Larry Warren says he’s rerouting his dream.

No longer does it pass through the Bigelow Preserve.

For years Warren has touted a 180-mile-long trail system running from the Rangeley region to Moosehead Lake. Its jewels, besides vista after vista, would be high-scale lodges where trekkers could find a hot meal and a soft bed.

Plans for one of those so-called huts – to be sited on the shore of Flagstaff Lake in Dead River Township – has just come up dead in the water.

The state’s Land Use Regulation Commission returned Warren’s application for a permit to construct the hut, noting the process “has been brought to a standstill.”

LURC canceled a public hearing on Warren’s application more than year ago at his request. At the time, a group called The Friends of Bigelow was mounting an attack on Warren’s plans to run the trail system through the state-owned Bigelow Preserve.

Wording in the legislation creating the preserve forbids certain things.

Warren wanted to make the trails wide enough to run mechanized cross-country ski trail grooming equipment over them, one of those forbidden uses.

On Tuesday, after learning LURC returned his application for the proposed Flagstaff hut, Warren downplayed the issue.

“It wasn’t a big deal,” he said. “It’s just a housekeeping issue.”

And Warren added, he’s given up on the idea of running the trail system through Bigelow Preserve.

Catherine Carroll, LURC’s director, said returning the application wasn’t as bad as it might sound.

In her letter to Warren she explained, “It has now been nearly a year and a half since your request (to cancel the hearing) was granted and you have not given the commission any indication that this project should be reactivated. … I hope you understand that the commission cannot hold inactivated applications for an indefinite period of time when there’s no compelling reason.”

She added that he could file a new application any time.

Warren said that with the route changes to the plan made necessary to avoid the Bigelow lands, he was going to have to withdraw the application anyway, then file another.

He’s working with other landowners to acquire property to make the trail system happen.

“We’re making good progress,” he said of both getting the land as well as arranging financing to pay for the trail system and huts along it.

He has estimated the cost for the project at $12 million.

The trail and huts are to be modeled in part on the 10th Mountain Division hut system in the Rockies, in part on the Appalachian Mountain Club’s White Mountain huts, and in part on trails and huts found in Europe, Warren says.