Colorado has a new badge of honour for long-distance hikers: the Great Colorado Route, a 1,700-mile loop stitching together the best of the state's mountains and public lands. It's the brainchild of Donovan “Iceman” Rice, an experienced thru-hiker who has already ticked off the Pacific Crest, Continental Divide and Eastern Continental trails — and who just became the first person to complete his own creation, finishing in 141 days.
The numbers are eye-watering. The loop summits 47 of Colorado's 13,000-foot peaks and 13 fourteeners, and passes through three national parks, two national monuments, 29 wilderness areas and all 11 of the state's national forests. Rice started and finished at Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, which anchors the western end of the loop.
This is emphatically not a beginner's walk. The core route leans on existing trails across public land but includes high routes with technical scrambling, and the official site is blunt about its ambitions: lower-difficulty alternates and bad-weather bypasses exist, but the route itself is aimed at the most adventurous and self-sufficient hikers. Rice has described it as a “scramble-heavy, beauty-first loop” around the state. Navigation, route-finding and solid alpine experience are prerequisites, not nice-to-haves.
The practical upside for everyone else: the route is divided into 32 sections that can be tackled individually. A fit thru-hiker should budget around four months for the full loop, but a week-long holiday on a single section — say a national park stretch or a cluster of wilderness areas — is far more realistic for most travellers. Rice also plans to refine parts of the route now that he's seen it on the ground, so it's worth checking the official website for updates before committing to any given segment.
Why should a regular traveller care? Because Colorado already has famous named routes like the Colorado Trail, and the GCR essentially draws a giant line connecting the state's greatest hits into one continuous itinerary. Even if you never attempt the whole thing, using its section breakdown as a planning tool is a smart way to build a hiking holiday around real, tested terrain rather than guesswork.
Full details, maps and section guides live on the Great Colorado Route's website.
