Ground has broken on an equally anticipated and contested trail network in northwest Colorado. 

Volunteer days were scheduled this month to continue building the first segment of the network known as Mad Rabbit — the first of 49 miles of new trail blueprinted off Rabbit Ears Pass near Steamboat Springs. 

Close to two dozen volunteers attended the groundbreaking, said Laraine Martin, representing local mountain biking nonprofit Routt County Riders. Some on hand that day had followed the debate over Mad Rabbit for the better part of 10 years. 

“It felt really amazing just to finally make progress,” Martin said. 

She and fellow advocates celebrated a victory earlier this summer, when Steamboat’s City Council approved $1.6 million for the project. Those funds seemed to hang in the balance following the state Department of Natural Resources’ objection to the U.S. Forest Service’s approval and 80-page environmental assessment. 

The objection echoed years of concerns over the trail system’s impact on wildlife and was specifically aimed at the Forest Service’s “adaptive management plan.” The state department took issue with a perceived lack of collaboration with Colorado Parks and Wildlife regarding elk monitoring and trail construction. 

Local District Ranger Michael Woodbridge told Steamboat’s City Council: “We didn’t take anything out of the adaptive management plan about CPW and DNR other than clarifying their decision-making authority. … We clarified that these are Forest Service decisions. There’s still a lot of involvement in the adaptive management plan of us working with DNR and CPW throughout the life of this project.”

It would be a long life, Martin said — taking place across 127,000-plus acres, where along with 49 miles of new trail, 36 miles of non-system trails are slated to be closed and the land rehabilitated. The plan details three phases. 

“I hate to put a number on it, but it might be another 10 years before we see the end of phase three,” Martin said. 

As work continues, she and advocates have ditched the Mad Rabbit name. “We’re just calling them the Rabbit Ears Pass trails,” she said. 

That, she said, is how the concept has changed over the years; at one point, closer to 80 miles of new trails were envisioned, connecting the pass with Mad Creek. Without the connection, “Mad Rabbit” is a “misnomer,” Martin said. 

“There’s also kind of a PR component to it now that we’re building trails,” she added. “We want to distance ourselves from the past negativity and step forward into the future.”