Even with a bit of rain, Bike to Work Day provided a good time to celebrate the opening of three more segments of the Eagle Valley Trail. The Wednesday celebration featured a small bike parade, mostly with longtime supporters of the years-long project. The segments opened Wednesday included EagleVail, Dowd Junction and a connector into Minturn.
Roughly $3 million in community support is needed to complete the final, most complex portion of the Eagle Valley Trail, go to eaglevalleytrail.org . Two of those segments posed some real challenges due to terrain.
Kevin Sharkey, the trail program manager with the county’s ECO Trails department, said the work required close cooperation with the Colorado Department of Transportation. In a release, Sharkey said the state department had to reduce lane widths on U.S.
Highway 6 to accommodate the trail. Trail designers Otak Inc. had to avoid negative impacts to the Eagle River, and steep, narrow terrain.
Buried utilities posed still other challenges. The Eagle River Water & Sanitation District was a key partner with the project in the Dowd Junction area. The district in 2020 began replacing an aerial sewer main crossing the Eagle River.
Design work began with a utility bridge to support the replacement pipe, but during discussions with other stakeholders, that design evolved into a bridge that could accommodate cyclists and pedestrians, which could help extend the Eagle Valley Trail. A second phase replaced another aerial sewer main that .
