The Mount Sanitas Trail will undergo a multiyear restoration project starting in June as one in a series of trail maintenance efforts, the city of Boulder announced this week.
The trail at Sanitas, in northwest Boulder, “is quite honestly falling apart because of overuse,” said Jim Reeder, trails and facilities manager for the Open Space and Mountain Parks division.
“As people walk up there, the soil erodes beneath the rocks that support the trail,” Reeder said. “We believe that if we do the maintenance right, we will be able to restore the trail to something that will last a long, long time.”
Boulder hasn’t tracked visitor data at Sanitas in about a decade, Reeder said, but is in the process of collecting data to better understand the degree to which the area is threatened by heavy use.
The Sanitas Trail project, which is expected to begin in June, will remain open during repairs. The city has not announced an end date for the work but called it “a multiyear effort.”
Sanitas is as consistently jammed as any open space in the city, save for Chautauqua Park, which has repairs upcoming, in addition to a potential pilot program aimed at easing issues of visitor crowding.
The main trailhead at the park, which winds up the Chautauqua meadow toward the Flatirons, will be reconstructed and realigned in spots, with work slated to begin in late April and conclude in July.
In total, the city expects to spend $1.7 million on the latest batch of flood-related trail projects.
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