One of the first things my family did when we moved to Loveland, Colorado in 2000 was take a trip to Estes Park, the small mountain town that sits on the northeast side of Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP). My mom excitedly pointed out that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, based on the Stephen King novel, was filmed at the Stanley Hotel. That fell on deaf ears though. Most of it was not filmed there, the maze was never actually there, and I was more interested in watching the X-Games than Jack Nicholson movies. Had I known that Dumb and Dumber was filmed at the Stanley, I might have been more intrigued.
We spent many days and evenings up in Estes since it was a short drive from our home in Northern Colorado. We’d drive up with a cup of hot cocoa in our gloved hands while the Christmas parade went by, or watch the elk herds graze through town on a weekend getaway as countless other tourists do. As the town is nestled next to RMNP, it serves as a basecamp for families heading into the park.
When I got out of the military years later, went back to Colorado, and started mountain biking, towns like Winter Park, Steamboat Springs, and Fruita came to mind many times over before Estes Park did. I recently visited the town for the first time in a long time, and I wondered why. Estes Park is one of the most well-known mountain towns in Colorado, but its association with adventure has always been a little blurry.
Candy shops greatly outnumber bike and gear shops. There aren’t any MTB trails in RMNP, which is usually the case with National Parks, and the few trail “systems” around the town are limited in connectivity, meaning that they would have to be ridden as an out-and-back, or looped with a long road ride. Such was my dilemma, trying to find a worthy ride in town before spending a day with the Ampt Biking group. Aside from a pretty rad bike skills park with a pump track and talk about great mountain biking on the town’s Visit Estes Park tourism website, the riding seemed pretty limited. The local tourism agency recently used notable adventure athletes to promote recreation opportunities in the town, trying to give it some credence.
Someone wrote about Pole Hill on Singletracks, but I didn’t feel like riding a 4×4 trail. Hermit Park sounded like a great option, especially with recent work from the trail community, but in order to fully loop the ride you’d have to use US-36, a busy road that connects Estes Park to Lyons and Boulder. I felt like riding something more technical that day, so Crosier Mountain sounded like the best bet, even though it would still put me riding road for several miles. It was worth a try though, I thought.
Everything feels bigger when you’re a kid, so when I was expecting to be at a higher altitude, and the temperature still hadn’t dropped from the upper 80s on the morning of my drive up to Crosier, I was a little disappointed. Both of the trailheads for Crosier are limited in means, and calling the parking dugout on CR43 a trailhead is a stretch. There is room for a handful of vehicles, and as a mountain biker seeking to ride all of Crosier Mountain from Glen Haven to Garden Gate it is unfortunately the best option.
After I ruffled through my bag realizing that I had left my chamois at home, I grumbled to myself as I began the six-mile road climb to Glen Haven on the windy canyon road. After about an hour, I made it to Glen Haven and took a break for cherry cobbler at the General Store. I spooned up the bready sweetness and watched residents sell hand carved wooden figurines along the road. Colorado’s more unknown mountain towns aren’t without charm.
By this point, I had knocked out six-miles and 1,000 feet of climbing on the road. The beginning of the the Crosier Mountain trail from Glen Haven would add on another 1,600 feet until the summit. Crossing through a short stretch of residential road, the trail starts heading up immediately over tall water bars and mounds of rock, covered in loose, broken down granite.
“Good luck with that mountain bike,” said a hiker to me as we passed each other. “Uh, thanks,” I replied, thinking why would she say that? I would never say, “good luck with those feet,” to someone. She wasn’t wrong though, and as I kept ascending, mounting and dismounting, and trying to ride, but dismounting again, I realized that there are trails that are much better by foot.
The trail is badly washed out and eroded in a lot of areas, making it unrideable in several sections. Like a lot of trails and spaces in Colorado, Crosier was hit bad by the floods in 2014, as someone also noted on Singletracks earlier this year in their review of Crosier.
“For wimpy bikers this will mean extensive hike-a-biking down eroded sections and rock stairs (not the fun kind), and an up-hill road ride back to the car. This trail received a LOT of damage from the floods and used to be 100% downhill ridable by the badass, now even the bad ass are walking a fair amount of the downhill.”
I moseyed on though, because the views off the trail, like windows to Longs Peak and beautiful open meadows, are plentiful, even if fun trail riding is not. On the tail end of the ascent to the summit there is a stretch of thick wooded forest and I crouched down to have a moment with a curious chipmunk. Finally, I pointed my bike downhill and enjoyed a moment of relief interrupted by the ping-ponging of being ricocheted around by massive pine cones and debris on the trail. At the time there were countless shrubs stretching into the trail that lashed my arms. It had been a little while since Crosier had seen some love, I assumed.
There are a few sections of the trail that I enjoyed opening up on and maneuvering around the tight jank, but many pinch points between boulders that will force most riders to dismount. On some steep, rocky pitches, I imagined a catch berm down at the bottom to help maintain speed, safety, and continuity. Even on the final stretch of downhill, it’s hard to get in a groove. There are not very many ridable lines heading down toward the Garden Gate side and the switchbacks are too triangular and off-camber to negotiate smooth turns.
Finally, the trail opens up briefly before the parking lot, and I threw my bike on the back of my truck in a hurry and went back down CR43 to find a spot to wash my frustration and sweat off in the Big Thompson River.
Later that night, I met for a beer with Matthew Beall, who started Ampt and is also a board member of the Estes Park Cycling Coalition. I dug into a burrito as I interviewed him, apologizing for stuffing my face in front of him, but that I was ravenous. “Oh, I know how Crosier Mountain goes,” he said.
