Colorado Trail Explorer

State of Colorado - Governor's Office of IT

About this app

Discover and explore Colorado’s unique trail experiences with the Colorado Trail Explorer (COTREX). Available for free and without ads, COTREX offers the most comprehensive official trail map in the state and is a collaborative effort spanning over 230 trail managers.

View trails by allowed uses on the map, browse featured routes, download offline maps, view closures, alerts, wildfire boundaries and avalanche forecasts, record trips and notes in the field, and share your experiences with the community. COTREX is your gateway into Colorado’s magnificent outdoors.

■ DISCOVER TRAILS & FEATURED ROUTES

Browse or search to find trails and recommendations from experts that match your activities or interests.

Change activity type to dynamically filter trails on the map whether hiking, biking, riding, skiing, snowshoeing and more.

■ DOWNLOAD MAPS

No cell coverage? No problem! Download free maps ahead of time for a continuous experience that doesn’t depend on your network.

COTREX offline maps are lightweight in size and easy to download.

■ VIEW ADVISORIES, CLOSURES, AND CONDITIONS FROM OFFICIAL SOURCES

More land managers use COTREX than any other app in Colorado to show their real-time closures and advisories. Know when and where a trail is closed before you leave the house, review real-time wildfire updates, and see daily avalanche forecasts all straight from the experts.

■ PLAN AND RECORD YOUR TRIPS

Measure the distance and elevation profile for any trail segment quickly and easily to plan your next trip.

Capture the details of your outdoor experiences by recording Trips.

■ SHARE WITH THE COMMUNITY

Inform and inspire the entire COTREX community by sharing your Trips and Field Notes publicly or submitting Trip Reports.

By sharing your experiences, you also help to inform trail managers about current conditions on the ground.

■ ABOUT COTREX

Colorado Trail Explorer aims to map every official trail in the state of Colorado. COTREX connects people, trails, and technology by coordinating the efforts of federal, state, county, and local agencies to create a comprehensive repository of recreational trails for public use.

COTREX is unique in that the app only shows information from official sources. No unreliable crowdsourced information or recommendations from someone on the other side of the country. Everything you see in COTREX has been reviewed and approved by the managers and experts local to that area.

This project is led by Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) and Department of Natural Resources, but is only made possible through partnerships with organizations at every level statewide. COTREX represents a seamless network of trails managed by over 230 land managers.

■ DISCLAIMERS

[Battery Life] We do everything we can to make the app low power when recording, but GPS is notorious for reducing battery life.

Terms: https://trails.colorado.gov/terms
Privacy Policy: https://trails.colorado.gov/privacy

Ratings and reviews

Tap on a trail and you get some info, but I'm looking for the rating of the trail and whether there's a fee. Why does it have to zoom way out when I search? I find an area I want to explore and search for trails classified as easy and it zooms out so that I don't know where I was. (Just like Google Maps. Just as annoying.)

Great for Planning Your Hiking! I like the ability to save custom routes. I use it to pre-plan hikes by evaluating the distance and elevation gain. I also use it to adjust my route by checking distance and elevation gain of alternate routes. See you on the trail! #ColoMountaineer #HikingColorado 9/25/2021 - I'm still enjoying the app. It drains battery down when recording, but so do other fitness trackers. I use it to plan hikes, look at routes, navigating, etc. I rely on my Garmin for stats.

+ Easy to track routes or make your own after the fact or as planing Downloadable maps is awesome Great info on all the trails I know of Elevation gain and loss (when it works) Free - Had to reinstall because it couldn't find my location Doesn't say trail difficulty. Would be a major plus for mountain biking Elevation gain/loss is buggy. By definition if I travel on a loop they should be equal but one is often several hundred feet off from the other Sometimes can't figure out that trails connect

What’s new

The map now shows restricted areas for snowmobiles when in snowmobile mode