Hiking the Colorado Trail
The Colorado Trail might be the best thru-hike in the country for what you get per mile (although I do think the AZT is more spectacular). It’s 486 miles and takes about a month. The CT doesn’t require any permits, and runs through some pretty spectacular areas of the American West. I’ve done it twice-ish (three times if you count the CDT, and then another good chunk on my collegiate loop Nolan’s 14 hike.). Once in 2014 as my first-ever thru-hike, and again in 2020 during COVID. I plan to hike it again, because it’s JUST a great trail.
As a Colorado native, I have a lot of fond feelings toward this trail. It’s amazingly beautiful while also having some pretty tough hiking. The afternoon thunderstorms can be downright freightning, and there’s a ton of fourteeners you can bag as side trips if you’re up for those #SideQuests.
What You Should Know Before Starting
The Colorado Trail runs from “Denver” to Durango. It doesn’t actually leave from Denver. It leaves from a trailhead in a suburb outside of Denver, which is genuinely a pretty shitty starting location. Most hikers go Southbound (westbound), which is the direction where the elevation gains are gentler, although you’ll be starting off in a burn area and pretty meh scenery. I personally recommend going Northbound (eastbound).
There are no permits required for the CT.
Season and Timing
The Colorado Trail runs at pretty high elevation. Most of the trail sits above 10,000 feet, with sections pushing past 13,000. Snow doesn’t clear at the high passes until mid-July in a heavy year, and comes back by mid-September. It’s good to remember that treeline is around 11,600 feet across the entire state, so you’ll want to be at or below that by the afternoon, when possible, to avoid thunder storms.
Best start window: July 1 to July 20. Starting this window gives you the best shot at dry passes through the San Juans (the high-altitude western section) before fall storms arrive. I started my 2014 hike on July 12 and finished right before the monsoons turned ugly. My 2020 COVID hike started in August and I hit the first snow of the season, which was actually quite delightful!
The afternoon thunderstorm season in Colorado run from ~July through August. So you should plan to be off exposed ridgelines by around noon every day, and be prepared to rapidly drop in elevation if a thunderstorm rolls in.
How Long Does It Take?
A fit hiker doing 20-mile days can finish in 25 days pretty easily. I think it’s a solid 3 to 4-week thru-hike. My 2014 hike took about a month including a couple of zeroes and short days. My 2020 COVID hike was about 3 weeks.
Navigation
The CT is well-signed and an amazingly, beautifully well-groomed trail. It makes it a terrific thru-hike for those that are new to long distance trails and learning to be better at navigating. You can do this one with some old-school maps and guidebooks. However, FarOut (formerly Guthook) has a Colorado Trail guide that makes it stupid-easy to hike.
The official trail maps from the Colorado Trail Foundation are also great. Download topo maps before you start (I use Gaia at this point). Cell service is often available at high points, and has been getting better every year.
Planning the Hike
Resupply
The CT is straightforward to resupply on without mailing any boxes. Unless you’re vegan or have specific dietary needs, you can make it work with grocery stores and gas stations along the way. The trail towns are all pretty decent! My 2020 COVID hike used four resupply points (all mail drops) to minimize in-person contact: Copper Mountain at mile 119 (friends brought supplies), a contactless mail drop near Twin Lakes at mile 175, Monarch Mountain Lodge at mile 249, and Molas Lake at mile 409. In a normal year you’d stop in more towns and have a more varied experience. I personally love the towns of Salida and Leadville, so would definitely recommend swinging into those. Besides, you can buy a Melanzana outside of the quota/reservation system if you’re thru-hiking the CDT and hitch into leadville!