Beall explained that the trail is a favorite for the high school mountain bike team and tech-hungry locals, but that it’s certainly not for the faint of heart. I told him that I assumed it had been a while since it’s seen some maintenance. They were planning to start some renovation projects on the trail this summer, but – Covid.
Beall says that when work can resume, they’ll start with low hanging fruit, like trimming back trees and shrubs and clearing the trail. They want to pump some life back into Crosier, but some of that will ultimately take rerouting sections of trail. Like most cycling advocacy organizations, EPCC is volunteer-run and the board members advocate on top of their full-time jobs and funding is limited. (Hint-hint, chip in with donations and sweat equity to your local org whenever possible for exactly these reasons).
The next day, with the Ampt group, we rode some of the trails on the YMCA of the Rockies property which were much more ridable and enjoyable than Crosier. Estes Park is far from being dubbed a mountain bike destination by any stretch, but there are a few options if you’re heading up there and need to take a bike. Gravel riding might be an even better bet since there are plenty of old forest roads around those mountains. The town surely has enough dollars from other tourists who are visiting, but with such a great location close to more mountain bikers in Loveland and Fort Collins, I can’t help but wonder what kind of boon it would be if there were more trails.
I went to Estes Park last summer as part of my wife’s family reunion gathering. There are a couple of sports shops locally, but only one had any rental bikes, and most of those were more “bike path” than MTB. I got a full suspension bike that was pretty low spec from 2014, and could not flip the brakes. That didn’t stop me from having a great time. I rode in the Hermit Park area, and met some locals that allowed me to tag along, and eventually gave me a ride back so I didn’t have to ride up Hwy36 liked described in the article. Lion’s Gulch trail was an absolute blast if you like “WTF where they thinking” technical trails. It’s not a destination MTB area, but a great family area. Definitely bring your own bike though. https://www.trailforks.com/ridelog/view/6353246/
I live in Loveland and ride Crosier on an almost weekly basis. I hate to be that guy, but this review is way off. Crosier is 100% rideable, up and down. And I love it! Is it gnarly and very techy? Yes! Are there white knuckle moments where you may have to just hang on and hope for the best? Perhaps. But it’s amazing. I hope the trail maintenance mentioned in the article doesn’t mess it up. Also, there are more trails on Crosier than mentioned here, as well as more trails in Estes not mentioned here. Estes is better for mountain biking than most know.
well ok, now that I re-read my post, maybe it’s not 100% rideable. Going up the summit spur will almost certainly be at least some hike-a-bike for most. But even that is rideable (and awesome) down.
Hey Jared, thanks for the comment. I did catch wind of more trails on Crosier than are actually mapped out, but that’s not my place to call out anyone’s secret stash. I guess there is a somewhat of a blurry line between what’s technical and “rideable” and what’s technical and actually fun. I’m no pro, but I can hold my own on most Colorado trails. I would have a hard time calling the descending from Crosier summit to Garden Gate fun by any means, but I don’t make the rules on what other people call fun. If it works, it works!
Fair enough. Funny how different we all are, cause I’m not just blowing smoke: I genuinely love that descent down to Garden Gate. I honestly think it is a blast and one of the best descents I’ve ever done. I consider myself blessed to live so close to it. I’m further blessed because there’s another descent within sight of Crosier mountain that I actually think is even better. By the way, descending the other trails on Crosier is also really fun. There’s the descent down to Glen Haven and also the descent down to the gravel pit trailhead (Crosier actually has three trailheads, not two). Both of those are rippers, too! Anyway – I think I was just shocked to come to this site that I check out occasionally and to find an article about one of my “home” trails. I probably came away feeling a little defensive after reading it. Sorry.
No worries at all, and my goal with this wasn’t to bash Crosier in any way, because I know a lot of people do like it. Really, I found it challenging to find a ride up in Estes and surprised by what Crosier actually entailed, compared to some of the info I found elsewhere – and on the Estes Park site. By my account and others, it sounds like it is more beat up than it normally is. Good to know the opposite direction is worth a try though. Next time though, I will probably just stick with Devil’s Backbone, Ginny trail, and so on in the Loveland/FTC area 😀 those are always a blast.
Matt — just to give context, Jared is an absolute beastly rider, doing it all on a steel hardtail, and crushing it going up and down. I don’t know anyone else who loves Crosier and Round Mountain and can ride them like he does. But full disclosure, I have been afraid of even trying them, so…
Hey Brett, I certainly don’t doubt that he is a crusher. I’m that’s why he loves it so much, haha. I wouldn’t say there is much to be afraid of. It’s easy to spot what can be done and what can’t. IMO, there are much more fun trails to ride that have an equal amount of tech. Much of what I noticed was just that the trail was in bad shape – eroded, needs a good raking, foliage could be trimmed, and parts could benefit from a rebuild. The trail feels like it’s built in a very old fashioned manner though with badly shaped switchbacks down to Garden Gate – likely very old. Maybe I have a “newer school” train of thought though. If Crosier/ Garden Gate really only serves a very high level of rider, that’s a pretty small sliver of people who could be riding it. Not there aren’t easier trails for anyone to ride around Estes, they just don’t seem abundant. It seems like a lot of new tech trails are being built with A and B lines for this reason. They don’t completely hold off anyone who hasn’t been riding for 10+ years from experiencing the trail making it better for the entire MTB population. I doubt that will apply to Crosier anytime soon, and that should make people happy. Just wanted to give a current trail update to people who are considering it on their way to Estes 🙂 Also, still not a fan of the road climb as the only visible option to loop the whole thing. Drivers up that canyon are not always friendly, and the trails up there look like they could benefit from better connectivity.