is an approximately 470-mile trail leading from Denver to Durango, Colorado. It passes through 6 designated Wilderness Areas and is on National Forest lands for most of the route. Elevations range from 5520’ at the start southwest of Denver to 13,334’ in the San Juan Mountains.
Since I don’t have the approx. 6 weeks available to hike the trail straight through, I’m working on it a section at a time over several (OK, many!) years. So far I have completed about 150 miles of the trail, including the first 60 miles southwest of Denver. Unlike most people, I’m planning on completing the entire trail in out-and-back hikes, so that means that hiking the entire trail will take me over 940 miles to complete.
I can hike about the first 2/3 of the trail on day or weekend hikes, but the driving distance after that is too long from Denver to do weekend trips. I’m guessing that 3 week-long backpacking trips will be necessary to do the last ~150 miles to Durango.
