Pikes Peak Region Trail Finder

BY R. SCOTT RAPPOLD
THE GAZETTE

Manitou Incline lovers, you know that feeling you get when you’re over the false summit and the end of the long, arduous climb is in sight?

The effort to legalize the popular yet illegal trail has reached that point.

Colorado Springs and Manitou Springs officials have drawn up an inter-governmental agreement for managing the trail, which is expected to be ratified by Colorado Springs City Council next month, said Sarah Bryarly, interim manager of the Colorado Springs Trails, Open Space and Parks program.

With approval of the management plan and a few other tasks completed, the trail should legally open to hikers by summer, said Colorado Springs City Councilman Scott Hente, who has been working to open the trail.

Photos: January day on the Incline

The former rail line runs 2,000 feet up the side of Mount Manitou in about a mile. The train shut down in 1990 and the railway bed has since become one of the region’s most popular trails, drawing up to 500,000 hikers a year.

A draft agreement between the two cities calls for Colorado Springs to oversee maintenance on the trail and Manitou Springs to regulate parking around the congested Ruxton Avenue trailhead.

Visit gazette.com/incline for a look back at the history of the Incline — including old photos of the train — and how we got to this point.

The Colorado Springs Parks and Recreation Advisory Board was scheduled to vote on the agreement Thursday, but the vote was delayed until the board’s February meeting to give city staff time to go over the document again with Manitou officials.

“To get five entities moving at the same pace, it’s taking a bit longer than we hat anticipated, but everything is continuing to move,” Bryarly told the board.

The trail is in serious need of maintenance after two decades of illicit use (it crosses private property), and while maintaining and repairing it will be Colorado Springs’ responsibility, there is no money available for the work.

“It’s really the Incline Friends group that we’re going to have to rely on to do any of the repairs that take place,” she said.

The friends group formed last fall and will have its first membership drivefrom 6 to 9 p.m. Jan. 25 at Phantom Canyon Brewing Co. Members have already built a new trail from the Barr Trail parking lot to the base of the Incline.

The agreement probably will be discussed at city council’s informal meeting Feb. 13, followed by a vote at its regular meeting Feb. 28, Bryarly said. It is unclear when Manitou officials will take a vote.

It’s been more than three years since an agreement between Colorado Springs Utilities, which owns the bottom third of the land, and the Cog Railway, which owns the middle section, was announced to open the trail. Utilities gave the Cog parking space in exchange for an easement for hikers. The upper third of the trail is in the Pike National Forest.

The U.S. Forest Service will issue a special-use permit this spring, said Frank Landis, recreation planner with the Forest Service’s Pikes Peak Ranger District. That approval was delayed last year after it came to light that the Cog’s paperwork to abandon the rail line was never forwarded to the federal level.

Landis said the abandonment issue is a “technicality” that is nearly resolved.

The agency has completed studies on the impact opening the Incline will have on plant and animal life and cultural resources.
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Contact R. Scott Rappold:
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