STEAMBOAT SPRINGS – It’s 10 a.m. on a sunny September Saturday at 10,000 feet on Rabbit Ears Pass and Laraine Martin, executive director of Steamboat Springs’ trails advocacy group Routt County Riders, wipes the sweat off her brow. It’s only 60 degrees or so, but she’s moving a lot of dirt.
She’s here on National Public Lands Day, along with a cadre of volunteers and a handful of U.S. Forest Service employees, as part of a workday on Bruce’s Trail, a wintertime Nordic trail, marking the groundbreaking of the new Mad Rabbit trail system just west of the Continental Divide off U.S. 40. The group is working on a user-friendly flow trail off Bruce’s, using hand tools to establish a flat traverse across the slope.
“Words can’t really describe how good it feels to actually be clearing corridor and moving dirt,” Martin said. “It brought tears to my eyes. There is a deep sense of satisfaction in knowing that years of work are finally paying off, and priceless trail experiences are going to be provided for a variety of users.”
The Mad Rabbit trails project dates to 2013, when local voters approved Steamboat’s 2A Trails ballot measure dedicating funds from an existing 1% lodging tax — estimated to eclipse $5 million — to help fund trail-building projects over the ensuing 10 years. Among 46 trail-related project proposals within 30 miles of town, the Mad Rabbit project was nominated as a frontrunner for the trail funds.
“It’s the last jewel in a string of projects outlined in the 2A program and will offer great access and take traffic away from other high-use areas like Buffalo Pass,” said Martin, who credits Mad Rabbit to a joint effort including local trail nonprofits, the city of Steamboat Springs, the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
But the process hasn’t always been as smooth as the trails they’re building. Saturday’s volunteer day marks the end of an eight-year process that often saw two sides at odds: those wanting more trails for recreation versus those fearing the trails’ encroachment on wildlife. All along, the Forest Service has worked to balance the need to conserve and minimize the impact to wildlife and its habitat with the area’s growing recreational needs.
Part of that balance involves reclaiming old rogue trails to limit traffic through elk habitat while concentrating new trails already impacted habitat closer to the highway. Across the state, land managers are grappling with illegally built trails as recreational users push farther into the backcountry.
Martin said different techniques suit different zones for closing and rehabbing pirate trails and deploying those strategies is largely up to the Forest Service.
“All of the trails marked for closure are catalogued in the final decision, and as far as how those will be phased, that’s Forest Service prioritization and timing,” she said. “Some trails will need physical barriers to entry and exit points, such as slash piling, and others might have more active restoration occurring along the tread surface, like chopping up dirt, seeding or installing check dams to stop soil movement on steep, washed-out sections.”
Closing 36 miles of user-created rogue trails
Routt County Riders, the Forest Service and other volunteers rehabbed rogue trails on nearby Buffalo Pass as they built new singletrack years ago and now they’re doing the same atop Rabbit Ears. In all, they’ll rehab and close about 36 miles of “user-created” trails to preserve habitat in the Mad Rabbit project.
Closing these rogue trails isn’t the only thing they’re doing to preserve wildlife areas. The new trail network has also been scaled back considerably from its original proposal, decreasing wildlife impact by maximizing habitat connectivity — concentrating trails within 1 mile of U.S. 40 and existing day-use areas or campgrounds. Sprawling undisturbed areas in the Long Park Colorado Roadless Area are not seeing any trails. The new trails are projected to ease traffic on popular wilderness area trails in the nearby Mount Zirkel, Flattops and Sarvis Creek wilderness areas.
Located on the north side of U.S. 40, the final Forest Service approval includes 49 miles of new trails accessed from the West Summit of Rabbit Ears Pass — all within a habitat area the Forest Service said is already compromised by the highway. The system will include connectors on Rabbit Ears Pass from Ferndale to Fox Creek and Bruce’s Trail, as well as one from the West Summit to Dumont Lake and an alternate track paralleling a portion of the Continental Divide Trail. The added trails are also being aligned to minimize impacts to sensitive forest areas, with seasonal closures in certain areas to protect the elk calving season.
Forest Service District Ranger Michael Woodbridge in his 2024 approval of the project said “the purpose of this trail project is to proactively manage a diverse, sustainable trail system on the Forest, while also minimizing impacts to other resources such as wildlife.”
After several years of planning and study, it all came to fruition on Saturday when volunteers finally put shovel and hoe to dirt on Bruce’s Trail to officially kick the project off.
“It went awesome,” said Marin, who recruited 24 volunteers to work on the project. “We did ‘dirt finishing work’ along the tread surface, cleaning up after the excavator passed through, removing additional roots and loose rock and tamping it all down.” The first trails, she added, are expected to be open for riding in summer 2026.