| Town | Approx. Mile | Access | Notes |
| Waterton Canyon TH | 0 | On trail | Drive or take a Lyft to the trailhead. |
| Breckenridge | 100 | Short hitch | Full service ski town, great resupply. Backcountry Brewing + excellent gear shops. |
| Copper Mountain | 122 | On trail | Resort with restaurants — can do pretty decent resupply out of Copper. It’s effectively on trail. |
| Twin Lakes | 167 | On trail | Small store. You’ll want to send a mail drop, or hitch into Leadville from here (or other hitch point further north) |
| Mt. Princeton / Buena Vista | 212 | Hitch | Buena Vista is a full resupply town. Mt. Princeton Hot Springs is a great option for a zero if you wanna spend some cash. You can also send resupply boxes to Mt. Princeton. |
| Salida | 248 | Hitch | Full service town, good restaurant scene, easy hitch from the highway, and super friendly to hikers. Overall good hostel in town. |
| Monarch Mountain Lodge | 260 | On trail | Lodge with restaurant. They accept resupply packages (used them in 2020). |
| Creede | ~350 | Hitch | Small but trail-friendly town. Hitch from Spring Creek Pass area or Stony Pass (can also do Lake City). |
| Lake City | ~415 | Hitch from Stony Pass | Great trail town, full service, excellent resupply. Access is out of Stony Pass with a reasonable hitch. |
| Silverton | 425 | Hitch | Charming old mining town, full resupply |
| Durango | 486 | On trail | Southern terminus — full service city, fly home from here, or rent a car or take a bus to Denver. |
Miles are approximate. The Colorado Trail Foundation maps are more precise.
Why I Navigate With a Garmin Watch
A Garmin Fenix is the best navigation upgrade I’ve made to my backpacking kit. It does four things my phone can’t.
- It sips power. The battery is tiny, so a typical power bank tops it up 15-20 times. In my experience it runs about 4 whole days of solid navigation between charges.
- Built-in flashlight. The Fenix 7X (and some other Fenix models) has an LED flashlight. It’s one of the features I use most on trail.
- More time in nature. The course lives on my wrist, so my phone stays in my pocket.
- Off-course alerts. It pings you when you drift roughly 150 feet off the course. It has saved me MANY miles of unnecessary backtracking.
Garmin Fenix 7X Solar Sapphire on Amazon Read my Garmin watch review
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Garmin Courses: Colorado Trail Resupply Splits
5 Garmin courses (473 miles), one per resupply leg. Download the ZIP, import the TCX files into Garmin Connect, and send them to your watch.
Each file is one stretch between resupply stops from my plan, with the start and end loaded as named course points. I split them up because Garmin Connect and the Garmin watches often crash with long courses or a lot of waypoints. Runs Waterton Canyon (Denver) to Durango. Monarch Mountain Lodge marks the trail point nearest Monarch Pass, and Molas Lake sits right by Molas Pass.
Heads up: I hiked the Colorado Trail before I owned a Garmin watch, so I never ran these on trail. They’re built from my resupply plan, not from a course I carried. The tracks come from third-party sources, so accuracy isn’t guaranteed. Carry backup navigation, and check the course against your own maps. If a long leg won’t import, split it smaller with the Trail GPX Converter.
The San Juans
The western half of the trail through the San Juan Mountains is the hardest and the most spectacular section of trail. You’re doing long traverses above treeline, crossing passes at 13,000+ feet, and dealing with the most exposed terrain on the trail.
In 2014 I bagged four Colorado Trail fourteeners as side trips off the main trail in the collegiate range: Massive, Shavano, Tabeguache, and St. Louis Peak (Start of the San Juans). These are all reasonable additions if you are up for it!
If fourteeners are a primary goal, the Collegiate Loop is worth a serious look. It’s a ~167-mile loop through the Collegiate Peaks area that swings by multiple fourteeners and links up nicely with the CT.
Colorado Trail Tips for New Thru-Hikers
The Colorado Trail is one of the most popular thru-hike options for people doing their first long trail.
- Don’t mail too many resupply boxes. The CT has excellent resupply options across the entire trail. Unless you have very specific dietary needs, you don’t need to send yourself food packages. The trail towns are good. Shipping boxes ties you to post office hours and kills flexibility. If you want to skip a town or move your schedule, you’re stuck waiting for a package. Trust the grocery stores and gas station options as much as possible.
- Start with enough time. The trail is harder than many other long distance trails. Make sure you plan to have extra time, which will allow you to take a few zeroes to recover from potential injury, or explore some side quests.
- Afternoon thunderstorms . Every single day during monsoon season (July-August) these things are likely to roll in. Try to get off exposed ridgelines before noon, and check the clouds around you before heading up above tree line for a long stretch in the afternoon. People get struck by lightning in Colorado yearly — and it can be pretty petrifying.
- The San Juans will humble you. The western half of the trail through the San Juans is the hardest section. It’s spectacular, but long traverses at 13,000 feet in unpredictable weather can be stressful.
