Sunset Open Space Trail Plan

Sunset Open Space in Erie, Colorado, is a city-managed open space with flow-style mountain bike trails. The town is expanding, with two new neighborhoods being built adjacent to the open space. The approval of these neighborhoods required the construction of a new concrete multi-use regional path.

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Kimley-Horn, the engineering firm designing the concrete path, added Pointe Strategies to their team to create an updated natural-surface trail plan for the area. Pointe created new trail alignments to avoid the concrete path, address maintenance issues, and design a new mountain bike skills trail and bike park.

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As a first step, Pointe created a basemap that included Lidar data, satellite imagery, parcel boundaries, and CAD designs for the upcoming neighborhood developments and the initial grading plans for the concrete pathway. This allowed the team to identify reroutes to avoid construction and improve connectivity within the site.

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The existing trail network generally faces north and has poor draining soils, as a result staff frequently closes the area for muddy trails; the frequency is a burden on staff and causes frustration within the community.  After multiple site visits to see how the existing trail system performs, Pointe staff created a maintenance plan, that after implementation, would allow the site to remain open for a greater portion of the year, a high priority for staff.  

 

Pointe Strategies also created a plan for a new zone of skills trails in an area of the open space. The skills trails were designed to provide learning opportunities and progression with a variety of trail features including berms, rock steps and rock gardens, drops, and jumps.