Colorado's Best Training Runs: Del Norte Area Trails

<h3 style="text-align: center;"> When you just want to get away from all the usual places, find a trail, and run your heart out...</h3>

The Stone Quarry Trail System puts you up-close-and-personal with running over sandstone. All photos by Alan Versaw.

It's been a while since I've done an edition of Colorado's best training runs, but the Del Norte Trails Organization recently invited me down to take a look at what they have.

As it turns out, they have a lot.

In addition to an honest-to-goodness small town setting where you could even take a spin around town and spend, if you chose well, most of your time on soft surfaces, the area around Del Norte is studded with publicly-accessible trails on US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management administered properties.

One of the local gems is known as the Middle Frisco Creek Trail. This one starts about 10 miles out of town (mostly south) at a large signed parking area for the trailhead. Leave town by the high school heading south on French Street. This becomes County Road 13 and, eventually, Forest Service Road 320.


Once you have arrived at the trailhead, the trail follows its namesake creek for a little over six miles, climbing from a starting elevation of 9000 feet to a little over 11,000 feet at Frisco Lake. And, yes, you will feel the burn as you climb. You will also feel the oxygen deprivation as you pass through cool aspen groves, open meadows, and spruce/fir forest along the way. 


If at any point you feel your body screaming that it has had enough, you can simply turn around and head back the way you came. Or, if you live a little more on the wild side and are prepared to deal with runs of 13+ miles at elevation, once you get to the lake, you can take a trail that traverses a little north and west to join the West Frisco Creek trail for your return (the trailhead where you bottom out is roughly a half-mile from your starting trailhead along a dirt forest service road).

Find a map for this route, and other local routes, at the Del Norte Trails Organization website linked above.

Although the stands of trees are dense enough to keep you mostly out of direct sun along the way, there are hazards to be aware of.

Bear and mountain lion frequent the area, making this a poor route to run solo unless you are confident and skilled in your ability to deal with dangerous megafauna. In any case, it's probably a good idea to make some noise as you go along. 

The trail has enough exposed rocks and tree roots to trip you up or tear up your ankles if you don't pick your lines carefully. So, pick those lines carefully and pay attention to what you're doing. The trail is not technical, but it does have hazards.

And, though the lower reaches of this trail are runnable in May of most years, you may not be able to reach the lake at the top until late June in some years. All this, of course, depends on winter and spring snow levels, and springtime and early summer temperatures.

A cooler-season trail option near Del Norte (also with a map provided on the Del Norte Trails Organization website) is the Stone Quarry Trail System. Note that I didn't say the Stone Quarry Trail. There truly is a network of trails here and it's probably best to carry some sort of map with you. As a rule, downhill and eastward is the way out, but you may not always find the trailhead at the bottom on your first attempt.

At the time of this writing, the trail system is not particularly well signed, so use good navigation skills as you proceed.


The Stone Quarry trail system ascends (and falls) over large, mostly flat, rock outcroppings for as many as several miles before reaching the namesake quarry from which the stone for many historic buildings in Del Norte, Monte Vista, and Alamosa was cut and extracted. You'll want to pause for a moment and contemplate the massive hole left in the ground as the trills of resident Rock Wrens reverberate off the walls of the quarry.

You might also feel inspired to pause and take in the view from time to time as the trail flirts with expansive rock outcroppings that yield panoramic views of the San Luis Valley. Those views will all be toward the north.

With all the trails that traverse this parcel of BLM land, you could easily run as few as four or five miles or as many as 20 miles. Bear and mountain lion probably aren't an issue here, but rattlesnakes and heat (late spring into summer) could be. Consider this a mostly spring and fall trail. If you run the trail during the summer, consider making this a very early start or a nice evening run. Take water with you if you plan to go more than four or five miles.


The trail system is accessed by driving about five miles east of Del Norte on US-160 before turning in a southwesterly direction on Rifle Range Road. The best parking is probably alongside the rifle range itself. Your outgoing trailhead is another 100 meters or so down the road on your right. The signage at the trailhead, as you can see in the photo above, is minimal at the time of this writing.


The trails rise and fall considerably but stay mostly within 200 feet either side of 8000 feet of elevation. If you are especially lucky or able to run with somebody in the know, you may even chance across some ancient rock art while you're out on these trails. Signs will remind you to leave the rock art intact and as you found it, but you shouldn't need the reminder.

There are other trails in the area as well. You could easily make Del Norte into a week-long trail running getaway.

As a caution about the trails listed on the Del Norte Trails Organization website, you probably do not want to try to run the main, inner Penitente Canyon Trail loop at Penitente Canyon Recreation Area--at least not while other visitors are parked at the trailhead. The trail is definitely not more than one person wide in spots and the probability of running into folks enjoying the loop at a slower pace too great to make this a good trail running option with other people in the canyon. There are, however, several trails in the larger Penitente Canyon Recreation Area that would make for excellent trail running.

Note as well that all of these trails are also used for mountain biking. Yield as needed and do all you can to make it a pleasant experience for bikers and runners alike.