Outdoor Pikes Peak Initiative · Article 22 of 24
The top of the priority list is a cluster of trail and mountain projects. The appendix gives each a short charge. Together they are the recreation half of the vision, written so a reader can see the difference between a loop, a plan update, and a management experiment.
A network, then the ring
The regional trail master plan is first because the task force wanted existing and future trails unified into one user-focused network, built with land managers, and built to last. Ring the Peak is second. Completing the 63-mile non-motorized trail would encircle the mountain, connect communities, and stitch existing trails into a continuous loop, preserving habitat while serving hikers, bikers, and others. The Front Range Trail, lower on the list, is the older idea of linking communities along the edge of the plains, still in need of a real strategy. In Fremont County, the Royal Loop would finish the last stretch of a roughly 40-mile singletrack from Cañon City to the Royal Gorge, through Grand Canyon Hills near Temple Canyon Park, a remnant of the 2013 Eastern Fremont Trails Master Plan. The Gold Belt Byway study asks whether a master trail along that corridor is feasible.
The mountain’s own plans
Colorado Springs Utilities is updating the North Slope Management Plan because recreation there has grown and the water resource still has to be protected. The Pikes Peak Highway management-plan update would examine the systems already in place and any collaboration or change worth making. The Pike and San Isabel forest plan has not been updated since 1984; the project would bring development, economics, recreation, habitat, and climate into a new plan. Waldo Canyon continues the 2020 Re-Imagine Waldo Canyon master plan through the organizations already on it. The regional recreation management model — CPW, exploratory — is the cross-jurisdictional piece described in the management article, listed here because the task force ranked it with the trail projects it is meant to unlock.
Camping, gravity, and a second wave
The camping management plan would inventory what exists, judge its condition, and name where more camping should go so growing demand has a designed outlet. The downhill mountain-bike course would look for the right location on undevelopable public land and a design that uses natural terrain. Centennial Park Play Wave II, in Cañon City, would add a second wave near the Ice House wave so river surfing can grow without stacking every surfer on one feature. Royal Gorge RIO is the named local lead. These are the projects the plan offers to people who asked, in listening sessions, for more recreation that does not wreck the place they came to use.
Source: Outdoor Pikes Peak Initiative Vision Plan 2025, prepared through the Pikes Peak Outdoor Recreation Alliance as the local Colorado Outdoor Regional Partnership, with support from Colorado Parks and Wildlife and Great Outdoors Colorado. Project team: PPORA, Trails and Open Space Coalition, N.E.S. Inc., Bachman PR, and the University of Colorado Colorado Springs Geography Department. The plan was written across a four-year process and released in 2025; some statistics reflect a point in time before publication. Appendix G, project descriptions, pages 474–478; priority order, page 104.
