Rio Grande National Forest OHV
The Rio Grande National Forest encompasses 1.85 million acres of southern Colorado's most geologically dramatic mountain terrain: the Alamosa, Conejos, Mineral, Rio Grande, and Saguache county landscape where the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and the San Juan Mountains bracket the San Luis Valley, the world's largest alpine valley at 7,600 feet elevation and one of the most distinctive landscape chambers in the Rocky Mountains. The OHV trail system operates on designated routes across the forest's Divide, Conejos Peak, Creede, and Saguache Ranger Districts, with the Creede and Divide districts providing the most extensive and scenically spectacular riding terrain. The Creede district occupies the volcanic San Juan caldera country surrounding the historic silver mining town of Creede: at 8,852 feet, Creede is one of Colorado's highest inhabited towns, and the surrounding landscape of volcanic tuff cliffs, old mine roads, and alpine meadows at 9,000 to 12,000 feet provides riding terrain with a boom-town ghost-mine character unique among national forests. The Weminuche Wilderness (490,000 acres, the largest wilderness area in Colorado), closes the forest's high-country interior to motorized use; the OHV designated routes operate on the wilderness margins and in the lower-elevation canyon and mesa terrain surrounding the San Luis Valley. The Divide District west of Monte Vista on US-160 provides forest road access into the southern San Juan foothills above the flat valley floor, with routes climbing from the alfalfa and potato fields of the valley at 7,600 feet to the ponderosa and spruce forest of the mountain flanks above. The forest serves the Colorado Springs market (750,000, 3.5 hours north via US-285), the Pueblo corridor (120,000), and northern New Mexico's Taos and Santa Fe markets via the historic US-285 highway. Rio Grande National Forest headquarters at Monte Vista (719-852-5941) manages current OHV trail conditions.