daily data sheet, she popped her helmet back on, switched into gear and continued humming up the road.

Olin’s days looked similar during her time as a high alpine ranger for the U.S. Forest Service, before she was fired during mass layoffs earlier this year. She’s been able to return to those duties, but now sports a green hoodie and cap emblazoned with a star-shaped logo instead of her Forest Service uniform.

The sheriff’s office launched its new alpine ranger program three weeks ago after proposing it as a solution for managing Ouray County’s backcountry, to fill a need formerly served by the Forest Service. The agency’s Ouray Ranger District lost its two alpine rangers who helped patrol Ouray County’s high-use areas in February, after federal job cuts.

“We relied on that resource and them being in the backcountry, patrolling the Alpine Loop, patrolling areas in the backcountry, educating. And when that resource for (those areas) was done, we knew we had to have something,” Ouray County Sheriff Justin Perry said.

At the sheriff’s office’s request, the county agreed to pull money out of its own pocket to supplement the federal cuts, calling the situation an emergency.

The sheriff’s office spent the past few months consulting with two terminated alpine rangers, Olin and Lanie Smith, to design the program and eventually hired the rangers as their own. The department also brought on Jeremy Matlock, who has a variety of backcountry experience, including with San Juan Mountain Huts as a maintenance manager and Colorado Parks and Wildlife as a river ranger. The sheriff’s office is working on hiring a fourth ranger. They will all work part-time through October. It’s unclear whether the program will restart seasonally in the winter.

Rangers’ role

Like Forest Service rangers, the sheriff’s office alpine ranger program is focused on education and “soft enforcement” rather than taking punitive measures. The rangers don’t have the same requirements as law enforcement officers. They don’t carry firearms or have the same powers as sworn officers, such as issuing citations or making arrests.

Instead, rangers are tasked with helping manage parking, off-highway vehicle registrations, fire restrictions, helmet violations and Leave No Trace principles concerning littering and human waste.

Perry said managing those problems is crucial to protecting the backcountry as use only continues to grow.

Matlock said having a presence in more remote areas becoming more popular for recreation helps influence behavior for both tourists and locals.

“A well-cared-for place is well cared for,” Olin said.

The rangers are also tasked with assisting on search and rescue incidents and educating the public on backcountry safety.

Sometimes it’s about finding a lost camper. Other times, it’s about asking hikers where they’re headed just as thunderstorms are rolling in, and warning them it’s not a good idea to attempt an ascent due to lightning danger.

Beyond safety and education, alpine rangers are also focused on collecting recreation data — counting the number of and type of vehicles and people in the backcountry — to help build the case for grant money to help fund the program, Perry said. He also wants this information for the public.

Olin said the main difference between the role with the Forest Service versus sheriff’s office is the rangers’ ability to focus their efforts on Ouray County public land, rather than the whole Forest Service district.

Matlock said he’s heard members of the public raise the idea of starting similar programs in San Juan and San Miguel counties.

Supporting the program

Funding the program longterm still remains a question. It is currently supported by $89,000 in county general funds, which Ouray County Undersheriff Tammy Stroup requested in May. Commissioners agreed to finance the program, for now, saying the sheriff’s office should look for other options in the future, including grants and donations.

It’s a much larger investment than the county contributed before, according to county records. In 2023, the county contributed $6,760 toward the Forest Service’s program. Now, the local government entity shoulders most of the cost, with some borrowed equipment.

The sheriff’s office didn’t receive the state grant it applied for to fund the program, primarily because it didn’t yet have the data to support the request. Perry is hopeful data collected by the department’s new rangers can help future applications.

The main challenge right now is securing vehicles. The sheriff’s office currently has one UTV marked with the department’s logo and is renting another one. The Forest Service also plans to lend the department a trailer for transporting the rental UTV to other high country areas.

Lia Salvatierra is a journalist with Report for America, a service program that helps boost underserved areas with more reporting resources.