3 new sections of the Eagle Valley Trail are now open
Chris Dillmann/Vail Daily
Even with a bit of rain, Bike to Work Day provided a good time to celebrate the opening of three more segments of the Eagle Valley Trail.
The Wednesday celebration featured a small bike parade, mostly with longtime supporters of the years-long project. The segments opened Wednesday included EagleVail, Dowd Junction and a connector into Minturn.
Roughly $3 million in community support is needed to complete the final, most complex portion of the Eagle Valley Trail, go to eaglevalleytrail.org.
Two of those segments posed some real challenges due to terrain. Kevin Sharkey, the trail program manager with the county’s ECO Trails department, said the work required close cooperation with the Colorado Department of Transportation.
In a release, Sharkey said the state department had to reduce lane widths on U.S. Highway 6 to accommodate the trail.
Avoiding harm to the river
Trail designers Otak Inc. had to avoid negative impacts to the Eagle River, and steep, narrow terrain. Buried utilities posed still other challenges.
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The Eagle River Water & Sanitation District was a key partner with the project in the Dowd Junction area. The district in 2020 began replacing an aerial sewer main crossing the Eagle River.
Design work began with a utility bridge to support the replacement pipe, but during discussions with other stakeholders, that design evolved into a bridge that could accommodate cyclists and pedestrians, which could help extend the Eagle Valley Trail.
A second phase replaced another aerial sewer main that crossed the Eagle River in Dowd Junction. That main was hung from a new utility bridge just upstream from the Gore Valley Trail bridge.
The third phase wrapped up this spring and included the new Eagle Valley Trail segment from Dowd Junction to the pedestrian bridge that was completed in 2021 near the County Road leading into Minturn.
That’s an example of the cooperation needed in the years-long effort to build the trail that, when finished, will allow cyclists, pedestrians and others to travel off the highway between Breckenridge and Aspen.
Sharkey said one result of getting these three segments finished will be fewer cyclists and pedestrians on busy roads, improving safety for those users and motorists.
Out on the ride, Tim Thompson said he’s impressed with the just-opened trail segments.
“This segment that was just opened up is incredibly beautiful,” Thompson said. “I was in Squaw Valley, and this is prettier.”
Opening access to Minturn
Minturn Mayor Earle Bidez said he was “very happy” to see the trail segments open, adding it could be the start of a more extensive trail system into and through the town.
The Minturn connector trail was a more straightforward piece of the Eagle Valley Trail puzzle, but it does run through critical winter habitat for the valley’s dwindling elk population, so it will have to close in the winter.
With Wednesday’s triple ribbon-cutting, only one segment of the trail remains, but it’s lengthy, complicated and expensive.
That 7.5-mile segment runs from Horn Ranch, in the middle of Red Canyon, to Edwards.
Great Outdoors Colorado, which is funded by Colorado Lottery proceeds, recently provided the project with a $7 million grant. Another $3 million in community contributions is needed.
The trail segment was already going to be complicated, but it’s become even more so in the past several months.
Complications have come in a few areas. A new design may be needed to get around the Colorado Department of Transportation’s maintenance yard at Wolcott. Instead of running the trail between U.S. Highway 6 and the yard, it may be necessary to put the trail between the yard and the Eagle River.
The owners of the ditch between Wolcott and Cordillera may ask the county to pay to install a pipe to replace the open ditch in that area.
The biggest complication may be a portion of the trail that crosses open space owned by Cordillera.
Sharkey Wednesday said he and other officials are still working through those complications, but he remains optimistic.
“We’ve got a couple of options” for the trail alignment, he said.
Combining the financial and logistical hurdles, the entire 63-mile trail could be ready for a marathon celebration in 2025.
