COLORADO SPRINGS — Hikers and bikers on the popular Palmer-Red Section 16 loop west of Colorado Springs might have noticed a lower stretch of the trail recently got a lot smoother.
Last weekend, volunteers with Medicine Wheel Trail Advocates built 1,000 feet of trail and a new entrance off High Drive, work that was done surprisingly fast after discovery of an old trail bed, purportedly built by crews working for Gen. William Jackson Palmer, Colorado Springs’ founder.
The trail makes a 7-mile loop from the Section 16 trailhead, up a mountainside, across a wide canyon and onto High Drive, a one-way road, currently closed to traffic, that returns to Lower Gold Camp Road.
Jim Schwerin of Medicine Wheel said the final stretch connecting with High Drive ran steeply downhill, resulting in erosion that had lowered it 5 feet below the original grade in spots. It probably was once a road to a Boy Scout camp farther up the valley. The organization got approval from city parks officials to relocate the trail.
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