Black Canyon Open Space Gets Its Trails Before It Gets Its Visitors

On Saturday, April 4, 2026, about 40 volunteers from Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado worked with Manitou's Open Space Advisory Committee to cut roughly 330 linear feet of new trail in Black Canyon Open Space. They also built rock features to stabilize the tread and started restoring old social trails so the vegetation could grow back. No trailhead sign stood at the bottom and no crowd was waiting to use the trail. The order is deliberate. Manitou Springs plans to finish this open space before it invites people in, and this Sunday, November 8, residents get an early look.

Thirty-eight acres that waited eight years for a front door

Black Canyon Open Space covers 38 acres between Highway 24 and Black Canyon Road, on a rugged, colorful perch southeast of Cave of the Winds. It is a separate site from the City of Colorado Springs' Black Canyon Quarry. The two sit near each other with private land between them.

Manitou bought most of the land in spring 2016. It purchased two parcels from the Richard and Robert Craun Irrevocable Trust using Great Outdoors Colorado funds and the City's own open space tax. Palmer Land Conservancy holds a conservation easement on about 33.48 acres, granted September 1, 2016. That still left the City without practical public access. The front door came in May 2024, when Manitou bought a four-acre parcel at the east end from Westside LLC. That purchase opened access off Black Canyon Road, and formal planning started.

City Council unanimously approved the Black Canyon Open Space Master Plan on March 4, 2025. The plan was developed with OSAC, the Parks and Recreation Department, the design firm Kimley-Horn, and public input. It calls for about two miles of multi-use trail. A trailhead and small pedestrian bridge would sit off Black Canyon Road near Garden Drive, the road that continues to Balanced Rock in Garden of the Gods. From the bridge, three trails would climb to a short series of loops. Black Canyon joins Iron Mountain and Red Mountain on Manitou's short list of city-owned open spaces.

A season of trail built one workday at a time

The plan was approved in 2025, and 2026 has been the year of digging. City and OSAC records show crews and volunteers coming back to the slope month after month:

1. April 4. Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado cut about 330 linear feet of trail and built stabilizing rock features.
2. May 9. Manitou Trail CATS and 12 volunteers held a trail workday.
3. May 20. Rocky Mountain Field Institute began a three-week contract, working 10-hour days Wednesday through Saturday. RMFI also sponsored four volunteer workdays: two for corporate crews and two for the public.
4. June 15 through August 17. OSAC Vice Chair Paul Arlinghaus led evening sessions from 5 to 7:30 p.m. on June 15, June 29, July 6, July 20, August 3 and August 17.
5. September 12. The City's newsletter advertised another new-trail construction workday.
6. October 18. Medicine Wheel Trail Advocates and OSAC held a volunteer trail workday, which was on OSAC's October 26 agenda for an update.

Turnout varied. OSAC's July 27 minutes say July's workdays drew fewer people than hoped because of the heat and an event listing that never went up on Eventbrite. At that meeting, Cory Sutela of Medicine Wheel Trail Advocates said the group wanted to help with Black Canyon trail work. The Pikes Peak Outdoors blog summed up the year in August: the open space was going through "its first major season of trail construction."

Why the route bends around a cliff-rim site

Some of the summer's contract work went into changing where the trail runs. OSAC's January 2026 minutes describe a "vision quest site" on the cliff rim, a low wall of stones a few feet from the proposed route. The committee talked about moving the trail away from it and about whether hiding the site or marking it with signs would protect it better.

In May, Chair Dave Conley and Parks and Recreation Director Gillian Rossi walked a revised alignment on site and agreed it would work. The May 18 OSAC minutes say RMFI's first job was building that alternate route "to avoid the sacred site." Building by hand at a slow pace made that possible. Moving a line on a slope with few hikers on it is much easier than moving a trail people already use every week.

The entrance waits for the trails

Getting people safely from a parked car to the trailhead takes its own construction. The plan's route starts at existing parking near Fields Park on El Paso Boulevard. From there, a crosswalk leads to a path along Black Canyon Road that ends at the new bridge and trailhead. Some people have taken to calling that walk "Mother Nature's Incline."

That access route depends on more than one government. In May, engineers from Manitou Springs and Colorado Springs met and were seriously considering putting the access path on the Garden of the Gods side of Black Canyon Road. By July, the City had hired Engineering Coordinator Stacey Salvatore for the Black Canyon engineering work. Rossi told The Gazette in April that the City also has work to do with the Colorado Department of Transportation and Colorado Springs "to increase mobility and safety to the open space."

She explained the order of the work in the same Gazette story:

"We want to get the trail system completed before we have that official entrance to the open space completely ready, so we don't have folks hiking on half-finished trails or hiking on a trail system that doesn't have wayfinding signage."

Her estimate for finishing the access work was "late 2026 or early 2027." Funding is being lined up in parallel. In July, OSAC reviewed plans for a Colorado Parks and Wildlife Non-Motorized Trails grant application due in October. Medicine Wheel expressed interest in providing quotes for professional construction of a climbing trail, and Rossi expected to include those bids in the request. The October 26 OSAC agenda listed the grant's status and timeline.

What it's built to be, next to the Incline down the road

Rossi calls Black Canyon "small but mighty," with "one of the best viewsheds in the city," a panorama of Pikes Peak and Garden of the Gods. She expects it to appeal to view-seeking hikers, dog walkers, picnickers and mountain bikers, "especially if you're looking for somewhere not as crowded."

The Manitou Incline is the clearest point of comparison. Since November 1, it has been on winter hours: 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. through April 30, compared with 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. in summer. Hikers still need a free reservation and a signed waiver, and the system allows 45 reservations per half hour. Black Canyon's planned network is about two miles of loops and overlooks on 38 acres. It is a short, view-heavy climb on the same side of town, built on the idea that a smaller place can stay quieter.

Sunday, November 8: the Trailmixers reveal

OSAC's new Trailmixers program runs one weekend morning a month at 9 a.m. Trail guides meet residents at a different trailhead each time and stay for an hour to help people change up their usual hikes. The program includes bike-to-trail routes, a chance to meet OSAC members, and free trail mix. The fall schedule worked its way across Manitou's open spaces, and Black Canyon is last:

The City's newsletter lists Sunday's event only as "Black Canyon reveal." It comes after a season of trail cutting, a reroute around the cliff-rim site, and engineering work on the route in from El Paso Boulevard. The City's official entrance target is late 2026 or early 2027. The City of Manitou Springs publishes Trailmixers details in its City News newsletter.

If the Black Canyon reveal has you wondering which part of Manitou or the west side puts your front door closest to the trails you actually hike, Brent and Jen would be glad to talk it over. Brent Patterson knows these trailheads and the streets around them, and we're always happy to help you start your home search with that in mind.