Telluride Mountain Club clears high-country trails as summer access opens
Crews cleared Sneffels Highline, Liberty Bell-Sheridan Crosscut Loop and Lizard Head to Wilson Meadows as Telluride’s snowline held near 10,600 to 11,000 feet.
The first real sign that Telluride’s high country is opening came in the form of sawdust, drainage work and a lot of cut logs. Telluride Mountain Club said its crews spent long days clearing the west side of the Sneffels Highline, the full Liberty Bell-Sheridan Crosscut Loop and the trail from Lizard Head to Wilson Meadows, while closer to town they cleaned drainage features on the Jud Wiebe Trail and did light brush cutting ahead of monsoon season.
That mix of work tells hikers and bikers exactly where the season stands right now. The Jud Wiebe Trail is being readied near town, but the alpine is only beginning to open, and the club said the snowline was still sitting around 10,600 to 11,000 feet depending on aspect. On May 26, crews also cleared trees from observation reports on Jud Wiebe, Owl Gulch, Deep Creek and the Iron Mountain Spur, and they completed maintenance on trail-based sections of the Via Ferrata while working with a local guide company to inspect the route.
For anyone heading uphill, that means route choice matters more than enthusiasm. Lower and mid-elevation corridors are the safest bets for a clean start, while higher routes still demand full summer and shoulder-season judgment. Telluride Mountain Club urged travelers into the alpine to be prepared for all conditions and to carry an ice axe where appropriate, a reminder that open on the calendar does not always mean open underfoot.
The club’s 2025 recap puts the scale of the spring effort in context. Crews cleared more than 240 downed trees from 25 different trails, improved drainage and brush-cut corridors, and added another trails maintenance specialist after U.S. Forest Service funding cuts and rising regional demand stretched the work. The club also said it was in the final stages of NEPA analysis for its trails proposal, with a decision expected in spring 2026.
Access work is also expanding beyond simple opening-day cleanup. Telluride Mountain Club partnered with the Telluride Adaptive Sports Program on the Breckenridge Trail and Galloping Goose Trail to improve adaptive mountain bike access, building on trail modifications that made the Valley Floor easier and more enjoyable for users of different ability levels. Founded in 1986, the club has turned spring trail opening into a full-time stewardship project, and this year’s work makes the message plain: the high country is coming in, but only the routes crews have already touched are ready to be trusted.
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