The Colorado Trail
 

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.

Try http://www.bikepacking.net

So for that route would you prefer to run fat knobbies or slicks? If it is fairly non technical I might consider using drop bars and medium to fat slicks on my rigid MTB. My wrists really hate the MTB bars anyway, even with bar ends I am not as comfortable with flat bars.

Edit: I would be interested in some more description of the route you linked if you have time to comment in some detail.

Knobs would be better since some of the roads are rough. You could probably get by with a low knob race tire like a Hutchinson piranha. It would roll well on pavement (about a third of the route) and give you enough traction on the dirt.

The rout follows some of Colorado's old rail lines and pass through some gorgeous places. The Rollins Pass route out of Rollinsville is stunning. You will have to carry your bike over Needle's Eye tunnel but that's not to hard. I'd suggest riding down to the Devil's Slide tressels which are about 1/2 a mile from the tunnel. It's up to you if you walk across them or take the old wagon road. The view into the Indian Peaks Wilderness is breathtaking.

Hagerman Pass is equally beautiful. On the Leadville side ride or hike up to the old Grand Tressle. On the Basalt side you'll ride through Hell's Gate which has bits of train at the bottom.

I've got you going up to near the Alpine Tunnel. Take the side trip to the west portal and tour the old buildings. You might want to go over Williams pass which is rough (you'll have to push some) but it's shorter than Hancock pass.

There's a lot more but typing on my I-phone is a pain. PM me for more details.

Sounds like a great option. Depending on the difficulty and the number of side trips I do it might be a bit short for the time I have, then again maybe not. Hard to say how I will deal with the elevation for one thing. It is usually easy enough to lengthen or shorten trips in any case.

I'll pm you, Stuart.

Ive ridden the first two sections (from Denver) on a rigid bike, fully loaded. (4 pans, lowriders in front, etc.) using schwalbe marathon supreme 1.6 inch tires....

The front lowriders were a problem for clearance issues. the rear panniers were no problem. Highrider front bags would have helped.

I used drop bars which were not ideal, flats would be better.

Only had to push a few sections because of technicality or grade. mostly the track was rideable in my lowest gear. (rohloff 44-17 at the time) lower gears would have been better though.

I pack lighter now, which would help.

beautiful area. links up w dirt roads periodically between sections too, if you want to have a bit of singletrack and a bit of fire-road stuff.