The Best Hiking Trails in Colorado Springs

What a glorious view! We were in town for a friend's wedding and one of our must-do's was coming here! It's unbelievable that this park is free as it has so much to offer. Various rock formations, beautiful landscapes, abundant trails for every level, and an overall great nature experience. The visitor's center is a great resource. Enthusiastic rangers and staff greeted us and educated us on the park. It also has a cool interactive map (like in Hunger Games lol) that shows all the destinations within the park. They have a desk to schedule Segway and horseback tours as well. There are plenty of parking lots for different sites and trail heads.

Any open space that allows me to let my dog off leash automatically gets five stars. I love that Colorado is such a dog friendly state. I've been here a couple of times, dog free, and noticed that they have an off leash dog area to the right as you're walking up the main trail on the left side of the parking lot. The regular hiking for humans has some really cool scenic views, and varying degrees of difficulty on the trails, but today I came here with my pup and his doggy friend to give the off leash area a try. There is a small lower loop and a little bit bigger upper loop of fairly easy trails.

Competed/participated in a 6 hour trail run/race Saturday the 24th of February. Thank you so much for the State Park opening up for the event. I was told other parks declined to issue a permit for the runners. The park was a great place to hold a winter time ultra trail event. I'm kind of porky so the 6 hour race was my limit after not training too much over the winter. There were also 15 and 30 hour events ongoing but I'm not enough of a stud to compete in this kind of stuff. Anyway, the park had great campsites, large flat tent pads, nice tables, power and running water. Large fire pits and clean restroom facilities were also evident. The trails were in good shape while frozen.