Mountain Biking Segment 7 of the Colorado Trail in Frisco, Colorado
I’ve been living in Summit County for a few years now, but I had never completed Segment 7 of the Colorado Trail which goes from a trailhead by Copper Mountain, over the Tenmile Range, and ends in Frisco. We technically did not do all of Segment 7 as we ended up turning onto the Peaks Trail to bike back to downtown Frisco instead of going over Gold Hill, which would have added some more elevation gain.
We started out early in the morning to beat the summer heat and parked in one of the Copper Mountain parking lots near the Wheeler Trailhead. We knew the first ~5 miles were going to be a steep uphill on a bike. This definitely turned out to be the case, and we found ourselves walking quite a bit. One would need to be in phenomenal bike shape to ride the whole first 5 uphill miles. We gained 2000 vert in the first 2.8 miles according to my watch. Once we got above tree line on the way up, we got some great views of Copper, the rest of the Tenmile Range (including Crystal and Pacific Peaks), and of the Gore Range. Views were pretty in every direction. We started at the elevation of 9,750 ft at the trailhead and topped out at 12,500 ft between Peaks 5 and 6. If you’ve skied Breckenridge, we were very close to the top of the Kensho Superchair.
At this point, we opened our shocks and got ready for the descent. This trail is rated a black diamond on MTB Project and I would agree with that rating. There are quite a few technical sections, especially in the beginning of the descent. We headed down and took in the beautiful views of Breckenridge and Lake Dillon along the way. After some time, we hit the Peaks Trail and took a left to head towards Frisco. We took this trail all the way back in to town where we had parked a second car to make it a shuttle. We were a little pressed for time which is why we did it this way. Had we had another hour, we would have just taken one car and ridden the paved rec path that parallels I-70 back to our car at Copper. In total the ride was 14.3 miles with 2,760 ft of vert. It ended up taking us a little longer than expected because we found ourselves walking our bikes more than we thought we would on the uphill. Even though I walked my bike a lot, I really enjoyed this ride. There were moments on the way up where I wished I were just hiking instead of hiking a bike, but the way down was a lot of fun on a bike. The views for most of the hike/bike were beautiful and make this one of my favorite hikes in Frisco. Maybe I’ll trail run it next time? :)
