While one marquee trail has opened in Trinidad, local professionals and volunteers have been busy on another project that continues the growth of the town’s outdoor recreation profile.

A trail to the top of Fishers Peak opened toward the end of November. Now some focus has turned to the other side of Interstate 25, around the other state park in town: Trinidad Lake.

A mountain bike skills course was built last year on adjacent, non-state park land owned and managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, along the old spillway below the east side of the dam. Prefabricated obstacles are situated in a clearing “like a bowl,” said Jenn Green, with Trinidad Trails Alliance.

“But it’s remained fairly unused because nobody really knows how to get down there,” she said.

Her organization is close to finishing what’s been described as “an intermediate, downhill flow trail” spanning less than a mile to the skills course. It’s part of a series of trails planned for the land, which consists of rock outcrops, low-lying woods and mountain views.

For the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the idea “was a little added benefit for the community that seems to be an evolving recreation need here in Trinidad,” said Kim Falen, the lake’s manager.

The project speaks to the broad, regional goal of connectivity, Green said. She quoted her mentor, renowned trail builder Tony Boone: “Coffee to trails to beer without getting in your car.”

That’s the idea with the recent singletrack carved by Trinidad Trails Alliance. Following the riverwalk from downtown, the trail is reached off County Road 20.8 — the gravel stretch featured in this year’s Rad Dirt Fest, the Life Time race in town. From the skills course, Green said, one could continue riding along the lake’s south shore out to Long Canyon.

Considering the Wormhole trails north of town, Fishers Peak trails to the west and these being added to the east, “you can come to Trinidad and go many directions and experience different riding areas from the hub of downtown,” Green said. “That’s kind of the metrics used to say this place is destination worthy.”