Cañon City's 'Climate Capital' ripe for new trails
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- Created on Wednesday, 08 December 2010 07:00
- Written by Dave Philipps
By DAVE PHILIPPS, THE GAZETTE
With 10 prisons all but surrounding it, Cañon City is perhaps best known as the convict capital of Colorado. Officially, its nickname is the “Climate Capital of Colorado.”
That’s because the town of 16,000 sits in a sheltered, sunny bowl where the average high temperature in December is a full eight degrees warmer than in Colorado Springs.
Add to the scene a stunning swath of desert mesas, canyons and pine-covered hills and it seems logical that the Climate Capital would be a thriving cool-season destination for bikers, hikers and anyone else looking for snow-free trails.
In fact, the area has never lived up to its potential as an outdoor hub, but some locals say that is slowly starting to change.
“People think it’s all just prisons here,” said Spencer Maxfield, who owns a bike shop, Spencer Sports, in the center of town. “But actually we have some pretty good trails. And winter is the time when this area shines.”
On a recent frosty morning, Maxfield offered a bike tour of a network of trails locally known as The Bank. The trails weave in and out of limestone canyons in an area near Shelf Road that, because of warm weather and excellent rock, has become a favorite spring and fall destination for Front Range climbers.
Maxfield pedaled up a Jeep road and turned onto a winding, narrow track leading to uninterrupted mountain views. Soon the morning chill wore off and he stopped at a sprawling vista to peel off his jacket.
“I’ve never seen anyone else up here,” he said, catching his breath. “We pretty much have these trails to ourselves. Which is nice, but we’d like to see more people enjoy it.”
Cañon City, as a whole, is not very interested in trails, Maxfield said. His shop sells few new bikes; much of his business is repairs. And the thousands of acres of city parks and federal land that surround the city have relatively few trails dedicated to nonmotorized routes.
Contrast that to other dry, sunny spots in the state that have capitalized on Coloradans’ appetite for cool-season trails. The network of trails at Pueblo Reservoir regularly draws crowds of hikers and bikers between October and April, and few mountain bikers consider spring or fall complete without a pilgrimage to the red desert of Fruita, near the Utah border.
“We never had that. Cañon never tried to capitalize on its natural assets,” said Brian LeDoux, a longtime local and a mountain biker.
Now there is a movement — albeit a modest one — to become more trail-friendly. In 2009, LeDoux and a small group of Cañon City locals founded the Lower Arkansas Mountain Bicycling Association to organize those who wanted more trail opportunities.
“The idea was to identify projects and work with the public land managers, and get some trails,” LeDoux said.
Around the same time, the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees much of the public land around the city, hired a person with similar priorities to oversee trails and recreation. Kalem Lenard had run a trail-stewardship and-advocacy group called Great Basin Trails Alliance in Ely, Nev., before joining the BLM, so he had experience designing trails and building the coalitions of users necessary to construct and maintain them. When he moved to Cañon, he saw similar needs.
“In many ways Ely was a lot like Cañon City is,” Lenard said on a recent afternoon as he went out to scout a proposed trail. “Lots of potential, but a lack of organization — lack of understanding how to really get started.”
Working with the newly formed bike association, Lenard and LeDoux created trails dedicated to hikers and mountain bikers. Last spring they laid out a five-mile loop southwest of town. Thanks to a crowd of volunteers from the local high school and biking community, the trail is almost complete.
Now the public/private trail partnership is working on a more ambitious project. Years ago, the BLM identified a swath of rolling juniper hills known as Garden Park north of Cañon City as a good place for nonmotorized trails. But the project was put on a back burner.
Seeing a local hunger for trails, Lenard moved it to the front. In summer he met with local cyclists to lay out possible trails on a map. Since then he has walked the hills, flagging a future trail.
On a recent afternoon, Lenard went back to the area with Erin Watkins, a BLM archaeologist, to make sure the proposed route did not disturb any potential archaeological sites.
They scrambled up through a dense grove of piñon and juniper trees, winding around sandstone boulders. A cliff band of tan Dakota sandstone rose above the cliff tops. Lenard’s route jogged toward the cliff, then contoured away, climbing gently into a rolling expanse where a recent forest fire had cleared the trees, leaving golden pasture.
“This gets so much sun,” he said as he walked, “that I think it will be snow-free most of the year.”
The trail looped past 30-foot-tall sandstone domes and humps that looked like giant beehives and climbed to a breezy ridge where views spilled 40 miles south to the Sangre de Cristo mountains.
It was stunning — exactly the type of terrain trail enthusiasts seek out.
“We should have all the approvals in place for this trail by spring,” said Lenard. “Then it is just a matter of getting enough volunteers interested to build it.”
He said the first phase would start with a three-mile loop. Longer loops could come later.
“We struggle with how ambitious the system should be,” he said. “You have to build enough trails to make it worth it for people to come. But you have to justify why you are devoting resources when really, there are very few people using trails here now. It’s a tough balance.”
It is a balance, he said, that Cañon City is trying to find.
Trails to check out:
Trails in Cañon City
Shelf Road
This network of roughly 12 miles of intermediate hiking and riding trails wanders the canyons near the Shelf Road climbing area. Camping is available.
The Town Loop
Three miles of fresh singletrack completed in November. To get there, take U.S. Highway 50 west to Cañon City. From the first stoplight (MacKenzie Avenue), drive four miles to First Street. Turn left and drive one mile, past Greenwood Cemetery. Turn right onto Temple Canyon Road and drive 1.9 miles past a junk yard and two radio towers to a pull-off on the right. This is the trailhead parking area. To access the trail, go through a gate. The loop is easy to follow and has no intersections with other trails.
Contact the writer: 636-0223
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