In a state of superlatives, Winter Park and surrounding Grand County, Colorado, stand out: 1,800 miles of trails, one national park, five wilderness areas, two ski areas, and two bike parks in a county that’s 75% public land. Despite those impressive numbers, Winter Park frequently finds itself left off the pantheon of classic Colorado mountain towns such as Crested Butte, Breckenridge, and Durango. But the town and its neighbors in the Fraser Valley quietly boast some of the state’s best fall biking—right in Denver’s backyard.
“I came from Alaska, which was an outdoors playground, and then I lived all these places throughout Colorado, but when I came to Grand County, I was like, ‘This is one of the most undiscovered mountain towns in the state,’” says Meara McQuain, the Executive Director of the Headwaters Trails Alliance (HTA), which advocates for, builds and maintains hundreds of miles of trail in the county. “Grand County is like Colorado’s Alaska.”
There’s plenty of land to go around: of the 16,000 people who call the county home, less than 20% are full-time residents, and some 65% are second-home owners.
“Grand County is larger than the state of Rhode Island; ‘geographically large’ is an understatement,” says McQuain. “We only have school four days a week because it takes the buses so long to get around.”
With both a population and government resources spread thin, the four year-round employees and the small army of paid trail crew at The Headwaters Trails Alliance perform nearly all the trail maintenance across the county, a jurisdiction some three to four times any of its trail-crew kin in Colorado.
Historically, most of the trails of Grand County are the product of extraction, whether mineral or timber, and are thus constructed in the Wild West “fall line is fastest” mode. For much of the 2000s, in the absence of new official trail development, user-built trails proliferated, using the old trails as a base. While locally popular, many were unsustainable skidders through sensitive wildlife habitat. The HTA has worked tirelessly with the Forest Service to convert, rather than close, those fallow roads and fall-line routes into contemporary trails that satisfy both long-timers and new riders alike. Between the vast trail mileage, the relatively small population, and the emphasis on stacked-loop trail systems, HTA has managed to minimize user conflicts.
Compared to the mythmaking of other mountain towns, Winter Park has remained relatively low-key, perhaps owing to the lack of full-time residents; although the community once billed itself as “Mountain Bike Capital USA,” these days the trails speak for themselves.
In addition to Trestle Bike Park, the largest and fastest-growing downhill mountain bike park in the United States, sprawling networks of classic and contemporary cross-country trails trace the colorful slopes above downtown; 10 minutes north of Winter Park, the enduro-style trails of Phases extend the trail inventory and the fall riding season. And in October, the town of Fraser will soft-launch a new bike park. Located at the 120-acre Cozens Ranch Open Space, the free, publicly accessible park will feature progressive jump lines and paved asphalt pump tracks, maintained by an expert build crew from Trestle Bike Park.
Although the trails have largely flown under the radar, come late September, the valley shows off. The flash of fluttering aspen leaves signals peak riding season, with the dramatic snow-capped Continental Divide on the skyline and trails quiet except for the crunch of the golden carpet of leaves under the tires. In other words, quintessential high-country mountain biking.
“Whether you’re on a horse or a bike or whatever, you could not live here if you did not have an affinity for the natural world. It’s just harder here — we don’t have box stores, we don’t have fast-food restaurants,” says McQuain. “So, people who choose to live here choose a little more challenging lifestyle” in return for the backyard bounty.
Fall riding in the Fraser Valley feels like a reward for the long winters and crowded summers of mountain town living. But it’s one that locals share willingly with visitors. After all, there’s plenty to go around.
Ride
Trestle Bike Park, Winter Park Resort
The largest and fastest-growing lift-served bike park in the US, Trestle boasts more than 40 miles of lift-served gravity trails. The varied terrain and trail styles, in most cases, favor speed over steeps: riders can put a pre-ride lap in and then rail with no-brakes abandon. Tech trails such as Search and Seizure string together high-velocity hits through roots and wood features and wall rides that seem to hover over the snow-capped valley below. The double-black Trestle DH significantly ups the ante with steep lines and high-consequence drops.
Meanwhile, flow trails range from the steep lips of Spicy Chicken to the intermediate-friendly senders of Paper Boy. Hop into a train on Trestle highlight Rainmaker for a series of high-speed tables and step-downs. Three lifts allow for mix-and-match and half-mountain laps.
Fraser Valley
Aspen hunting in Winter Park is as simple as pointing your bike toward the foothills flanking the main drag. On the east side of Winter Park, the Idlewild trails climb above summer homes to old mine claims and Forest Service cabins below Rogers Pass and the Continental Divide, with expansive aspen-framed views over the Fraser Valley. Riders can return to the valley via Yankee Doodle, which begins with fast, swooping turns in and out of aspen gullies before finishing with some tight, technical switchbacks with mild exposure above town.
West of town, the technical cross-country riding of the Vasquez Creek and Leland Creek drainages exemplifies HTA’s efforts to legitimize but not dilute traditional user-built routes. Although multi-use and bi-directional, trails such as Pinball Wizard, WTB, and Leap Frog throw plenty of spicy alt-lines at riders, from babyheads to boulders with sniper-like landings. (Emphasizing the social nature of the network, many of the trails, including Iko and Akima’s Way, are named after locals’ dogs.) Meanwhile, Razzmatazz, which crosses private land, provides a dose of downhill-only flow, with numerous booters, berms, and rock drops.
Whereas many of the Fraser Valley trails represent quintessential Colorado cross-country excursions, Phases appeals to the fire-road-to-freeride enduro enthusiast. Less than ten miles north of Winter Park, the Phases network represents another success story of rogue-to-rehabbed trails. The backside trails, such as Phrooty Pebbles and Salad Bowl West, weave into west-facing aspen slopes. Meanwhile, on the front side, Ridge Runner intersperses a handful of traverses with steep chutes and slabs before finishing off with a fast, flowing series of rollers at the bottom. Thanks to their south-facing orientation and decomposed granite surface, many of the lower trails at Phases are rideable as late as December.
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