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The Colorado Trail Foundation





The Colorado Trail is Colorado’s premier long-distance trail. Stretching almost 500 miles from Denver to Durango, it travels through the spectacular Colorado Rocky Mountains amongst peaks with lakes, creeks, and diverse ecosystems. Trail users experience six wilderness areas and eight mountain ranges topping out at 13,271 feet, just below Coney Summit at 13,334 feet. The average elevation is over 10,000 feet and it rises and falls dramatically. Users traveling from Denver to Durango will climb 89,354 feet.

Trail enthusiasts include hikers, horseback riders, and mountain bikers, many of whom report that they love the Trail.

The mission of The Colorado Trail Foundation is to provide and to maintain, through voluntary and public involvement, and in cooperation with the USDA Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, a linear, non-motorized, sustainable, recreation trail between Denver and Durango, Colorado. This trail will provide multi-day, inspirational, and educational values keyed to the diverse, high mountain, natural environment.

We care for The Colorado Trail. The Colorado Trail Foundation (CTF) is the organization that keeps the Trail in good condition. We organize the Volunteers who built The Colorado Trail and who continue to improve and maintain it. CTF Trail Crews are weekend to week-long summer Trail work efforts with a team of around twenty volunteers accomplishing Trail improvements. Adopt-A-Trail is our program where Volunteer Adopters and Helpers do annual maintenance on a particular segment. The Colorado Trail Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization funded almost entirely by private contributions. Our “Friends” are the giving people who volunteer and/or contribute

The vision of The Colorado Trail Foundation is:

  • To preserve the sense of community associated with the unique, high altitude experience achieved by participation in trail activities.
  • To support environmental education, to be a place for healing and self-renewal, and facilitate an appreciation for the value of natural systems.
  • To support multiple use, non-motorized, family recreation in a wide variety of unpopulated ecosystems.
  •  To maintain a cooperative effort that involves volunteers and promotes a sense of public ownership

Mountain trail building costs usually run $12,000 per mile. The Colorado Trail Foundation, with hundreds of volunteers, builds and maintains the CT at a cost of $500 per mile with most of the costs going toward feeding the volunteers. Your contribution will help fund this successful volunteer effort.