The Ring the Peak Trail, a 70-mile loop planned to circle Pikes Peak, has been placed on a state list of priority trail projects for 2016, thanks to local champions who have been pushing the trail’s completion for years.

The unfinished trail has two gaps – 5 miles on Ute Pass Regional Trail and 8 miles on the peak’s southwest side – that could be closed with the help of state grants, and now, some cachet.

Gov. John Hickenlooper on Wednesday announced Ring the Peak was on a list of 16 unfinished trails from Durango to Boulder that will get priority status for state funding. Among other criteria, the trails were picked based on their potential economic impact and local efforts for their completion.

A finished Ring the Peak Trail has big implications for El Paso County and could rival other destination trails, like Utah’s White Rim Trail, advocates say.

“This would become one of those bucket-list trails that people, potentially from all over the world, would want to come and do,” said Susan Davies, executive director of the Trails and Open Space Coalition, one of the groups that submitted Ring the Peak for consideration.

While the designation of “16 in 2016” – does not guarantee any of the trails funding, it could help give them priority when agencies apply for Great Outdoors Colorado grants, spokeswoman Laura Cardon said. The state has set aside $10 million for trails projects to finish the governor’s 16.

“It doesn’t mean the work is over by any stretch,” said Davies. “But what it does mean is that the governor’s office … has said this is an important trail to finish.”

Outside of the state designation, the Ute Pass Regional Trail section of the route was pushed closer to completion last year when the El Paso County commissioners approved a master plan to close the trail’s gap. All that the plan lacked was funding.

Meanwhile, Davies’ group and another nonprofit, Friends of the Peak, have worked to close the trail’s second gap on the southwest side of the peak. But the effort has proven to be far more complex, she said. That route takes the trail along Bison Reservoir near Victor, through a Cripple Creek municipal watershed and over federal and private lands.

“We’ve got to find a route that is acceptable to the people that live up there,” Davies said.

Trail advocates celebrated Wednesday’s official stamp of the governor’s approval as a decided victory.

“I mean, doing something like this is not easy, and it takes a really long time and sometimes you run into a lot of dead ends,” Davies said. “So it’s just lovely to have this little rainbow today that says we are doing the right thing, we are on the right trail.”

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Contact Ryan Maye Handy: 636-0198

Twitter @ryanmhandy