Originally Posted by
staehpj1
I have a bit over three weeks in August planned for touring in Colorado. I fly into and out of Denver.
The original plan was to do a road tour with some side hikes (possibly some overnight ones) and some peak bagging. I have recently been considering whether I might want to do a bike packing trip instead. Does anyone have any experience with the Colorado Trail? I am curious about the level of difficulty as well as the logistic issues. I can see that it will involve a huge amount of climbing, but it is not clear from the info I have found how technically difficult the trail is.
I'd be interested in hearing what other folks experiences have been with the trail.
The Colorado Trail is a mixed bag when it comes to difficulty. Some of it is highly technical mountain biking and some of it is mild mountain biking. All of that is predicated on an unloaded bike. A loaded bike would make the difficult parts much more difficult.
There are also sections that can't be traversed by bicycle because the trail crosses wilderness areas. There are work arounds, however. I'd suggest looking into the Great Divide route from Adventure Cycling, however. It's geared more towards bike touring and bikepacking rather than pure mountain biking like the Colorado Trail is.
Here's a route that follows lots of Colorado railroads and would be a wonderful trip for bikepacking. You could cut off some of the route if you wanted and there are sections that I've never ridden like around Marble. You might be able to do it on a road bike but a mountain bike would be better.