Cascade Is Getting Its Sidewalk. The Rest of the Ute Pass Trail Still Isn't Designed.

Drive through Cascade this month and you'll see orange cones where Fountain Avenue meets Highway 24, curb forms going in along Chipeta Park Road, and a stretch of shoulder that's been dug up for drainage work. If you assumed this wrapped up over the summer, you're not alone. Spring news coverage described the segment going in "this summer." It isn't finished. The concrete work is expected to run into December, which means the disruption on Chipeta Park Road is a fall and early-winter fact of life, not a memory.

What's actually landing by December is narrower than the "Ute Pass Trail is finally happening" version of this story you may have already heard. This segment closes the walk between Cascade and Green Mountain Falls. It does not close the gap to Manitou Springs, and that gap hasn't even been designed yet. Two different projects, two different timelines, and knowing which one you're looking at when you see construction signs matters if you're trying to plan around it.

What Lands By December

El Paso County Parks is building a mile-and-a-half concrete segment starting at a new trailhead off Spring Street, right at the stoplight where Fountain Avenue meets Highway 24 in Cascade. From there it follows Chipeta Park Road up toward Ute Pass Elementary, tying into trail sections that already connect Green Mountain Falls to the Teller County line.

The scope tells you something the word "trail" doesn't. This is being built with:

• Curb and gutter installation
• Retaining walls
• Drainage improvements
• Tree removal along the public right-of-way

That's road-project vocabulary, not gravel-path vocabulary, and the funding matches it. The segment carries a $3 million price tag, with the Colorado Department of Transportation covering $2.4 million and El Paso County Parks contributing just over $600,000. A separate $2.5 million grant from Great Outdoors Colorado is funding several recreation projects across the Pikes Peak region, and roughly $200,000 of that pool is going specifically toward this trailhead.

Jason Meyer, who has overseen the Ute Pass Trail project for El Paso County Parks since 2009, put the practical case plainly to the Denver Gazette:

"Folks no longer have to walk or ride on the shoulder of Chipeta Park Road; they'll have a sidewalk."

That's the whole point. This isn't a scenic add-on. It's a safety corridor to a school, funded like one.

The Shoulder Walk This Replaces

If you've walked or biked between Chipita Park and Green Mountain Falls, you already know the alternative. A short dirt jogging path currently connects the H.B. Wallace Reserve parking area to Ute Pass Elementary, useful as far as it goes, but it dead-ends at Chipeta Park Road after about a mile. Past that point, anyone on foot or on a bike shares the shoulder with Highway 24 traffic. Meyer described the goal as connecting "the commercial hub there at Highway 24 all the way up to Ute Pass Elementary" without forcing pedestrians onto that shoulder.

Wes Ritner, a Green Mountain Falls resident, described the current situation more bluntly in a KOAA interview: "There are sections where there is no trail, so you're either running on the highway or you are making your own trail." He also made the case for why this matters beyond his own commute: "I see a lot of value in it, not only for the residents, but the people in the region."

Once the concrete segment is in, Meyer's other point becomes real for anyone who's driven the two miles between Cascade and Green Mountain Falls out of habit rather than necessity: "You don't have to drive between Cascade and Green Mountain Falls. You can, on a nice summer day, take your bike and go for a ride." Notice the timing. He's talking about next summer, not this one. This fall is the construction. The riding season it's built for is 2027.

Why the Trail Still Ends Short of Manitou

Here's the part that's easy to miss if you only catch the headline. The Ute Pass Trail has been assembled piece by piece for more than two decades. Construction began in 2003, a segment linked it to Teller County in 2006, a third link connected those two in 2008, and a stretch following the historic Ute Tribe route out of Manitou Springs was finished in 2013. This fall's mile-and-a-half segment is the next piece, not the last one.

The final gap, roughly 1.75 miles between Colorado Springs Utilities property and the new Cascade trailhead, still hasn't been designed. Meyer was direct about why: "It's going to be very complex. It's the narrowest part of Ute Pass. We have the highway, Utilities, watershed properties. It's going to be the most difficult section to complete for sure."

Practically, that means the current dirt trail on the Manitou side, which starts near the Manitou Incline and runs about three miles before stopping short of Cascade, stays disconnected from the new work for the foreseeable future. If you're picturing an unbroken eleven-mile path from Manitou to the Teller County line by next year, that picture is ahead of where the actual planning sits.

What's Already Rideable, and Where to Stop

None of this means there's nothing to use right now. The existing dirt segment from H.B. Wallace Reserve parking still gets you to the trailheads for Crystal Falls, Catamount Trail in Green Mountain Falls, and Mount Esther Trail without touching the highway for that first mile. It's not scenic in itself, more of a connector, but it's the safer way to reach those trailheads than parking along the road shoulder.

For a stop before or after, the Coffee Cottage on West Highway 24 opens at 5 a.m. and runs a drive-thru location as well as its café, convenient if you're heading out early to beat fall weather on the trail. Ute Pass Trading Company, a family-owned shop on the same stretch of highway that's operated locally since 2001, sells everything from hand-carved bears to chainsaw sharpening, the kind of practical local business that gives the corridor its character rather than its polish. Wines of Colorado runs creekside dining a short distance up the highway, with outdoor seating by the water that makes sense once the weather cools and the crowds thin.

What This Actually Means For the Next Few Months

If you live in Cascade or Chipita Park, the honest takeaway is this: expect construction noise and lane shifts around the Fountain Avenue intersection and along Chipeta Park Road through the fall, with the county targeting December for completion. What you'll gain when it's done is a real sidewalk on the route kids already walk to Ute Pass Elementary, and a safer way to get between Cascade and Green Mountain Falls without a car. What you won't get, not this year and not next, is a finished connection all the way to Manitou Springs. That piece is still on paper, and by the county's own account, it's the hardest piece left to solve.

Knowing the difference matters if you're the kind of resident who tracks what's actually happening in your own backyard instead of repeating the headline version. The trail everyone's been promised for twenty years is arriving in installments. This fall's installment is real, it's funded, and it's aimed at a school crossing more than a scenic overlook. That's worth knowing before you assume the cones on Chipeta Park Road mean the whole thing is almost done.

If you're weighing a move to Cascade, Chipita Park, or anywhere else along Ute Pass and want a read on how local infrastructure like this shapes day-to-day life in the area, Thetford Team Real Estate knows this corridor block by block. Reach out for a home valuation or to start a search, and let's talk about what actually matters where you're looking to land.