North Greenway Trail Description
Starting at the Park-n-Ride lot, the trail begins across the street from the entrance to the lot. It descends and joins the main
trail about 100 yards down. Turn right if you want to go to the Santa Fe Trail or left to join the Greenway trail. There will
be a mileage marker at this point from which you can judge your progress. I will break the trail into manageable sections for
purposes of describing the trail.
This first section is asphalt and follows the creek as it proceeds south. The path is fairly level and has a mixture of shaded and
open sections. This is a short section. At about 2 miles, you will encounter an office park where I sometimes park. A small parking
lot in this complex provides easy access the trail and a place to park if you want to start further south than Woodmen Road. This
section is good for short hikes and those with strollers. It is also good for wheel chair access.
Section 2 will start by crossing the creek at a pedestrian bridge about 1/4 mile south of the parking area. The trail starting from the
east side of the bridge is concrete. It has recently been reconfigured because of the construction of a major shopping mall to the east
of the trail. It is not clear if there will be easy access to the mall lot but a concrete pathway heads east from the trail and goes up to Nevada Ave.
It is possible to follow this and gain access to the
Pulpit Rock Open Space area however,
there is not a defined access point as yet. The main trail will be concrete for about 1/2 mile then cross a bridge and become asphalt again.
At Garden of the Gods Road, the trail will pass under the road and become concete again until you reach the wastewater plant
about 1/2 mile up. There is a small reservoir between Garden of the Gods and the treatment plant and on occasion, you can find a heron
or two doing some fishing. The trail will loop around the treatment plant and enter into the Goose Gossage sports complex area. Here there
are a number of baseball fields and soccer fields and a bmx/skateboard park. It also has a lot of parking areas over the next mile or so.
I consider section 2 to end here.
The next section, section 3, will wind through the park area on the east side of the fields and a skate board area. About midway into the park,
the
Sinton Trail will take off to the right and the Templeton Gap Trail will take off to the left
and cross the creek on a pedestrian bridge. At the far end of the park, the trail will pass under Filmore Ave. For the next mile, you will be
following the stream, cross a small street, then cross another pedestrian bridge and then climb a gravel hill up to Beacon Street/Wood Avenue.
Here you have to cross the drainage ditch on the street and pick up the trail on the other side. Follow the asphalt roadway that goes west at the
other side of the drainage ditch about 1/4 mile and take the trail to the left just before the creek. A short gravel section here will take you
into Monument Valley Park. There is some street parking just up the hill when you enter the park and at various locations along the way.
Monument Valley park is about 2 miles of gravel pathway that will end at Bijou Street in the downtown area. The park is a popular running,
hiking, walking and riding area for the near north side and Colorado College. When I ran from the Downtown YMCA for many years, I used
Monument Valley Park for most of my runs. It is one of the flattest places in town. A lot of the cross country teams from the high schools
use the park for training in the fall and have their meets there regularly.
I consider the northern section of the Greenway trail to end here. Many times we will go into the downtown area for a coffee or refreshments
before starting back to Woodmen Road. There are a number of coffee shops and some with outdoor seating along Tejon for a pleasant experience.
