Colorado 14ers to see new trail construction, maintenance this summer

The nonprofit leader in building and maintaining trails on Colorado's highest peaks enters the field season with plans to progress on an unprecedented project.

Colorado Fourteeners Initiative is celebrating 30 years this summer. Mount Shavano represents "the most massive project that CFI has ever undertaken," the organization's executive director, Lloyd Athearn, has said.

Eight years ago, CFI bought 41 acres of old mining claims around the Chaffee County summit. That was ahead of work that began in 2021 to build new trail along the route deemed to be among the most environmentally damaging and unfriendly to hikers across the state's fourteeners.

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The lower trail "was basically straight uphill," said Brian Sargeant, CFI's development and communications manager. Spring runoff caused "a waterway" along the route, he said, adding to "large grapefruit- to bowling ball-sized rocks pretty much strewn across the trail. ... Pretty miserable, ankle-twisting scenarios."

Crews celebrated a new mile-plus stretch of trail at the end of last summer, away from steep, erosion-prone zones. This summer figures to see another section lending to what Sargeant called "a nice, smooth and steady hike up through the woods."

Meanwhile, another crew will work above Shavano's treeline on new trail rising to the summit "block" CFI owns. That part of the project will see "much slower progress," Sargeant said. "They're working in a talus field, moving 400, 500 pounds of rock."

The total project has been forecast to cost around $2 million by the time it's complete, possibly in the next four or five years, Sargeant said. After connecting new lower and upper trail with the existing middle section, the focus will turn to closing and restoring the original, eroded trail corridor.

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That middle section has been a focus of CFI's Adopt-a-Peak Crew — a program enlisting hundreds of volunteers for trail maintenance across Colorado's fourteeners. Sargeant said a dozen peaks have been identified for routine work this summer. 

Also this summer, CFI will position crews on Mount Elbert for two trail reroutes that have been in the works over the past few years.

One is high on the mountain's southern aspects, along the uppermost Black Cloud Trail. The other reroute has taken place near 13,000 feet on Elbert's Northeast Ridge.

Pikes Peak will be home to another long-going effort.

This will be the sixth summer in the job to reroute much of the Devil's Playground summit path on the peak's backside. That job is being overseen by Colorado Springs nonprofit Rocky Mountain Field Institute.

Leadership has said this summer will see the start of trail construction above treeline, with still years to go before opening the new route.