It’s Slacker Hour at on a hot Tuesday afternoon. Only a few people are seated at the Boulder brewery’s wooden tables, and despite the hour’s moniker, at least one of them has earned their beer.
Martin Mapes sits at a table near the back, backpack propped up on the stool next to him as he sips a pint of J Wells Amber Ale. Like most days when he ends up at J Wells, Mapes got here by foot, walking about half an hour in the June heat along the Boulder Ale Trail. The ale trail is Mapes’s own creation, though he dislikes taking too much credit for the idea. All he did, he said, was make the connection between all the breweries sprouting up in the Boulder and Longmont areas and their close proximity to the Longmont-Boulder Regional Trail.
Thus, the idea for the Boulder Ale Trail — an unofficial extension of the Lo-Bo Trail that passes 10 breweries on the way from Boulder to Longmont — was born.
“I knew I wasn’t going to actually make a profit on this. And I don’t own the trail. I don’t own a brewery,” said Mapes, 46, a web developer in Boulder. “But isn’t the world a better place if there is something like this and people know about it?”
Mapes launched in January as a guide for others looking to bike, walk or run along the 15-mile trail. In April, he started calling around to see if breweries wanted to sponsor the site, half-hoping no one would be interested.
“If it was going to fail, I wanted it to fail early and quietly,” Mapes said with a laugh.
He did not get his wish.
The ale trail now has four sponsoring breweries all along the trail. A few weeks ago he printed off his first batch of pamphlets advertising the trail, and he plans to distribute them in Boulder and Longmont and at the breweries.
Todd Straka, who manages and is friends with Mapes, helped design the pamphlets and gave Mapes some advice about rolling out the website and social media feeds. A member of the Runner’s Roost road running team, Straka says the trail is a good idea and hopes to organize a group run along the path this summer.
“I think there’s a place for it for sure. Running and drinking is always a great combination, a great pairing,” he said, though he noted most runners like to drink after they run, not during.
Walking the entire 15-mile trail from Boulder to Longmont would take about six hours (stops at breweries not included).
But given the amount of breweries along the way, the trail is ideal for , hit a brewery or two and then walk back.
The trail itself is almost completely flat, and the scenery alternates between suburban and rural. The path winds its way through housing subdivisions, past a disc golf course and through a field where prairie dogs scurry through the grass as airplanes from nearby Boulder Airport fly overhead. And there are almost no cars to be seen.
The ale trail site has now been live for about six months, and though he has no numbers to back it up, Mapes thinks the idea may be catching on.
A few weeks ago, he saw a group of about 10 people at and then spotted them again two stops up the trail at .
“I never saw that until this year,” Mapes said.
Will Kropp, who handles sales and marketing for J Wells Brewery, said he thinks the trail is a good idea, not only in terms of business, but because it joins the breweries in the area.
In Fort Collins, the breweries often do events together, but in the Boulder area, most of the breweries put on their own events, he said.
“Everyone kind of flies solo here,” Kropp said.
“There’s nothing where no one is the headliner and everyone is just part of it.”
Mapes hopes more people will use the trail this summer, but what continues to draw him to the ale trail is neither the trail nor the ale. Instead, it’s the chance to get out of the house and put all his energy into one simple task.
“It’s about turning everything else down or off and focusing on something you know you can do,” he said.
Jessica Iannetta: 303-954-1510, jiannetta@denverpost.com twitter.com/JessicaIannetta