- Town hitches are part of the experience. Most CT resupplies require hitchhiking. This is normal, safe, and usually easy in Colorado’s outdoor-friendly towns. If you’ve never hitchhiked before, the CT is a great place to learn!
Hitchhiking the Colorado Trail
Hitchhiking is a core part of the Colorado Trail experience!
Is Hitchhiking Safe on the Colorado Trail?
Yes, with normal common sense. The CT passes through rural Colorado mountain towns and resort corridors. The people giving you rides are often outdoor enthusiasts, ranchers, and locals who’ve seen thru-hikers before. I’ve hitchhiked hundreds of miles in Colorado and have never had a bad experience (I am a white dude though, so I understand this can be more concerning for others. Can be great with a travel buddy. You can also avoid hitchhiking with some well-planned resupply boxes).
How to Hitchhike Effectively
- Stand at a visible pull-off. Drivers need somewhere safe to stop. Don’t stand on a blind curve or at the top of a hill. Find a spot where cars can see you coming and have room to pull over.
- Look approachable. A smiling face and visible hiking gear gets you much further than looking like you’re homeless. Hold your poles, look approachable, make eye contact, smile, and wave at each car as it approaches.
- A sign may help. “Hiker to [Town]” on a piece of notebook paper likely increases success rates. Drivers know immediately where you’re going and whether they can help.
- Know your hitchhike points before you get there. The CT hits major highways at predictable spots. Salida (Hwy 50), Buena Vista (Hwy 24), and Twin Lakes (Hwy 82) are easy hitches. More remote spots like Spring Creek Pass (Creede) require patience.
CT Hitchhike Difficulty by Section
| Hitch | Difficulty | Notes |
| Breckenridge (Hwy 9) | Easy | Ski resort town, lots of outdoor traffic, tons of pickups. Usually <15 min. |
| Twin Lakes (Hwy 82) | Easy | Busy weekend traffic toward Aspen and Leadville. Weekday mornings can be slower. |
| Buena Vista (Hwy 24) | Easy | BV is a very hiker-friendly town. High traffic volume on this road. |
| Salida (Hwy 50) | Easy | There’s a big parking lot, where you can usually talk with folks and secure a ride into town. |
| Spring Creek Pass to Creede | Harder | Remote highway, lower traffic. Patience required. Weekend traffic from Creede is better. |
| Stony Pass to Lake City | Moderate | Remote road. Plan for a longer wait to hitch into town. |
| Silverton (Hwy 550) | Moderate | Reasonable traffic. |
Getting to and from Trail
Eastern Terminus (Waterton Canyon, near Denver)
The eastern terminus is at Waterton Canyon, about 25 miles southwest of Denver. You should Lyft, or arrange a shuttle to the trailhead. The canyon itself is a wide dirt road for the first 6+ miles. And then it moves into a burn area that has long-ish water carries, and isn’t very scenic.
Western Terminus (Durango)
Durango is served by the Durango-La Plata County Airport with direct flights to Denver, Dallas, Phoenix, and a few other hubs. It’s a full-service city with good restaurants and a great celebration meal waiting at the end. Fly or drive back from here.
Gear Notes
- Rain and wind protection: The afternoon thunderstorms in Colorado are frequent, and will typically occur every afternoon during the main hiking season. You’ll definitely be hiking in rain at least some of the time, so will want a rain jacket that’s reliable. I use OutDry jackets, because they that literally cannot wet out. Standard DWR rain jackets fail in sustained downpours, which can happen in Colorado. Typically by the early evening hours, the storms have passed and you can dry out your gear (although there may be days-on-end with rain in some years).
- Insulation: A down puffy jacket, or a alpha direct fleece + wind jacket should be enough in the summer.
- Shoes: This trail is well groomed, so isn’t too bad on footwear. I use Hoka Challengers — very padded, light, flexible, and one pair is fine for the entire trail.
- Trekking poles: Highly recommended. It takes weight off of your body, so why not use them?!
2014 Gear List (first thru-hike)
2020 Gear List (COVID year, solar panel setup)
Trail Updates from the Trail
Below are the journal posts and emails I sent during both Colorado Trail hikes. The 2014 posts are from my first thru-hike. The 2020 posts document the COVID-era hike with very different logistics.