Rainbow Trail (CO)

Colorado, US

Distance

102.9 mi

Cory Linfield posted the trail:

The Rainbow Trail is one of the longer hiking trails in Colorado, after the Colorado Trail and the Colorado section of the CDT. It runs roughly parallel to the Sangre de Christo mountains in the South Central part of the state, starting at one end south of Westcliffe and at the other end south west of Salida, forming an upside-down J. The trail is roughly 100 miles long with around 24,000 ft of gain according to a TOPO! map of the route.

GPS Track

Rainbow_Trail_100_FKT_all.gpx1.97 MB

FKTs

Standard route

Male

Supported
Cory Linfield			1d 6h 58m 38s	2014-07-14

Female

Supported
Rachel Merling			1d 14h 1m 15s	2023-09-03

This route on the old FKT site

http://fastestknowntime.proboards.com/thread/536/rainbow-trail

Comments

A friend (Ross Webb) and I will be attempting to break the FKT for Rainbow trail (Male - Supported - Standard Route) in early September of this year (2020). We will be using a Garmin inReach Explorer to track our progress and will provide the tracking info to the FKT site managers to help verify the effort. We will also be tracking the effort through the GPS on our Garmin watches which will be uploaded to Strava.

Bear Creek to CR 108 – Closed due to flash flood damage
just a heads up.

Haha, not sure why it posted like that. just thought you might want to know about the trail closure before you get all the way to Salida.

Thanks for the heads up! There is a section that is washed out between Ducket and Hayden THs too (3 miles up Wolf Creek). I ran through it twice...definitely able to navigate it, but the trail is harder to find than other areas. I did not realize there was also a trail closer for flooding above Bear Creek. Tried to do a lot of research, but obviously missed that. Will do our best to navigate that on the fly. May go out and do a bit of scouting early this week to see what we are dealing with.

Found this article: https://www.themountainmail.com/free_content/article_be687366-d2d6-11ea-a3b1-0718c024e25c.html says that it is only closed to wheeled traffic. Will make that 6-mile section harder, but we should be good to go...thanks again!

Not sure if you did the trail yet but it is closed to All Users between FSR 101 and 108. It's closed to all users between FSR 108 and 124 between 8/31 - 9/3, 9/8 - 9/11, 9/21 - 9/24, 9/28 - 10/1, 10/5 - 10/8, 10/12 - 10/15 and 10/19 - 10/22 due to heavy machinery performing maintenance. Contact the Salida Ranger District at 719-539-3591

On 9/2/23, I will be attempting the Rainbow Trail to establish the women's FKT on the standard route, supported.
I will be carrying a Garmin InReach with Mapshare link: https://share.garmin.com/Rmerling and password: RainbowFKT!

I will also be recording this effort on my Garmin, which will later be uploaded to Strava.

Well, I managed to complete the trail except for one small section (~4 miles) off CR 40 due to an unforeseen trail closure. This doesn't technically meet the requirements for the FKT record, but I wanted to share my Strava link for additional info in the event someone else plans to do this trail in the future.

Here is the correct link to my strava activity.

https://www.strava.com/activities/9781130272

Route: Rainbow Trail (CO)

FKTs

Comments