Drivers who pull off I-25 to climb the white rock at the north edge of University Park usually think they've seen the whole thing. Pull into the dirt lot, hike up, take the photo of Pikes Peak, drive away. "And they think that's all there is to it," Larry Bogue, a longtime neighbor whose property backs up to the hillside behind Pulpit Rock, told the Colorado Springs Gazette back in April. Bogue knows better. So does anyone who has actually lived next to these roughly 600 acres for a while, because Austin Bluffs Open Space, of which University Park's own namesake open space is one of three founding parcels, has never been one simple hill. It's a hillside crossed by more informal trails than the city ever intended, and this summer that changes.
Thirty Miles of Trails Nobody Officially Approved
Before the current construction, Austin Bluffs was less a trail system than a decades-long collective improvisation. A 2020 conditions survey that kicked off the city's master planning process found nearly 30 miles of user-cut paths crisscrossing the bluffs, most of them carved by hikers and mountain bikers who simply picked their own line up the rock. Cory Sutela, executive director of the mountain biking group Medicine Wheel Trail Advocates, put it plainly to the Gazette: the old network was "frustrating if you didn't know how to make sensible loops." Robert Lomenick, another rider who has used the space for years, called it "very confusing," even for someone who knew it well.
That's not a knock on the neighborhood. It's just what happens when a popular hillside sits between a college campus, a shopping center, and a few hundred backyards for thirty years without a formal map. People found their own way up, water found its own way down those same cuts, and the erosion started to outpace the enjoyment. The city's plan doesn't try to preserve that free-for-all. It tries to replace it with something a first-time visitor and a twenty-year regular could both actually follow.
What's Under Construction Right Now
Here's what's changing on the ground this summer, based on reporting from the Gazette, Axios Colorado Springs, and KOAA5 between January and May 2026:
Trail | Status as of mid-2026 | What it means if you use this space regularly |
|---|---|---|
Enlightenment Trail (also reported as Inspiration Trail) | Under construction, no opening date announced | A brand-new, hiking-only stone staircase straight up Pulpit Rock. Over 400 steps. |
Spine Trail | Under construction, roughly 2.5 miles | A new official connector from the south end of Rockhurst Boulevard to Union Boulevard, linking Austin Bluffs to Palmer Park for the first time. |
Lori Cohen Memorial Trail | Closed during construction | The familiar 3-mile loop around the UCCS bluffs is off-limits for now. |
Black Sheep Trail | Closed during construction | The one technical, downhill-only mountain bike run on Pulpit Rock is paused. |
Rim Trail | Open | The 4-plus-mile tour of the upper bluffs, once an unofficial favorite, is now signed and mapped. |
Summit Trail | Open | Still the main route to the top while Enlightenment Trail is built underneath it. |
Both the north and south parking areas near Pulpit Rock have seen closures at different points this year as the work has progressed. FOX21 reported the north lot closing in mid-May 2026 for trailhead prep, and Axios had already flagged the south lot as closed earlier that same month. If you're used to grabbing whichever spot is open, plan on checking the city's Austin Bluffs Open Space page before you head out rather than assuming your usual pullout is available. The work is expected to run through summer 2026, and as of this writing, nobody at the city has committed to an exact finish date.
Fewer Miles, Not More
Here's the part that surprises people. The city describes this as trail expansion, and in one narrow sense it is. But if you measure the whole hillside rather than just the two new named segments, the honest description is closer to a contraction. The finished, official network will land at around 18 miles. That's meaningfully less than the nearly 30 miles of informal paths the 2020 survey actually found on the ground. The two new segments, Spine Trail and Enlightenment Trail, are formally replacing more than 13 miles of those older rogue cuts on their own, according to Axios's reporting in May 2026.
So the paradox is real: more signage, more legibility, a genuinely new experience at the top of Pulpit Rock, and fewer total miles of dirt to wander than what's technically been there for years. If you've got a favorite unofficial shortcut on the west face that isn't Rim Trail, Summit Trail, or one of the other named routes, this is the summer it's likely to close for good rather than reopen once the dust settles. Parks officials aren't shy about why they're doing this. Outdoor recreation on city-run land generated $90 million last year, Axios reported in May 2026, and a hillside eroding into gullies isn't a sustainable version of that asset.
The Trailhead Bar Is Getting the Same Treatment
The same instinct, take something homegrown and give it a real structure, is playing out down the hill at Lost Friend Brewing Co, off Union Boulevard near North Academy. If you've hiked Pulpit Rock and rewarded yourself with a beer afterward, there's a decent chance it was here. The taproom at 2458 Montebello Square Drive has been a woman- and veteran-owned neighborhood fixture since it opened in April 2019, known mostly for two things: leashes clipped to carabiners on the tables, and a rotating cast of food trucks parked outside because there'd never been a permanent kitchen.
That's changing. Construction is underway next door, in a space that used to be a Burn Boot Camp, and owner Andy France told Springs Magazine in March 2026 that the expansion adds a full bar, a permanent food partner in The Shed (a barbecue fusion concept from BC's BBQ), and a new 50-person event space that will be free for select nonprofits and community groups when it's not booked. Hours are stretching earlier too, aimed at remote workers who want coffee and breakfast before the taps even open. France framed the whole project as less about adding features and more about "creating a community space where everyone feels welcome and comfortable." The opening is coming in phases sometime in 2026, with the new space going live first and the original taproom getting its own renovation after that.
Same Footprint, New Shape
Put the two stories next to each other and the pattern is hard to miss. A hillside that grew its own trail network by accident is getting an official one. A brewery that grew its own following by being small and improvised is adding a bar, a kitchen partner, and a room for a hundred people. Neither change erases what made either place work in the first place. The dogs still get carabiners. Pulpit Rock still has the same view of the range from Cheyenne Mountain to Mount Herman it always did. But the version of both that you've built your routine around, the shortcut nobody else knew about, the taproom with no kitchen and no morning hours, is the version that's disappearing this year.
If you live in this stretch of Colorado Springs, the practical move is simple: check current access before your next hike rather than assuming last year's route still works, and give Lost Friend's expanded hours a look once they land if your Saturday routine has room for one more stop.
If you're weighing what it's actually like to live near this corner of the city day to day, not just what a listing says about it, Kevin James Bond has spent years walking these same trails and can talk through what's changing and what isn't. Let's Connect.
