Coal Creek and Dry Creek trails had mostly wide and smooth fine gravel trail surface, with some pavement and roads throughout.
Not much foot traffic so you can pick up your speed and zone out.
We encountered a few trail closures both at the beginning and then towards the end. (Although the detour signs were not very clear, we were able to find our way.)
On a winter day, the trail was snow covered in shady areas and muddy in others (especially under one particular underpass where it was basically a giant mud pit!!).
The mountains in the distance were a lovely sight but the scenery between the trail and those mountains was industrial/not so lovely for stretches.
Do this ride if you want a flat and fast gravel trail ride on a non-technical surface with wide open views of the foothills, cows and prairie dogs.
We used the Mountain Bike Project web site to select these trails and we agree that both the Coal Creek Trail and Dry Creek Trail were correctly identified as beginner, double track mountain bike trails.
If you want even less pavement to gravel ratio, you could turn around about 1.5 miles sooner than we did. (I suspect more and more of this trail will get paved as the areas around it continue to develop, so enjoy the gravel while you can!)
Our Strava map has the beginning detour that we had to take, the downloadable GPX file is the original route without the detour.
If it has snowed or rained recently, it is probably a good idea to We forgot and our back sides got rather muddy and dirty. It would have been nice to have a towel for cleaning up and sitting on for the drive home too. Did we mention we got really dirty?
Interested in other winter gravel routes? Check out this blog post for a few others!
Laura & Rose
Laura Karpinski and Rose Barcklow are the creators of Gravel Bike Adventures. Click on the About page to learn more about them.
