COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Crews this summer inched closer in a yearslong effort to build a new trail to the top of Pikes Peak.
For a fifth season, Colorado Springs nonprofit Rocky Mountain Field Institute (RMFI) led Rocky Mountain Youth Corps cadres in building a Devils Playground trail to replace the existing summiting path, long seen as eroded, unsafe and damaging to the environment.
The U.S. Forest Service blueprint calls for a new trail spanning about 4 miles, trending south of the current alignment on the backside of the 14,115-foot mountain.
Four years after the project launched, about 2½ miles of trail have been cut. Early coordinators envisioned potentially a mile of new trail each year.
RMFI’s Carl Woody has overseen progress since 2020. “Back when the concept for this project was being put together, I think it was always hard to look into the future and predict exactly what was gonna happen,” he said in a previous interview.
Certainly unforeseen was a pandemic that would slow work and alter RMFI’s staffing expectations.
“This year, we started off with a slow pace of getting everybody in the door and trained, and we just kind of kept hiring all year,” said RMFI Executive Director Jolie NeSmith. “We’re like restaurants and everybody else. Hopefully next year we’re kind of closer in that direction of pre-COVID.”
The summer saw about a quarter-mile of new trail carved by hand, she said. The focus, she said, was along a section that saw the addition of several erosion-mitigating structures, including 81 steps of rock and timber and 35 retaining walls.
“Increasing the sustainability and durability of that trail in the long run,” NeSmith said. “That’s huge work and very time-consuming.”
The task won’t get easier in the coming years with about 1 ½ miles of trail left to build. Next summer, crews are expected to start construction above treeline, moving heavy rocks and boulders as needed.
“Tedious isn’t the right word,” NeSmith said. “Back-breaking is the right word.”
As September ended, she was busy preparing a grant request to Colorado Parks and Wildlife for three years of funding help through the agency’s annual Non-motorized Trail Program. While awarded the first three years of building, the Devils Playground project has been without any grant the past two years.
