Riding the Centennial Trail out of Woodland Park, CO.

We loaded the van and took the trikes, to Woodland Park, there's a trail that goes along Hwy. 67 to the Manitou Lake Picnic Grounds. Never knew it had a "name" but after we parked the van at the Visitor Rest Area, we took back streets towards Hwy. 67 and found an actual "Trail head" and found it's called the Centennial Trail. It's a 16 mile RT with a few short but steep hills. The views are great but the trail isn't in the best condition! There's a 2.5 to 3 mile stretch that is really BAD!! There are constant, 3-6 in. wide and 6 inch deep crevasses the whole width of the trail!! Well with our "non-suspension" trikes we had to constantly slow to a crawl and it totally killed any momentum for up coming inclines! It was ROUGH and added 1-hr. each way to the total time to ride the trail.

The first part is great, it's thru the actual town of Woodland Park, once you get past the Really BAD part it's still rough but it's rideable and as stated before the views make it worth the PAIN! MLPG is a State run area so they "charge" to use the facilities but bikes/trikes are only $3.00 and the gate guard only charged us $3.00 for both of us! After using the restroom and eating a couple of cliff bars we headed back, yes, thur the bad sections again and there's more HILLS on the return. I'm so happy I switched out my stock 38tooth single front chain wheel for a 32tooth single chain wheel, that gave me a 32-32 gear combo for climbing, LOL, in the old days that 1 to 1 ratio was considered "Alpine Gearing" but in Modern MTB terms that's not much!! JoLynn was getting really tired, but my switching her triple from a 52/39/30 to a 44/32/22 and a 11x34 cassette made so she only had to walk the trike up one short/steep hill due to loss of "traction" due to sand on the asphalt trail!!

If you've got suspension or bigger wheels, it's probably no biggie but it was a struggle for our 20 in. wheeled non-suspension trikes! 85F, Sunny, breezy to windy.

 

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BTW, just to give you an idea of how ROUGH it really was for us, we BOTH popped the chain off the front chain wheel, that's never happened before!! :O