Kelly Flats

I stopped at the trailhead on Monday, June 14, 2021. The gate was open and there were no signs indicating closure. However, the Forest Service website still indicates closure as of 6/15. Kind of confusing. I walked up to the first obstacle but didn't go further.

Although this trail is scheduled to be open now, the trail remains closed by the US Forest Service because of damage from last year's Cameron Peak Fire. It is not yet known when, or if, this trail will be opened this season for motor vehicles. We will continue to check with the US Forest Service and post details as they become available.

Although Kelly Flats is typically open this time of the year, it remains closed by the USFS due to road damage from last year’s Cameron Peak fire. We will keep an eye on opening information.

Fire closure has been lifted, but the seasonal closure is now in effect.

The Cameron Peak fire west of Fort Collins continues to grow, prompting additional closures to the Roosevelt National Forest. The trail is affected by the Forest Closure Order effective 08-20-2020. Ongoing information about the fire, it’s progress, evacuations and closures can be found at Inciweb.gov website.

Great trail. Heart attack and the chutes make this trail a ton of fun. Good views and some good dispersed camping as well.

Excellent run today in my stock JK Rubicon. While lines and tire placement were critical in certain spots (kissed my skids half a dozen times)I will certainly be back to this trail once I have my lift and tires upgraded. Ran earlier in the morning and had the trail completely to ourselves.

Ran the trail at about 11am was not crowded at all. Day was nice trail was clean. The chute was awesome! Definitely wouldn't try unless you have the front and rear lockers. Overall great trail.

Thankfully, something is finally open. The Northern Colorado Mountains had good snowfall this year and it has been slow to melt. Many trails will have delayed openings, but Kelly Flats is ready. Because it is one of the few trails open, it was really busy with several large groups running the trail on the weekend. For those of you who want to run the Chutes with an audience, a busy weekend offers quite a crowd to cheer drivers through the challenge. Enjoy the ride.

Ran Kelly Flats today. It was busy! I would recommend going on a weekday. Overall the trail is in great shape! This trail is a great test for a stock or mildly built vehicle.

Trail is now open for the season per the Forest Service.

Had contact with the US Forest Service who advised that Kelly Flats was still closed because of snow and wet conditions. This next week is slated to be unusually warm. We'll see what that does for the trail conditions. Maybe next week.

This was my first time on Kelly Flats and with the little bit of snow and ice it made it fun! I will have to go back next summer and try it when it's dry. Heart attack hill was Dry on the way up but the back side still had snow. The Chutes were still covered in mud and snow at the bottom and the one guy in our group that tried it wasn't able to get through it.

There has been some recent snowfall in the Poudre Canyon. While many road are enjoyable with a little snow, I find that Kelly Flats is not one of them. I went as far as Waypoint 3 and had a difficult time negotiating the rocky climbs near the gate keeper. Although the road is open, the conditions are down right dangerous because of the snow.

To this date, this was the hardest trail I had done in my trailhawk. I have gotten way more comfortable with it since this video, but I was still blown away by how good it is. Heart attack hill is no joke,. I had to stop a few times to figure out what line I wanted to take, and this trail is relentless. As soon as you think you're coming out of it, it has another obstacle. I definitely hit my skids and sliders , but if you are smart about it, you can work your way through, though it is technical. Glad I've got a rear locker cuz I don't think i would have made it nearly as easily as I did without it . Still this was a gorgeous trail, and the views made it definitely worth it

I came down from Wyoming mainly to try the chutes on this trail. Heart Attack hill was also pretty fun, stayed on far right line where it was rocky. Looks like a lot of people are skirting the rocks and going up the easier left side, really widening the trail there. ( isn’t that what the bypass is for?) Shorther wheelbase makes the v-notch in the chutes pretty challenging, broke a front driver side stub shaft on my first try a few weeks earlier. Put some chrome shafts in and better u-joints, went right up this time. I did notice, the groove where your driver side tires sit can be made very tippy and difficult, or rather mild, depending on how many rocks are piled in there or have been removed. I slammed my roll cage into the big rocks pretty good, the rocks were all freshly removed by a recent trail guardian apparently. After that first notch, it’s pretty much a driveway, unless you’re really wide. Fun trail overall! Thank you for this site!

Ran Kelly Flats with the Horsetooth 4 Wheelers group. Watched a few people attempt the chutes, one made it up all the way. This trail was very challenging in my stock 05 Toyota Sequoia on 33's, but made it fine with no damage. Beautiful trail with great views and a bit of everything (rock, mud, water, scenic, etc). Personally, I think the FS might have opened this trail a bit too soon. There were 2 extremely muddy sections between waypoints 8 and 9, which both of required a heavy gas pedal to get through. And since its one of the only trails open right now in the entire state (there was A LOT of traffic), those mud sections are just getting worse and worse. There was a visible new bypass on one of the mud sections. Anyways, great day with a great crew of people. Kelly Flats is a very fun and challenging trail, I highly recommend it.

Open for business. Because of the late season mountain snow and cooler temperatures slowing the snowmelt, Kelly Flats is one of the few trails open in northern Colorado. As a result, it was busy with many wheelers on the trail for the Memorial Day holiday weekend. The trail conditions were fabulous. Heart attack Hill at Waypoint 4 was dry and in great shape. There was some standing and running water in the Chutes at Waypoint 7, making passage exceptionally difficult except for the most well built rigs. Some water and trail mud are still present after the Last Half Rocks. Please go through, not around, the mud holes. Please enjoy the ride and "Stay the Trail".

Opened this weekend with the help of the Forest Service and the adopted club.

