Hermit Park to Homestead Meadows

Hermit Park is the newest public open space in Estes Park. There is a new connector trail from there to Homestead Meadows, which is in the National Forest, that allows Mountain Bikes. Homestead Meadows has always been one of the coolest areas around Estes Park to bike, but it has been way to difficult to get in there. You could either go in through Pearson Park - which is the loosest, rockiest, not fun descent you can imagine, or you could go in via Lion's Gulch, which is an incredible difficult mostly hike-a-bike trail. Great for hiking, but not so great for biking.

Now with the new Hermit park trail, it is much easier to get into that great area. Don't get me wrong, the Hermit Park connector trail isn't easy, but it is almost all bike-able and it is relatively short. After 1.5 miles of single track, there is a good sized climb on a good Jeep Road. You can the take a left towards the saw mill and there is a cool looking single track behind some of the homesteads. I only rode it about 3/4 of a mile and turned around because the trail started down and Kate was waiting, but it was really nice single track. The meadow loop has a mile or so of nice single track. There is another mile or so of great single track at the top of the Lion's gulch trail. There are many miles of great double track on the forest roads exploring all the homesteads. Without trying too hard there are probably about 15 miles of great trails & jeep roads. If you are adventurous and have a generous definition of trail, there is is enough for many days of riding/exploring. One of the issues though is the area has had so little use over the last 50 years that many of the old roads and trails are disappearing.

Mostly it was really cool to be back on the mountain bike. I have been on the road bike so much this year (about 5000 miles so far) that I had forgotten about the other. I biked 30 miles or so over 2 days in the Hermit Park, Homestead Meadows & Pearson Park areas and saw 1 other mtn biker and maybe a dozen hikers total. It was also great fun biking with Kate with her new fitness. This was her 1st time on the mountain bike in a while, and the new fitness really paid off. She was doing big climbs with no issue and even riding difficult technical trails.

More pictures can be found here.