The white, throne-like monolith looms in plain view from Interstate 25 through Colorado Springs.

Drivers popularly pull off to hike up Pulpit Rock.

“And they think that’s all there is to it,” Larry Bogue says. 

But he knows there’s much more to Austin Bluffs Open Space. 

He knows as he lives in the neighborhood bordering this hilly mosaic of rock outcrops, meadows and woods, this slice of wilderness between homes, a college campus and shopping center. 

But lately, Bogue and a growing number of others have gotten to know these 600 acres in a whole new way. This includes Cory Sutela, executive director of mountain biking group Medicine Wheel Trail Advocates. 

“It was popular yet unknown,” he says — popular among neighbors in-the-know. “Now it’s much more popular and well-known.”  

That’s as Austin Bluffs Open Space’s trail network nears a full transformation envisioned in a 2020 master plan. 

The network previously? The plan identified “a proliferation of rogue trails” criss-crossing nearly 30 miles, like a spider web.

“It was frustrating if you didn’t know how to make sensible loops,” Sutela says. “It was really easy to end up in a spot where it wasn’t rideable.”

Even for riding neighbors in-the-know like Robert Lomenick, it was “very confusing,” he says. And worse, those “rogue” or “social” trails carved steep hillsides, catching water and eroding, forming deep gullies. 

“[V]egetation and wildlife habitat is becoming fragmented and degraded,” the master plan determined. It called for closing trails, formalizing others and adding segments for a final network of about 18 miles.

It has all just about come to fruition. 

“I would now tell you I think this is my favorite biking park,” says Lomenick, who has been riding around Colorado Springs since retiring here in 2013. “And not just because I live behind it, but because of the way the trails were done and all the different variety.” 

Yes, there is much more than Summit Trail, the well-defined path to the top of Pulpit Rock previously climbed by undefined, incised trails.

Before Pulpit Rock, Summit Trail meets a curious outcrop. And behind this rock are signs now marking Rim Trail — a scenic, 4-plus mile tour of the open space’s upper reaches. 

Rim Trail has become a go-to for people on foot and bike. As has the Lori Cohen Memorial Trail, looping 3 miles along the bluffs rolling around the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. Spine Trail is a more recent addition, spanning the length of Austin Bluffs over to Union Boulevard and more sought-out bluffs of Palmer Park. 

Back on Pulpit Rock, the downhill mountain bike-only Black Sheep Trail plunges for a technical challenge some see as rare across the city park system. Farther afield, winding between cliffs, oak and grassy valleys, Lomenick has come to love more moderate trails called Borrego and Shepherd.

The trail names — borrego is Spanish for “lamb” — harken back to a shepherding era around Austin Bluffs. Henry Austin bought land here in the 1870s, around the time El Paso County was home to 15,000 or more head of sheep.

About 100 years later, in 1975, the city acquired Pulpit Rock and 192 acres around it. Among other acquisitions over the years, the most significant came in 1999: 258 acres dedicated as part of a deal to grow the University Park neighborhood.

If it weren’t for houses like the one he’s lived in the past decade, Bogue has wondered about what Austin Bluffs Open Space could’ve been. 

“It could’ve been really huge,” he says. “But still, what we have for a city of our size is pretty amazing.” 

The 600 acres “became an oasis in the middle of the city,” says David Deitemeyer, senior administrator of the city’s Trails, Open Space and Parks program. “It’s this quiet respite for wildlife to escape the busy population.” 

Preserving that habitat — closing trails, revegetating and directing people to narrowed recreation corridors — was the ultimate aim of the 2020 master plan, Deitemeyer says. 

“As a land manager, it’s a little bit embarrassing to think about how we’ve held the responsibility to manage that property since the ’70s, and we had no official plan to manage it in a sustainable and appropriate manner,” he says. “We had these 600 acres of incredible open space in the heart of the city that was well loved and utilized by a select few who more or less created their own private open space.” 

They created trails that some hated to see go under the plan. The plan came with compromises — “ups and downs,” Sutela says. 

“But overall, it’s the right thing to do for such an obvious and iconic place,” he says. “Pulpit Rock, it’s so accessible and so noticeable, and it would be irresponsible not to make it really open the way that it is now.” 

Where regulars and newcomers often got lost, “all of a sudden there’s signage now” across the trails, Lomenick says. “The push to put signage in was a big deal.”

And he’s excited, too, for construction expected to start this month at the two parking lots and trailheads off North Nevada Avenue, under Pulpit Rock. The work aims to better define and sustain the two main portals to the open space, Deitemeyer says. 

Also this month, he expects construction to start on Enlightenment Trail. The hiking-only trail of stone steps will create a more direct, fitness-centric route to the top of Pulpit Rock. 

Maybe it will invite more people to the open space — a concern commonly brought up in shaping the master plan. 

“As much as I would love to have this be my private playground, it can’t be,” Lomenick says.

Indeed, says Bogue, the fellow neighbor: “Everyone needs to have access to it.” 

Still, he knows Austin Bluffs to not be nearly as busy as other parks and open spaces in the city. And he still finds himself discovering more here. 

Not long ago, Bogue found himself between unfamiliar trees and spotted a buck. He went on to spot a woman and her two daughters. He pointed them back in the direction of the big deer. 

“Hopefully those two little girls got a chance to see a buck on a walk with their mom,” he says.