Colorado Trail 2026: The Route (and all its changes)

   I had a draft of the route all written up and was about to hit publish when I ran across some inconsistencies in distances around day 2 and 3. I was watching this video and noticed his ride-around of the Lost Creek Wilderness area was 70 miles, while mine was 24 miles. That's why you do the research. 

First off, there isn't a ton of route variation you get to choose from when you're riding this trail. What you do get to choose is how far to ride each day. For our trip, we're shooting for a 4 day ride. Initially, we were going to ride from the official start at Waterton Canyon to Copper Mountain like this:

Days one through four

Here's the old breakdown, notably the miles and elev:

Day 1: Waterton Canyon to Buffalo Campground, 33 miles, 4800 elev

Day 2: Buffalo Campground to Rock Creek South Trail head, 32 miles, 5400 elev

Day 3: Rock Creek South Trail head to Breckenridge, 36 miles, 5600 elev

Day 4: Breckenridge to Copper Mountain, 13 miles, 3700 elev

Looking at those numbers, day 2 and 3 were going to be pretty intense. Once I realized my error, an additional 50 miles made it near impossible. This became a great opportunity to shorten our ride and make everything more reasonable. Sure, we weren't going to be able to ride the whole section between Denver and Copper, but we could still have an epic outing. Here is the new route:

New Days one through four

Here's the old breakdown, notably the miles and elev:

Day 1: Buffalo Creek to Tarryall Reservoir area*, 50 miles, 5800 elev

Day 2: Tarryall Res to Jefferson Creek / Aspen Campground, 30 miles, 3500 elev

Day 3: Jefferson Creek / Aspen Campground to Breckenridge, 35 miles, 4100 elev

Day 4: Breckenridge to Copper Mountain. 19 miles, 3700 elev

*on day one, we ride as far as we can.

This new route is a little shorter, a little less climbing:

Day one looks a lot harder, because it is the Lost Creek Wilderness ride around, and it is a combination of gravel and paved road. We should be able to pile on the miles that day.

I'm planning to break down each day further as the date gets closer, and cover some interesting points and challenges they present.