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. Available for free, COTREX offers the most comprehensive trail map available for the state and is built atop data from over 230 trail managers.

View trails by allowed uses on the map, browse featured routes, download offline maps, record trips and notes in the field, complete challenges to earn badges, 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 Feature Routes that match your activities or interests.
– Change activity type to dynamically filter trails on the map.

■ OFFLINE MAPS

– No cell coverage? No problem! Download 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.

■ RECORD TRIPS & FIELD NOTES

– Capture the details of your outdoor experiences by recording Trips.
– Go beyond simple photos by taking and classifying rich Field Notes along the way. Choose from 45,000+ classifications that include trail conditions, species, rocks and minerals, historic places, points of interest, and much more.
– Seamlessly sync activity recorded on your devices with the web.

■ COMPLETE CHALLENGES TO EARN BADGES

– By recording and classifying Field Notes, you can complete Challenges and earn Badges for your profile.

■ SHARE WITH THE COMMUNITY

– Inform and inspire the entire COTREX community by sharing your Trips and Field Notes publicly or submitting Trip Reports.
– View activity feeds for all users or just the ones you follow.
– By sharing your experiences, you also help to inform trail managers about current conditions on the ground.

■ ABOUT COTREX

The Colorado Trail Explorer endeavors to map every trail in the state of Colorado in support of the Colorado the Beautiful Initiative. 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.

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

well designed app, but it's got a few bugs 1) when your vehicle goes off the map it does not recenter the map, so you have to manually do it. sketchy when you're 4x4 driving. 2) it's a bummer I can't go back & add campsites or parking lots to a map track I saved. you can edit a few things, but you should be able to go & add more "field notes" you couldn't do real time. 3) "keep screen on" is finicky. I had to toggle on/off 2-3x to get it to stick. 4) no running "activity"?

Excellent trail map for ATV riding. We used it this past weekend for the first time and barely scratched the surface of it's functions. It was awesome to have the offline capabilities and with it's constant update as to our position on the trails, it definitely kept us from getting lost in the high country. We'll be using this app now to find new places to ride and explore as much of Colorado as can. Thanks to the developers for a great app!

Overall, I love this app! I love being able to download map sections for offline use without having to pay. I use it for every hike I do in Colorado. If it doesn't already have the option, (because I haven't tried yet) It would be nice to have every state have some kind of app similar to this and be compatible so hiking stats from out of state hikes can be saved in the same app. Otherwise, I will have to continue using All Trails everywhere else.

What's new

- Fixed broken driving directions link
- Stability improvements