The Manitou Incline Is Closing Again — Here's Everything You Need to Know
If you have a reservation locked in for the Manitou Incline this Saturday, it's time to make other plans. Once again, the extremely popular Manitou Incline trail outside of Colorado Springs is set to close — and this time, it's because of one of the strangest, most beloved events in the entire state of Colorado. Come Saturday, October 24, the Incline will be temporarily shut down to the public given the heavy traffic that will be present in the mountain town of Manitou Springs for the Emma Crawford Coffin Races event. The closure is brief and the trail bounces back fast — but for anyone who treats the Incline as a non-negotiable part of their weekend routine, the timing is worth understanding in full.
What the Manitou Incline Actually Is — and Why It Commands This Kind of Attention
There are steep trails in Colorado, and then there is the Manitou Incline. The two categories are not the same. The Manitou Incline is known around the country for being one of the most difficult hikes pound-for-pound. It climbs 2,000 vertical feet up 2,768 steps in less than a mile, with most hikers opting for the 3-ish mile Barr Trail return route to get back to the trailhead. To put that gradient in perspective: the average slope hovers around 45 degrees, with sections that push past 68 degrees near the top. It is a vertical assault disguised as a hike — the kind of effort that leaves seasoned trail runners genuinely humbled.
The trail follows the route of a former cable car railway that operated on the flanks of Pikes Peak in the early twentieth century. The original tram infrastructure was dismantled, but the railroad ties that formed the bed of the track remained embedded in the mountainside for decades. Those old wooden crossties, weathered by altitude and season, eventually became the de facto steps that drew a cult following among Colorado Springs athletes, soldiers from nearby Fort Carson, and masochistic fitness enthusiasts from across the country. When Colorado Springs Parks, Recreation & Cultural Services formalized public access and launched a reservation system, the Incline graduated from an unofficial local secret to a nationally recognized bucket-list sufferfest.
The reservation system itself speaks to how wildly popular this stretch of trail has become. Demand is high enough on weekend mornings that spots are often claimed well in advance — which makes the Saturday closure this weekend all the more disruptive for the regulars who run it multiple times a week. Some dedicated Incliners maintain unbroken streaks measured in hundreds of consecutive days. One closure, even a brief one, breaks that streak cold.
The Emma Crawford Coffin Races: Why an Annual Festival Shuts Down a Trail
To understand why the Incline closes at all, it helps to understand just how completely the Emma Crawford Coffin Races transform the physical geography of Manitou Springs for a full day. This is not a small-town block party with a few food stalls and a bounce castle. Typically drawing more than 10,000 people to the limited space of the downtown area, the event will take over the town's main street, resulting in significant road closures in the area. When a town as compact as Manitou Springs — situated in a narrow canyon where Ruxton Creek cuts through the Rockies — absorbs that kind of crowd, the infrastructure buckles. Parking becomes impossible. Roads close. Pedestrian traffic overwhelms every sidewalk and side street.
The Legend Behind the Race
The event draws its name from a genuinely macabre piece of local history. The races are named after the late Emma Crawford, who is buried on the Red Mountain nearby. Crawford's coffin was washed away years after her burial, and she supposedly still haunts the mountain to this day. Emma Crawford was a celebrated concert pianist, but has been much more celebrated in her death than in her life. She moved to Manitou Springs in the late 1800s seeking relief from tuberculosis, fell in love with the mountains, and famously requested to be buried on the summit of Red Mountain — a wish her fiancé honored. A couple of decades later, a railroad company started construction in the same place, forcibly relocating Emma's coffin. Apparently reburied in a reckless manner, her coffin got easily dislodged after heavy rainfall, and her remains raced down the mountain into the canyon below. From that dark footnote of frontier Colorado, a tradition was born.
In 1995, the Manitou Springs Chamber of Commerce started the first coffin races in the nation, in memory of a beloved resident of Manitou Springs. In the years since, the races have grown into an often-copied-but-never-equaled Manitou Springs tradition. The event is now in its 32nd year, and it shows no signs of losing momentum.
How the Races Work
Each team at the Emma Crawford Coffin Races is composed of one 'Emma' and four runners, all dressed in their own costumes. The fastest times to finish the 195-yard track along Manitou Avenue will earn trophies. Other special awards will be up for grabs as well, such as Best Entourage, Best Coffin, Best Emma, and Miss Emma. Teams compete in speed, coffin design, team names, and costumes. Coffins must meet strict specifications for safety and functionality. The result is a spectacle that blends athletic competition with costumed absurdity — part Halloween carnival, part sprint race, and entirely unlike anything else in the American outdoor calendar.
