Ring The Peak - Pikes Peak Outdoors

Your voice for the outdoors

Ring thePeak

A roughly 63-mile loop around America’s Mountain. Close the gaps. Connect the towns. Steward the corridor as one shared landscape.

Support the effort Designate your gift for Ring the Peak

01

The route

Complete the ring

Close the remaining gaps — especially along Ute Pass and on the southwest flank — so the loop is whole, signed, and usable end to end.
02

The towns

Connect communities

Portals in Manitou Springs, Cascade, Green Mountain Falls, Teller County, and the high country turn a mountain circuit into everyday access.
03

The care

Steward the corridor

The trail crosses federal, state, county, city, and private land. Finishing it means coordinated management, not a patchwork of rules.

Explore the route

Open a segment or a trailhead. Tilt the view to see the mountain.

Open full map →

The dashed olive line on the southwest side follows roads you can use. It is not a finished trail. Conditions change—confirm access, seasonal closures, and allowed uses before you go.

Help finish the ring

Planning and partnerships that close remaining gaps
Trail improvements, portals, and clearer public access
Shared stewardship across the agencies that manage the peak

How to give

Gifts to Pikes Peak Outdoors can be designated for Ring the Peak, or given as unrestricted support for the regional outdoor effort.

Support the effort

THE CASE, IN PLAIN LANGUAGE

Why the ring is still worth finishing

For the region

Most of the circle is already a trail. Finishing it is what makes the rest a destination: one way around America’s Mountain that treats Manitou Springs, the Ute Pass towns, Woodland Park, Cripple Creek, and Victor as places to start, stay, and spend. The 2019 plan is plain about this. The Ring is access, watershed protection, and an economic strategy for the towns on the southwest side.

Since 1999

The ask is older than the Master Plan. In 1997 Colorado Springs Utilities put the agencies in one room. In 1999 they adopted a Perimeter Loop around the peak, and Friends of the Peak spent the next two decades building it. In 2017 the stakeholders reread that plan and agreed the vision still held. The state later named it one of Colorado’s 16. The community has wanted this trail for more than twenty-five years.

To finish it

Build the southwest gap, from Pancake Rocks north of Gillett to Forest Road 376 at the South Slope watershed, without cutting bighorn habitat or closed watershed land. Then do the work the plan would not separate from the dirt: one agreement among the land managers, volunteers trained to maintain what gets built, and funding that outlasts a single grant. The miles, the management, and the public have to close together.