Shrine Pass

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3.8/5 (26 reviews)
Red Cliff, Colorado (Summit County)
Last Updated: 11/17/2023

Trail Information

Highlights

The pass is located at the northern end of the Sawatch Range and is a popular shortcut from I-70 to the town of Red Cliff and the more interesting off-road trails such as Holy Cross, , Ptarmigan Pass, and McCallister Gulch. The pass offers scenic views of wildflower meadows and pine woodlands during the summer and autumn months, as well as a distant view of Mount of the Holy Cross to the north.

Trail Difficulty and Assessment

Trail Navigation

Trail Reviews

3.8/5 (26)
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Official Crew
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137550
Seasonal Closure
Visited: 11/17/2023

Official winter Seasonal Closure is now in effect
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Official Crew
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137550
Impassable
Visited: 10/29/2023

Recent snow storms have blanketed the trail creating dangerous driving conditions and rendering the trail impassable.
Open
Rated 4/5
Visited: 10/01/2023
Difficulty Accuracy: Spot On

Easy drive through from Vail Pass to Red Cliff. As others have said it gets a bit rockier towards the end as you approach Red Cliff Definitely worth a stop at the Holy Cross overlook.
Trail Review: Shrine Pass - Jake Latham
Trail Review: Shrine Pass - Jake Latham
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Open
Rated 4/5
Visited: 09/17/2023
Difficulty Accuracy: Spot On

great high-to-low trail with views to match almost all the way. vast majority of surface is dirt, with the western portion being rock. would guess the dirt portion of this road is really slopply during or after a rain, so glad i went on a dry day. from around WP 5 on (west) this trail is a near never-ending descent that roughly parallels Turkey Creek, until you're dumped out at Redcliff. there's also a great little restaurant at the Redcliff trailhead.

from WP 9 to 11, this trail gets extremely rocky and has steeper sections. the rocks are small, but it's a rough ride - a real constrast to the same road before WP 9 - might even state trail difficulty leans more toward a 2 than 1 in some of those sections. according to GPS tracking, this trail was around 60 minutes to complete.

Open
Rated 4/5
Visited: 09/03/2023
Difficulty Accuracy: Spot On

We camped along shrine pass for the weekend. There's plenty of camping spots to find along the road that aren't marked by way points in here and it was never too crowded of busy even for labor day weekend. For the most part this is just a basic dirt road but on the west half of the trail there's a few stretches of some really bumpy rocky sections. A GMC Terrain went through there with it's low ground clearance, you would just want to slow down and take it easy in something like that.

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