Emma impersonators prepare to ride their specially-designed coffins, pushed down Manitou Avenue by their pallbearers. The Fan Zone opens at 10 a.m. in the 700 block of Manitou Avenue. The parade starts at noon, with the races following it, approximately 1–2 p.m. The City of Manitou Springs is asking everyone to avoid driving near downtown from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday. For anyone planning to attend as a spectator, it's worth noting that the event is free, and gaining both national and international attention, attendees come from all over the country to witness this spectacle of the spooky and the bizarre, with an expected attendance of over 12,000.
The Logistics of the Closure: What Incline Regulars Need to Know
The Manitou Incline will be closed all day on Saturday due to the coffin races. There is no partial-day window, no early-morning exception before the crowds arrive, and no workaround for runners who want to sneak in a dawn summit. The closure is total and covers the entire trail for the full day. Reservations will be available again at 6 a.m. on Sunday, October 25, according to Colorado Springs Parks, Recreation & Cultural Services. That means the turnaround time from closure to reopening is just one day — lean enough that it won't derail any serious training blocks, but long enough to sting for the streakers.
The access issue is not abstract. The Incline's trailhead sits at the top of Ruxton Avenue — the same canyon road that channels foot traffic directly toward the Coffin Races' staging area and finish zone. During the event, road closures stack on top of each other throughout the canyon and along Manitou Avenue. Getting a vehicle anywhere near the Incline parking area on race day is logistically futile, and pedestrian passage through the area would put hikers directly in the middle of a 12,000-person street festival. The closure is not bureaucratic overcaution — it is a practical reality imposed by geography.
Alternatives for the Day
If news of the Incline closure will mess up your weekend plans, consider checking out the Coffin Races — just make sure you have a parking plan ahead of time. Otherwise, a hike like Blodgett Peak might be a good one to consider if you're looking for a trail that's steep and offers a similar uphill grind. Blodgett Peak, located in the northwest quadrant of Colorado Springs near Woodmen Road, tops out just under 9,000 feet and offers a legitimate cardio challenge through scrub oak and pine with views over the Palmer Lake Divide. It is not the Incline, but nothing truly is.
Other nearby options worth considering include the Mount Manitou Summit Trail via the cog railway corridor, the Waldo Canyon Loop off U.S. 24, or Barr Trail itself — the same path that Incline regulars use for their descent. Running Barr Trail in ascent mode from the Manitou Springs trailhead all the way toward Barr Camp is a punishing alternative that will satisfy anyone chasing vertical gain without a fixed staircase. It climbs over 3,800 feet in 6.4 miles to reach Barr Camp, a degree of effort that makes even the Incline look like a warm-up.
A Pattern of Closures: Colorado's Trail Infrastructure Under Pressure
The Manitou Incline closure this weekend is brief and benign, but it lands in the context of a broader, more consequential trend playing out across Colorado's trail network. The state's outdoor recreation infrastructure is being asked to absorb more visitors than it was designed for, and the resulting strain is showing up in closures, restoration projects, and access restrictions that would have seemed extraordinary a decade ago.
Consider what has happened across the state in recent years. The closure of the Blue Lakes Trailhead near Ouray allowed crews to reconstruct the popular trailhead after years of overuse. That marked the first phase of the U.S. Forest Service's Blue Lakes Visitor Use Management Plan, which focuses on reducing visitor impacts, maximizing orderly parking, relocating the current toilet, and ensuring long-term sustainability of the natural resources. That a beloved alpine trailhead in the San Juan Mountains required a full reconstruction project is a stark signal of how thoroughly Colorado's most popular outdoor destinations have been loved to the edge of degradation.
In Rocky Mountain National Park — the fifth-most visited national park in the U.S. in 2024, with over 4.1 million visitors that year — the pressure has been relentless. In an effort to protect and reintroduce native fish, wildlife officials in Rocky Mountain National Park closed several popular hiking trails along the northeastern end of the Colorado River. After the removal of non-native fish species like brook trout, National Park Service staff reintroduced Greenback cutthroat trout. As a result, some areas in the Kawuneeche Valley, including the Colorado River Trail and the Grand Ditch, were closed. That is a trail closure driven not by trail damage, but by ecological emergency — the kind of closure that becomes necessary when a beloved landscape has been altered at the species level.
