After a brush with cancellation over lack of volunteers and resources, Black Forest’s annual parade is back on for August. 

The decades-long tradition is part of the annual Black Forest Festival, which has been a staple event in the unincorporated community north of Colorado Springs since the 1970s. Last year’s festival and parade attracted a crowd of 5,000 people, said Black Forest Community Club volunteer Tiffany Coles. 

Coles and the other nine lead volunteers in charge of the event posted on Facebook on Feb. 22 that the festival would be dropping the parade from its lineup this year. Black Forest residents reacted with confusion and disappointment. 

“It’s just the demise of Black Forest, which we don’t want to allow and we got to do something about it, and everybody is up in arms. Everybody felt the same way. Why?,” Jeff Schickler said at a late February community meeting to discuss the cancellation . 

Coles’ response: if Black Forest wants the parade to go on, the community has to help. 

“We would love for the parade to happen, but we can’t do it without volunteers,” she said. 

Coles said that last year’s festival taxed a small team of volunteer event planners to the limit, especially after the departure of some of the group’s longer-serving members. 

Coles said that people might underestimate the time and money it takes to put on a large public event, especially in unincorporated El Paso County. Along with the lack of volunteers, she said that the cost and organization of the parade has increased significantly in the past few years.

Black Forest has to acquire a permit from El Paso County and buy event insurance to host the parade. A lack of sidewalks along single-lane county roads requires volunteers to erect a rope line with dozens of hand-driven posts, while electronic signs have to be deployed to announce the road closures prior to the event. 

Coles said that parade insurance in particular was a headache for volunteers last year, as organizers had to shop until the Thursday before the event to find a vendor. That insurance vendor required a comprehensive emergency response plan that ended up being 30 pages. 

She said the final price was also an unexpected budget challenge over past years, with an increase of close to $2,000 over past years. 

All of those reasons and more were brought up at a raucous meeting called by the volunteers at the Black Forest Community Club, in which more than 40 people attended from the close-knit area.  

Standing at the front with a paper list of volunteer roles to fill, Coles drafted from raised hands in the audience. Other attendees like Schickler, who owns the Firehouse on the Run BBQ restaurant in Black Forest, offered to fundraise for the extra cash the parade would need to go forward. 

As of Monday, Coles says she is “confident” the parade is going ahead as previously scheduled on Aug. 10. The annual outhouse races are still canceled due to lack of entrees. The festival starts on Aug. 9 and will include the usual fundraiser biergarten, live music and vendors. 

Anyone who would like to find more information about the lineup or to volunteer can go to Weareblackforest.com. 

Scenes during the 2021 Black Forest Festival Parade in Black Forest on Saturday, Aug. 7, 2021. Hundreds of people attend the event that included a breakfast, live music, food and drink, demonstrations and fun activities for the family.

The Gazette file