Picket Pin Road

Picket Pin is a lightly traveled, in-and-out spur road located near Deep Creek Lake in the Flat Tops Mountain Range, north of Glenwood Springs. This trail is the poster child of a slow-burner, as the journey along the road begins as a seemingly mundane drive through dense pine forest with an annoying amount of potholes. Eventually, the trail pokes out of the trees and rewards you with wide-open meadow views and passes a couple of camping spurs that dart off into the trees.

The first 2.5 miles of road are an easy, hard-packed dirt surface. At the 2.5-mile mark, a 20-yard-long chocolate milk-looking mud puddle will leave you looking for a depth probe. This marks the beginning of consistently muddy conditions, even in peak summer, that necessitate a high clearance 4-wheel drive vehicle. The trail comes to an end after 3 miles, where it T's to two separate, awesome campsites. The northern site is a large, grassy site nestled along the hillside, while the southern site is a small and level site sitting atop the ridgeline with views that stretch as far as the eye can see.