Colorado Springs mountain bikers are celebrating the completion of a trail said to be unlike any other in the city.

In North Cheyenne Cañon Park, Colorado Springs Mountain Bike Association is calling Captain Morgans the only double black diamond, downhill-only bike trail recognized by the city’s parks department. The nonprofit association recently marked the mission complete to modify the trail up to city standards — “the culmination of almost a full year of effort from planning to development to fundraising to construction,” read an announcement.

A lifelong rider in the Springs and executive director of Colorado Springs Mountain Bike Association, Keith Thompson called Captain Morgans “probably the largest advancement in the mountain bike scene here in probably the past five-plus years.”

He added of early feedback: “Really just feeling like, Hey, this is a new day for mountain biking and for progressing trails to the point where we have things that we can offer similar to other cities we see around Colorado and around the country.”

Off Captain Jacks Trail and plunging toward the downhill bike-only Chutes trailhead on Gold Camp Road, the expert-only Captain Morgans had long been deemed an erosive “rogue” trail by the parks department leading up to the 2018 North Cheyenne Cañon master plan.

While the plan called for several trail closures and re-routes in the canyon, advocates with Medicine Wheel Trail Advocates — the city’s longest-going mountain bike advocacy group — pushed for Captain Morgans to be retained and sanctioned. The moment was seen as a compromise between city officials concerned about expensive, unsustainable trails on the region’s unique, loose soil and enthusiasts wanting to seize the potential of local terrain.

Those interests have flared tensions in recent years. Colorado Springs Mountain Bike Association rose in 2022 “to create a new relationship across the divide,” Thompson said.

Captain Morgans, he said, “represents a willingness of parks staff to recognize that you can take something that riders want in an illegal trail and find a way to compromise and bring that as a resource.”

The trail design “kept it about 90% intact of its current form,” Thompson said. The “main concern,” he said, was controlling and moving water across loose, decomposed granite. “So we had to engineer some pretty calculated drainage features,” he said.

Captain Morgans was formally recognized in a trail map released by the parks department in June, proclaiming the new Ladders Trail. That’s the 2 1/2-mile section largely paralleling Gold Camp Road, providing a scenic path off the busy, dusty road and unlocking several connections between the high reaches of North Cheyenne Cañon and the lower Stratton Open Space.

Captain Morgans is one of those connections. Off Captain Jacks, Morgans runs down to a wooden “flyover” feature never before seen in city parks. Hikers and cyclists can proceed safely on Ladders Trail while downhill bikers can fly over the overhead ramp, catching brief air in one of the more dangerous moments of Captain Morgans.

“We feel like this flyover feature is going to become really the symbol of how mountain bikers perceive Colorado Springs,” Thompson said.

But the landing has drawn criticism. Riders drop to a narrow turn in a fashion that’s difficult to negotiate and appears to be degrading the trail’s edge.

Thompson said a plan is underway to create a cinderblock stretch that “should provide a surface that people can break on … but more importantly will hold the slope.”

He said another volunteer day is scheduled for September.

“To examine the work that we did through the construction phase to make sure (the trail) is holding up against any rainstorms as well as damage from riders,” he said. “So far what we’re observing is that the trail is getting used at a much greater rate than it ever was when it was a rogue trail. That’s important, because that decomposed granite does not always hold up well to extremely high use.”