Closer to the urban Front Range, a hole that formed under a popular Boulder County trail resulted in an extended closure impacting hikers and cyclists. According to Boulder County Parks and Open Space, the hole formed under the abutment of a bridge located a quarter-mile east of Fourmile Canyon Drive on Boulder Canyon Trail. As a result, a section of the trail was closed, making the trail no longer a thru-route option. The project is complex due to the trail's proximity with Boulder Creek and Boulder Canyon Drive, potential permitting that will be required, and how the City of Boulder's water utility infrastructure runs beneath the bridge. That kind of multi-agency complexity — trail damage entangled with utility infrastructure, creek corridors, and permitting requirements — reflects how deeply Colorado's trail systems are woven into broader built and natural environments. When something breaks, fixing it is rarely simple.
Wildlife Pressure and the Human-Animal Equation
Not every closure is about pavement and erosion. Some are about animals that were here long before the trails were. The Colorado city of Golden closed a popular trail until further notice for human safety. Tucker Gulch Trail was closed between 1st Street and 7th Street due to heavy bear activity in the area. Drought conditions resulted in a lack of natural food sources for bears, pushing them closer to the city in search of calories. With more bears present in developed areas, the possibility of a negative human-animal interaction can increase. That scenario — drought shrinking wildlife habitat, bears pressing into urban edges, trail closures following — is one that Colorado's land managers expect to see more frequently as climate variability intensifies in the southern Rockies.
The Incline's Place in Colorado's Outdoor Identity
The Manitou Incline occupies a peculiar and powerful spot in the culture of Colorado outdoor athletics. It is simultaneously a commuter workout and a pilgrimage site. On any given weekday morning, the staircase is shared by Fort Carson soldiers in uniform, ultramarathon runners doing fifth-laps before breakfast, recreational hikers from the Midwest experiencing genuine altitude shock for the first time, and retirees who have been climbing it twice a week for twenty years. No other trail in the state hosts that specific mix of demographics at that intensity level.
The reservation system — introduced to manage crowd density and protect the trail surface — added a layer of formality that initially met resistance from longtime locals who were accustomed to showing up whenever they pleased. Over time, it became accepted as a necessary tradeoff. The Incline is essentially a single-file ascent on a steep, narrow corridor of railroad ties. Without managed access, bottlenecks form, safety deteriorates, and the trail surface suffers under concentrated foot pressure. The lesson from the Incline applies more broadly across Colorado's overcrowded trail network: thoughtful access management is not a restriction on freedom so much as it is a preservation of the resource that makes the experience possible in the first place.
The Saturday closure for the Coffin Races fits within that same management philosophy. The town needs to function, the event needs room to operate safely, and the trail will be there Sunday at 6 a.m. — ready, as always, to punish anyone willing to show up for it.
Planning Around the Closure: Practical Notes for Visitors
For anyone traveling specifically to Colorado Springs this weekend with the Incline on the itinerary, the math is straightforward. Saturday is gone. Sunday is open. Reservations will be available again at 6 a.m. on Sunday, October 25, according to Colorado Springs Parks, Recreation & Cultural Services. Book the earliest slot you can on Sunday if you want the full autumn experience — October light on the Front Range hits differently than summer's haze, and the aspens in the creek drainages below Pikes Peak will still be holding their color at elevation.
If you happen to be in town Saturday without a plan, the Coffin Races are genuinely worth attending as a standalone experience. The event is free, though a finish-line bleacher seat runs around $32 with processing fees through the event's ticketing platform. Parking is the operative challenge. Multiple roads in Manitou will be closed with detours in place, and the crowds will make it nearly impossible to navigate town by vehicle as the parade and race times approach. The City of Manitou Springs is asking everyone to avoid driving near downtown from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday. Shuttle service from Colorado Springs is the practical move — or a bike, if you're set up for it, since the Pike Ride Bike Valet operates at Memorial Park throughout the day.
The interplay between the Incline closure and the Coffin Races is, in some ways, a microcosm of what makes Manitou Springs one of the most interesting outdoor towns in America. It is a place that takes its history seriously, treats its geology as a recreational resource, and manages the collision of those two impulses with an annual event that is equal parts absurd and surprisingly moving. The story of Emma Crawford — a woman who loved these mountains enough to ask to be buried in them — and the story of the Incline — a trail that demands everything from the body in exchange for a view of those same mountains — belong to the same landscape. One day a year, the trail yields to the legend. Everything else, it's all yours.
