The Colorado Trail, 10th Edition

By Colorado Trail Foundation

Book Overview

The official guidebook for hiking, bicycling, or horseback riding on the Colorado Trail

Completely revised guide to the Colorado Trail, the premier scenic long trail in North America Updated maps of every segment showing access points, key trail intersections, and more Current details on new trail reroutes, trail town amenities, and wilderness bicycle detours

The Colorado Trail is considered by many to be the most beautiful "long trail" in the world. Spanning 486 miles from the Denver suburbs to Durango, Colorado--plus 80 miles of the Collegiate West addition--the trail passes through six national forests and six wilderness areas, traverses five major river systems, and crosses eight mountain ranges.

The tenth edition of The Colorado Trail has all the information a day hiker, thru-hiker, mountain biker, or equestrian needs to plan and complete a trip on the Colorado Trail. Written descriptions for all 28 segments of the trail, plus 5 segments of the Collegiate West, have been updated throughout the guide. The guidebook includes updated amenities in each trail town for resupply, shopping, and lodging, as well as current details on wilderness detours for bikepacking routes.

Each chapter provides essential logistical information for the Colorado Trail day hiker or thru-hiker: trailhead directions; road access points; detailed trail descriptions including distance and elevation gain; color maps and elevation profiles; and information on water sources, campsite locations, and resupply towns.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1937052893
• ISBN13: 9781937052898
• Release Date: January 2024
• Publisher: Colorado Mountain Club
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.2" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Very helpful guidebook

Some friends and I are planning our thru hike of this trail this summer, and this guidebook was amazingly helpful. It details where nearly all water sources are as well as offering suggestions for food, showers, campsites, and all other necessary amenities. The maps provided are helpful but I'm still planning on buying the set of full topos for the trip to understand the topography of the trail better. This book is fairly heavy to pack on the trail, but I think I'll still probably bring it because of its turn by turn details of the trail, scenery, and what to look and watch for along your trek. Overall a fabulous guidebook and I would strongly encourage anyone planning a thru hike of this trail to get this book.

Co. Trail

The book overall was helpful when hiking for the first time in some areas but some descriptions were contradictory

Outstanding - Highly recommended

Get this book. You won't find a better Guidebook. I have numerous Guidebooks from several publishers and authors and I haven't seen anything better. The book includes sections on planning your trip, the heritage, natural history and geology of the Colorado Trail. The book provides a tremendous amount of information. A great deal of effort went into the organization and layout of the information in the book. The individuals that were responsible for making this book available should take tremendous pride in a job very well done. Note that this book is bigger and heavier than many other Guidebooks because of the great color photographs. I consider this to be a plus. This is a beautiful Guidebook. My other Guidebooks for the most part all have black & white photographs. They all pale in comparison to this beautiful book.

Now with GPS waypoints/coordinates

The new 6th edition comes with latitude, longitude, and elevation for each of the main waypoints and intersections along each of the segments.

Nice but missing a few things

I agree with all of the positive points of the first review. The only things that are missing, which I think are important, is that on the book's maps none of the coordinates are given for the trail. Waypoints would be excellent information so that you can map it on your own Topo! software without having to buy something else in addition to the book.