Step out the front door in Upper Skyway on a Saturday morning right now and you notice something the guidebooks haven't caught up to. The paved approach to Helen Hunt Falls is quiet. The cars that usually stack up at Mount Cutler are gone. The canyon has been rearranged, and the neighborhood behind it is suddenly the way in.
That is the thesis of this post. For the moment, Skyway is not "close to" the North Cheyenne Cañon trail system. Skyway is the trail system's functioning entrance.
The front doors closed. The back doors didn't.
In early June 2026, storms sent debris flows and scree across the paved corridor at the bottom of the canyon. The city's Parks, Recreation and Cultural Services department closed North Cheyenne Canyon Road at the main entrance and Gold Camp Road near Bonnie Vista Drive to vehicles, and as of that update there was no vehicle access to Helen Hunt Falls and no access to the Powell parking area used for Seven Bridges. Regional Parks, Trails and Open Space Manager Scott Abbott has said publicly that a reopening timeline waits on damage assessments.
Two things follow from that. First, the trail network itself is still open on foot and by bike from designated trailheads. Second, if you live in Skyway, the trailheads you own by geography — Pegasus Point, Ridgeway, La Veta, North Chamberlain, Stratton Preserve — are doing the work that the paved canyon road normally does. Get used to that arrangement. It might be with us a while.
Your actual trailheads, not the ones on the postcard
The Friends of Stratton Open Space publishes the full trailhead list. The five that matter from inside the neighborhood, roughly north to south:
| Trailhead | Address | Practical note |
|---|---|---|
| Skyway | 3200 Pegasus Point | The upper-neighborhood back door. On-street plus a couple of spaces. |
| Stratton Preserve | 2019 Stratton Forest Heights | Two spaces plus on-street; west of Gold Camp Elementary. |
| Chutes | 2150 Gold Camp Road | Two spaces. Downhill-bike drop-in. |
| Ridgeway | 1504 Ridgeway Avenue | 30 spaces, trailer parking. The one out-of-neighborhood folks fill first. |
| La Veta | 1500 Hermosa Place | 15 spaces plus on-street when Cheyenne Mountain High School is not in session. |
| North Chamberlain | 2200 North Cheyenne Canyon Road | 12 spaces, two blocks west of Starsmore Discovery Center. |
If you are used to driving to the Starsmore lot or up to the Helen Hunt overflow, the shift is mental more than physical. Pegasus Point puts you on Ponderosa Trail almost immediately, and Ponderosa connects into the 318-acre Stratton Open Space, which itself connects into Pike National Forest and, via Chamberlain and Ladders, into the North Cheyenne Cañon system. Most trails inside Stratton are easy-to-moderate loops. All trails designated as "paths" are hiking only; equestrians and cyclists have the rest.
Current trail lengths inside Stratton per the city: Chamberlain-Ridgeway Spur 1.1 miles, Gold Camp Path 0.8, Ponderosa 0.4, South Suburban Lower Loop 0.4, South Suburban Upper Loop 0.6, Stratton Springs Path 0.5, Upper Meadows Loop 0.7, Wildflower Path 0.7. Nothing there is long. The point of Stratton is that you can stitch three of these together before work.
What changed underfoot in 2024
If you have been in the neighborhood five years or more, you already know Stratton looks different than it did in 2023. In August 2024 the Colorado Springs Fire Department's Wildfire Mitigation Section, working with Parks and City Forestry, completed a 266.7-acre fire-mitigation project inside Stratton, targeting removal of roughly 50% of Gambel oak and shrub-like species, plus dead, dying, and diseased stems and small conifers up to 5 inches in diameter. The land runs against Upper Skyway to the north and Lower Skyway and Old Broadmoor to the east and south. That is why the sightlines opened up along Meadows and the Ridge trails. That is why the Ridgeway trail had rolling closures for months. The work reduced ladder fuels and modified fuel structure adjacent to homes, which is not a small consideration for anyone whose back fence faces open space.
