Trails built to outlast us all.
Arrowhead Trails has been planning, designing and building sustainable natural surface trail out of Salida, Colorado since 1994 — for federal agencies, state parks, counties, towns, land trusts and private landowners across the West.
Every trail we design and build carries a standard one-year warranty.
Since 1994 Arrowhead Trails has consulted on, designed and/or constructed over 500 miles of natural surface, multiple-use trails in Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, Idaho, Arizona, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Wyoming and Kansas. Clients have included municipalities, counties, federal agencies, state parks, ski resorts, non-profit organizations, cattle ranches, land trusts, irrigation companies, river authorities and private landowners.
From the first flag to the last rake
We plan it, we map it, we design it, we build it, and we come back and check on it. One company, one standard, for the whole life of the trail.
Trail Layout & Design
The single most critical component of a sustainable trail. We flag and design the line first — grade, drainage and topography — because mistakes made on the flagging tape become a maintenance bill forever.
Learn moreSustainable Trail Construction
Full-bench natural surface trail, cut to a written specification and finished by hand. Machine-built where the ground allows, hand-built where it doesn’t — and every project carries a one-year warranty.
Learn moreTrail Reconstruction
Rutted, braided, fall-line trail that eats your maintenance budget every spring. We reroute what can’t be saved and rebuild the rest to a grade that sheds water on its own.
Learn moreTrail Master Plans
Full-colour, bid-ready master plans — site assessments, GIS maps, technical drawings and budget line items — so your board can fund it and your staff can build it.
Learn moreMaintenance Plans
An engineering stake log, photographs and GIS maps that tell your crew exactly what needs doing, where it is, how many hours it takes and what it costs to put out to bid.
Learn moreGIS & GPS Trail Mapping
Meticulous field data collection turned into full-colour maps — trail lengths, acreages, soil types, road and river frontage — laid over aerials, topo and ownership layers.
Learn moreCrew & Volunteer Training
One-day workshops or week-long intensives that leave your staff and volunteers able to build and maintain sustainable trail without us.
Learn moreAccessible & Crusher-Fine Trails
Surfaced trail built to meet the Americans with Disabilities Act Accessibility Guidelines — so the outdoors is open to everyone who wants to be out in it.
Learn morePump Tracks & Bike Parks
Rollers, berms and skills features shaped in native dirt. Public parks, school campuses and back yards — including the first pump tracks in Salida.
Learn moreTrail Consulting
Feasibility, funding strategy, specification review and a second opinion from people who have been doing this since 1994 — whether you are starting a trail program or already run a trail staff of twenty.
Learn moreA trail is a drainage structure that people walk on
Almost every failed trail we get called to fix failed for the same reason: water had nowhere to go. So we build to a written specification, and we check it with instruments rather than opinions.
- Average grade
- 8% maximum average trail grade in most soils
- Maximum grade
- 12% absolute maximum, checked with a clinometer
- Singletrack tread
- 18–24 inches wide
- Multi-use tread
- 4–6 feet wide
- Tread outslope
- 3–6%, checked with a digital level
- Backslope
- Constructed between a 1:1 and 2:1 ratio
- Drainage
- Rolling grade dips as the standard water drainage feature
- Corridor clearing
- Confined to within 2 feet of trail and backslope edges
- Slash
- Lopped and scattered to a maximum height of 18″; no debris within 20 feet of trail
- Loose rock
- Nothing over 3″ left in the tread; larger rock placed on the downslope side
- Woody material
- Stumps, logs and brush over ½″ removed from the tread
- Finish
- Hand raking and grading of tread, backslopes, spoils and water diversion structures
These are Arrowhead’s own published construction specifications. They vary slightly by site and by who the trail is for — on heavily ridden trails we’ll recommend leaving more protruding rock, which adds challenge and, more usefully, slows riders down where they meet hikers and horses.
The right tool for the side slope
Arrowhead Trails was the first private company in the world to specialise in SWECO-built trails for hikers, mountain bikers and equestrians. Machines get the bench cut fast and cheap where the ground allows it — and where it doesn’t, the crew finishes on foot.
On one private climb in Pagosa Springs the side slopes ran from 20% to 75%. We ran machines until the slope hovered around 65%, then built the rest of the mile — and its twenty-plus switchbacks — by hand.
Trail on the ground, from Kansas to Idaho
A hundred-plus projects for federal agencies, state parks, counties, towns, non-profits and private landowners. Here are six of them.
Federal
Falcon Trail & Farish Recreation Area
United States Air Force Academy
Municipal
Bobcat Ridge & Soapstone Prairie
City of Fort Collins Natural Areas
County
Douglas County Open Space & Trails
Douglas County, Colorado
State Parks
Curt Gowdy State Park
Wyoming State Parks, Historic Sites & Trails
Federal
Fern Creek & Lost Trail Creek Reconstruction
Creede OHV Club with the Divide Ranger District, Rio Grande National Forest
Non-Profit
Little Rainbow Trail
Salida Mountain Trails, with Southwest Conservation Corps & the BLM Salida District
Thirty-two years of dirt, photographed
Hundreds of photographs from Arrowhead projects — machines cutting bench, crews on hand tools, stone work, pump track berms and finished trail across ten states. Every one of them is a real Arrowhead job site.
A one-year warranty, and then some
Trails constructed and designed by Arrowhead Trails carry a standard one-year warranty. Very few contractors offer this — but when a trail is designed and built correctly it needs very little in its first several years, and only minor routine maintenance from then on.
We often check on our projects for several years after construction. That lets us see how the trail is holding up through its first seasons of use, and fix anything that shows up before it becomes a problem.
“Right the first time”
5 Google reviews · all five stars
“Arrowhead Trails has designed and constructed over 28 miles of soft-surface multi-use non-motorized trails for Douglas County Open Space in the last several years. The Arrowhead staff has an extraordinary talent to locate trails to maximize the experience for the trail users while minimizing impact on the land, earning them the nickname of the Michael Angelo of trails.”
“Even in difficult terrain, the trails have proven to be very sustainable with only minimal maintenance. Open Space considers Arrowhead Trails the only contractor with the skills to construct backcountry trails in a manner that is consistent with the land ethic of the County’s open space program.”
“Arrowhead Trails is a long time International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA) preferred partner. IMBA has very high standards with regard to sustainable, quality, natural surface trails. We literally wrote the book (IMBA Trail Solutions, How to Build Sweet Singletrack) on trail planning, design and construction. And Arrowhead was a significant contributor to Trail Solutions.”
“It was Arrowhead that provided the foundation and input in the development of our award winning, flagship program, the Subaru IMBA Trail Care Crew.”
“Arrowhead Trails is one of, if not the most competent trail designer and contractor of sustainable trails in the country. I know that any job that they do for me is going to be right the first time.”
“Super solid and talented company. Arrowhead Trails Inc. was Colorado’s first member of the Professional Trail Builders Association (PTBA) in 1995. They have been designing and building sustainable trails over three decades. Awesome company to work with!”
“Lee and his crew took on a challenging project, building a pump track in a backyard, and they killed it.”