Another season of trail work has come to a close across Colorado’s highest, heavily trampled mountains.

Colorado Fourteeners Initiative, the stewarding nonprofit based in Golden, has announced missions accomplished at mounts Elbert and Columbia. For the fourth and final season on Elbert’s east ridge, crews near 12,700 feet focused re-routing efforts through a talus field — “ensur[ing] the thousands of visitors hiking the peak each summer travel on hardened surfaces as opposed to trampling ancient alpine soils and fragile plant communities,” CFI reported.

After five summers of moving rock and building steps to replace an eroded trail on the western slopes of Columbia, workers have left the mountain mostly satisfied. “Still more work that could be done along the ridge higher up,” CFI executive director Lloyd Athearn said, “but we’ll save that for another day.”

Elsewhere, a two-person crew embarked daily to elevations above 13,000 feet to reconstruct trail on Grays and Torreys peaks. The plan is to continue the job next summer, Athearn said. Same with maintenance on trails to Handies, Redcloud, Wetterhorn and Uncompahgre peaks in the San Juan range.

Also this summer, progress was made on the new trail up Pikes Peak.

Set to skirt the backside of the mountain and serve as the new Devils Playground route, a total 2,287 linear feet of tread was built, said Jennifer Peterson, executive director of Rocky Mountain Field Institute, the local nonprofit leading the endeavor. Woods were cleared for another 2,230 linear feet of trail corridor, she said.

Crews “will be back at it again next year,” Peterson said, “and likely several years to come.”

Ground was broken last year on the project, slated for completion in 2023. The trail is projected to span 4 miles, trending south of the current path steeply scarring the tundra.