Winter Park Mountain Biking – Part 1: trailriding near town

Winter Park is a town located an hour and a half or 67 miles west of Denver. It’s an amalgamation of two towns with a history based on logging, ranching and a railway tunnel. Then in 1948 the city of Denver decided to open a ski Resort (Winter Park Resort) just south of the town that then became the City of Winter Park. Winter Park itself sits at 9000ft so people unaccustomed to this elevation would be wise to take their time to acclimatize and not exert too much.

Our friend Greg Mazu, a resident and professional trail builder, has been encouraging us to come and visit for quite some time. We’re glad we did! His company Singletrack Trails has been involved in many projects in this area and throughout North America building and maintaining trails and we found that he’s rightfully proud of the diversity and density of trails; many of which are accessible right from town with minimal or no driving.

For an overview map of the area check out the Chamber of Commerce link here. Mountainbiking opportunities are represented by two bike parks – Trestle Bike Park at Winter Park Resort and Granby Ranch . Also in this area are 600 miles of Cross Country trails in 4 areas – Elk Creek/Fraser West, Idlewild, Fraser Valley and Granby XC area. We spent four days in this area and could have easily spent more. All these trail networks are supported by private landowners, Grand County and the towns of Winter Park, Fraser, Tabernash and Granby. The only thing that might perhaps have been lacking in proximate access to high alpine epics (Winter Park is surrounded by Wilderness which in a quirk of US lawmaking is verboten for bike access).

In our opinion, Winter Park's strength is remarkable access -ie trails which required little to no driving to access. And for those of us coming from sea level, we can only get so epic.

LOCAL WINTER PARK TRAILS - WINTER PARK WEST AKA TIPPERARY CREEK

We started exploring by riding from town on the area known as Tipperary Creek or Winter Park West Side. This area has civilized access via a nice grade of a climbing trail and a variety of both fast cruisy pedalling trails as well as some slow technical trails.

Kevin, Meara, Sharon, Greg and Weston joined us on our ride. Greg is carrying Weston so he can save Weston's paws on the slight downhill road cruise to dirt trailhead - Lee Lau photo 

Sundog Climb - Sharon Bader photo

Some fun optional play stunts on this two way trail - Lee Lau photo

Joining us on this ride was Greg, our good friend Kevin from Grand Junction and Meara. Meara is with the Headwater Trail Alliance, a non profit advocacy group dedicated to trails in the Winter Park Area. She does everything from grant writing to chainsawing out dead fall so watch out for her energy! This organization helps maintain 300 miles of trails in the Grand County area through Adopt-A-Trail programs, funding via USDA/Forest Service, BLM, Town of Winter Park, Fraser, Grand Lake, Chamber of Commerce, Grants, other public sources as well as Private Donations. Also joining us was Keith Sanders who owns a local bike shop (more on that below) and who is President of the local IMBA representative in the Grand Valley (GMBA – Grand Mountain Bike Alliance) who also helps with trail advocacy and various trail days.

Natural rock features on Akima’s way are probably left-overs from far gone glaciers. They’re incorporated into the trail as options- Lee Lau photo

Most Colorado close-to-town trails are neutered of technical challenge so it was surprising for us when we got to LeapFrog. This is a former social trail ie an unsanctioned trail that got adopted into the system. Good to see the town allow some challenge in the bike trails - Lee Lau photo.

The Winter Park West area is pretty much a perfect way to get a feel for the area and see the diversity of terrain and trail choices particularly for sea-dwellers looking to acclimatize. There’s an interesting discussion in the TGR Forums about Biketown USA and Canada concerning the best cities to live in for MTB in North America. .I’d have to say that based on even this first taste of local trails Winter Park wins in terms of proximity; literally within 5 minutes pedal of town you are on a legitimate singletrack of a decent size. Winter Park also wins in terms of diversity. The trails were interesting. The tech trails in particular demanded concentration and attention albeit without having the are-you-going-to-tomahawk nature of our home North Shore/Whistler trails

Take D' Leap - an additional trail linking back to town - Lee Lau photo

Winter Park Strip with snow blanketing the 13000ft peaks- Lee Lau photo

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Stats

LOCAL WINTER PARK TRAILS - Yankee Doodle and Arrow areas

The Yankee Doodle and Arrow areas are E and N of Winter Park.  A shockingly long pedal of road pedalling of 50m from Hideaway Park (just contiguous to the Hideaway Brewery) brings you to the trailhead where you can start climbing singletrack.  After a pleasant ramble up the climb you get up to a plateau where you can either head back to town or you can get into the Arrow Forest Service trail networks.  These networks are well signed and used by many people in the weekend.  They are also bi-directional so speeds can get high  in the twisty-turny singletrack (fun!) so keep your heads up for other users.

Greg Mazu of Singletrack Trails built Yankee Doodle - Lee Lau photo

View towards town and toward the ski hill to the south - Lee Lau photo

Ride down Arrow was fun and fast- Lee Lau photo

Final descent back to beer! - Lee Lau photo

Where to stay and where to get bikes

During our four days we stayed at the Timber Run condos in the Vista Building. This was booked through Stay Winter Park. It was well stocked if you want to cook. Ours was an older one bedroom unit with minimal bike storage but with the ability to keep bikes on the balcony. It’s an out of the way complex so we felt like it wouldn’t be prey to much break and enters. Timber Run is about 1 mile from downtown Winterpark so it’s nice to have a car, but you could bike to two of the mountain bike areas from the town. 

Apparently in the winter season the Winter Park Resort Shuttle does run to this area but not so in the summer.

Beaver Sports Shop is the place to go to get quality bike rentals. For our trip I was on a Trek Remedy and Lee was on a Trek Fuel. Skyler and Keith set us up well and we had a great time on these exceptionally well-maintained bikes. 

Keith (the shop owner and GMBA president, his son, and Skyler (the head mechanic) - Lee Lau photo