Wanted to drive in a ways and check it out. But after only a couple hundred yards there is no way you can get a stockish truck up there with out a winch. Kinda bumbed cause I wanted to check it out. But I guess ill live or wait and catch a ride with some one through the trail some day. "Update" Drove from the backside in a couple miles. Fairly easy. Note its very icy, Had fun though!

My wifeʻs friend is visiting and I decided the 3 of us would head up from the west side in our stock JKU rubicon. I just learned what a difference airing down makes in the wrangler (Itʻs not nearly as important on a dirt bike) so we thought weʻd go see the meadows up top. Last time I tried it the ride was a bit too scary for me. So it was an easy drive from the west, and everything was beautiful. We came across a guy in a Tacoma TRD who claimed there was only one gnarly obstacle and he got through with only a couple bottom scrapes. So we thought it would be ok. Later we met a couple more wranglers and they had the same comments about the gnarly spot, and added the suggestion to use the lockers. It turned out the gnarly bit was the "Last Half Rocks" in the pics above, and since there were fresh tire tracks it was easy to pick a line and drive up. Later we came across a big steel sign showing the direction for the chutes, and the bypass. Conveniently we had come down the bypass. At this point it is worth mentioning our mindset. Remember, we started with the Ocean Liner Tacoma TRD guy (with his wife/gf) saying he did the "one obstacle" ok with a couple of scrapes underneath. And the two jeepers (who had their women with them as well) said thereʻs just the one obstacle, and that itʻs like a driveway the rest of the way out. More than once my wife, her friend, and I made jokes about the "driveway", but there wasnʻt anything that seemed terribly tough. So when we go to the top of a steep drop, I thought the driveway thing was a pretty funny joke, but hey, that huge truck did this and it didnʻt look too bad, so we crawled down it with no particular difficulty. I decided it would be ok because I could see more "driveway" below. There were some rough spots, but nothing too terrible. So then we get to another steep and messy area, and itʻs wide like a freeway because people have obviously been fighting their way up this thing with a wide variety of lines. At this point Iʻm thinking the guy with the truck drove up this and his skill level is obviously far greater than mine because I canʻt imagine that stock longbed making this trip at all. Still, we crawled down it without too many scrapes and all was well. A bit later on (after going in and out of 4 low too many times, still thinking weʻre supposed to be on this mystical "driveway"), we come across another sign that points one way at "bypass" and the way we came "heart attack hill". Somehow we missed that particular bypass opportunity and the first steep drop we went down was the final cherry on heart attack hill. We agreed that it was highly unlikely that either truck or the jeep guys had come up the tough hill. Overall the trail was in excellent shape and quite a lot of fun. And next time Iʻm heading up from Kelly Flats and figuring out where the bypass for heart attack hill comes out so I see how I missed it. None of us recalls seeing a side road. Because ignorance and the belief a giant truck had come up that hill are the only reasons I went down that way instead of looking for an alternate route.

A large group took the trek of Kelly Flats on an ominous weather day. The occasional rain sprinkles and light hail made the rock surfaces very slick especially in the chutes. Even with the rain, mud was not a problem anywhere along the trail. An interesting jeep joined in on the fun. A completely restored, vintage 1944 Willy's manufactured for the US Army conquered the entire route. Jeeps have been driving over stuff for more than 75 years and it was nice to see a original stock Willy's with 1940's designed tires prove it's heritage.

It's early in the season and the trail is in great shape. The US Forest Service opened Kelly Flats last week so this weekend sounded like a great opportunity to check things out. At the trailhead, I met a fairly new off-road driver asking questions about the difficulty of the trail. Of course I referred him to TrailsOffRoad.com for his future questions. As a beginning driver, he approached the gate keeper rocks at waypoint 2 and decided that this trail was probably too much for his comfort level. That's ok, this style of wheeling is not for everybody. The trail was dry and in great shape I was surprised by how few other vehicles I encountered on the trail. In a few weeks, I expect that the weekends will get pretty busy.

The last trip to Kelly Flats was a fun one to say the least. The day started with myself and another person volunteering to go with the U.S. Forest Service to check the condition of a trail in the area to see if it could be opened, unfortunately it could not due to some massive sinkholes. Once we left from there we headed to the back side of Kelly Flats to meet up with the rest of our group at The Chutes for lunch. While this portion of the trip was uneventful, it was still fun as we encountered some wildlife and treated to some great scenery. Once we reached the Chutes everyone else was there already and having fun attempting The Chutes. We played there for about an hour before heading back out to the start of the trail, when I realized something was wrong with my breaks, my drivers front caliper came off as it lost the bolts holding the bracket to the knuckle. Lets just say it was an interesting trip to the Parking Area without any breaks! Overall the trail was in good shape and nothing out of the ordinary from the trail description listed above, and the overall rating would be a 6 but in a dual rating it would be a 5 on the easy side but if you attempt the chutes it would be an 8 this year.

We ran the trail on 6/5/15 and it was open for the season at that time. We had an LJ on 37s locked front and rear, and a TJ on 35s locked front and rear. This trail really only 2 obstacles. One is Heart Attack Hill not far from the start and this has a bypass around that hill climb. It definitely is a steep, loose climb and should not be taken lightly. The rest of the trail is pretty mellow until you reach the Chutes. That is where all of my pictures are taken from. The Chutes should only be attempted by very well equipped vehicles that have lockers or a winch. Body damage is a very high possibility in this obstacle. There is a bypass for this obstacle. It began to rain fairly heavily on us when we were in the Chutes so the second rig had to winch out because he couldn't get any traction on the rocks. Once you have passed the chutes, there are no real obstacles just a bumpy road through the forest.