Two effects worth registering on your next walk. Views from Chamberlain-Ridgeway are longer than they used to be. And rolling closures may still appear on any given weekend as follow-up work continues; trail closure infrastructure is enforceable under the Fire Code, so the flagged detours are not suggestions.
The loop locals are still sleeping on
Skip the Mount Cutler pulloff. It fills before eight, and right now the road to it is closed to cars anyway. The loop that most reliably rewards a Skyway weekend is Daniels Pass into Sweetwater Canyon, which the Gazette's Seth Boster described as almost five years old but still under the radar. Trip log per that report: 5.8 miles round trip as a lollipop, 886 feet of elevation gain, trailhead at pulloff No. 21 about two miles up from Starsmore. Daniels Pass crests at 1.25 miles, meets a split for Mount Muscoco that lets you summit away from the Cutler trailhead crowd, and then rolls through views of Cheyenne Mountain before dropping back down.
The mountain-bike crowd already knew. Trailforks lists 30 trails inside Stratton with 26 designated for mountain biking, the steepest being Cheyenne Canyon at an average 11.1% grade and the biggest descent on The Chutes at 105 meters. Chamberlain has the most climbing, at 193 meters. Hiker traffic on Ridge is heavy; plan around it.
When mornings need a real ending
The neighborhood's coffee stop is not on the resort side of Cheyenne Boulevard. It is at the mouth of the canyon, in the old general store building that dates to the early 1900s. Sacred Ground Cafe, 1801 Cheyenne Blvd, opened in 2013 as a coffee shop and pushed into a scratch kitchen from there. Hours as posted: Tuesday through Thursday and Sunday 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Friday and Saturday 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., closed Mondays. Owner Natasha's Russian heritage runs through the menu, and the kitchen accommodates gluten-free, vegetarian, vegan, keto, and paleo. The room seats a handful of tables close together; the patio is the play in warm months.
Two Skyway-specific reasons this matters right now. First, with vehicle access into the canyon capped, Cheyenne Boulevard is the boundary where trail time ends and neighborhood time begins. Second, Sacred Ground runs themed prix fixe dinners on Fridays and Saturdays that turn a trail day into a proper evening without leaving the corridor. Georgian, Italian, French, Mediterranean menus rotate through.
When you do not feel like driving anywhere
Some Saturdays the canyon is not the answer. The neighborhood's other outdoor asset is Bear Creek Regional Park, 545 acres on the east flank of Skyway, home to hike, bike, and horse trails, a 10-acre off-leash dog area with tree cover and water, an archery range, pickleball courts, and multiple playgrounds. It is what most Skyway residents actually visit most weeks. The archery range and the dog park are the two features that get undersold in the standard neighborhood roundup.
For the bike-commute crowd, the small Skyway Park singletrack tucks in behind Cheyenne Mountain High School and connects Stratton's northeast corner down through a tunnel under Cresta Road toward the Pikes Peak Greenway. From the top of Ponderosa in Stratton down to the Santa Fe Trail is roughly 2.5 miles of mostly downhill riding. That is a legitimate way home from a canyon lap.
A working weekend template
- Before sunrise, weekdays or weekend: Pegasus Point to a Stratton loop of your choice. Ponderosa into Upper Meadows into Ridge and back is under three miles.
- Saturday, if you have three hours: drive or ride to pulloff 21 when the road reopens, or bike up from North Chamberlain now, for the Daniels Pass and Sweetwater lollipop. End at Sacred Ground.
- Saturday, if you have three hours and a dog: Bear Creek off-leash, archery range if that is your household, and pickleball if the courts are open.
- Friday or Saturday evening: Sacred Ground themed dinner. Reservations are a good idea; the room is small.
- After a big storm week: check the city's Parks page before you go. Closures right now are dynamic.
The pattern the storm accidentally exposed is worth keeping even after the roads reopen. Skyway's real amenity is not that it is close to the trails. It is that the trails are only fully accessible through it.
If you own a home here and want a candid read on what that access is worth when it comes time to price, list, or refinance, that is the conversation Broadmoor Homes Co has every week. Let's connect.
