Spirit Trail Race

The Spirit Trail Run is a fun, beautiful yet challenging trail race through the Buena Vista Trail system, including portions of the River Park Trails, Whipple Trails, the Broken Boyfriend, the Midland Grade, and incorporates our newest trails, Fist Full Of Dollars and the Django Loops.

Buena Vista is located at an altitude of 7,965′ and has about 2,700 residents. The town is situated in the heart of the Arkansas River Valley half way between the towns of Leadville and Salida. On the western side of the valley stands the imposing Sawatch Mountain Range, home to 15 of Colorado’s 14,000 foot peaks including the famed Collegiate Peaks. The Sawatch Range also forms a significant portion of the Continental Divid and hosts well over 100 miles of the Colorado Trail in addition to hundreds of miles of national forests trails traversing large swaths of remote wilderness area.

The eastern side of the Arkansas valley is flanked by the smaller Mosquito Range (though it is still home to 5 of Colorado’s fourteeners). The eastern side of the Arkansas River Valley is high desert landscape mostly under the purview of the US Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and hosts a broad range of outdoor recreation opportunities from paddling to mountain biking, to off road vehicle use of all kinds, hunting, and, of course, running! In fact, it is in the Four-Mile Area on the east side of the Arkansas River Valley, just above the town of BV, that we host the Spirit Trail Run!