Colorado has a brand-new long trail, and it makes the famous Colorado Trail look like a warm-up lap. The Great Colorado Route (GCR) is a 2,000-mile loop across the state's Rocky Mountains, dreamed up and first hiked by 29-year-old Donovan "Iceman" Rice from Golden. He started at Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park on May 14, 2026, and returned to the same spot on October 1 — four and a half months later, as the first person ever to finish it.

The idea came to Rice in 2024 at the Colorado-Wyoming border, right after he completed the state's 700-mile stretch of the Continental Divide Trail. Nothing else he'd hiked — including the Pacific Crest Trail in 2020 — hit him the same way. So, between jobs, he spent months mapping a route built around three principles he sums up as "beauty, breadth, and epicness."

The numbers are wild. The loop passes through three national parks, two national monuments, all 11 of Colorado's national forests, 29 wilderness areas and eight wilderness study areas. It touches 13 fourteeners (including Pikes Peak and the Maroon Bells) and 47 thirteeners. Its outer edges run from Rattlesnake Arches in the west to Alamosa in the south, Colorado Springs in the east, and to within a mile of the Wyoming line. Rice logged 364,000 feet of elevation gain — and thinks that's an undercount.

His personal highlights? Indian Peaks Wilderness, Wild Basin in Rocky Mountain National Park, the Sangre de Cristo range, and walking straight across the dunes at Great Sand Dunes National Park. The route deliberately avoids overlapping with the Colorado Trail and the CDT, skips technical climbing and gear like ropes or packrafts, and minimises road walking and out-and-backs.

Rice is upfront that this is not a beginner's hike. There's scrambling, off-trail navigation, and plenty of problem-solving where trails were closed or unreported obstacles appeared — he called it "building the plane while flying it." He consulted fellow thru-hiker Kevin Silvernale, creator of the Northern Colorado Route, who told him to design the hike he wanted rather than the easiest one. That advice shaped a route that's extreme by design.

The human side of the story may be the best part. Rice documented the trek on Instagram and a live tracker, picking up thousands of followers who spotted him in towns along the way. He credits those small Colorado towns — and their overwhelmingly supportive residents — as the real heroes of his hike.

For travellers, the GCR is less a to-do list than a menu. Because it's a loop, you can start anywhere and sample a section: a wilderness traverse, a fourteener approach, or a dune crossing. Experienced long-distance hikers now have a serious new objective, while everyone else gets a freshly scouted masterclass in where Colorado's best backcountry actually is. Credit: Backpacker.