Hiking on Colorado’s biggest mountains has dipped to the lowest levels tracked in 10 years. 

Colorado Fourteeners Initiative, the nonprofit stewarding summit trails and placing infrared counters across several, estimated 256,000 “hiker-use days” in 2025. That’s the fewest reported since CFI started annually estimating numbers in 2015 and sharply down from 415,000 logged in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic sent record surges across the outdoors. 

Numbers have steadily returned to what some land managers and advocates might describe as “normal” ー at least closer to what CFI started tracking in 2015, when the organization surmised 260,000 “hiker-use days” across the fourteeners. 

The latest figure is down from the 265,000 CFI estimated in 2024, which was slightly up from 2023. CFI uses the term to represent “one person hiking one peak on one day,” knowing that one might hike multiple fourteeners any given year.

Mount Blue Sky Scenic Byway was closed last summer for construction. That “contributed greatly to the decline, which offset higher climbing use on several of the most popular fourteeners,” CFI reported. 

Increases were reported on the most popular: Mount Bierstadt (nearly 31,000 hiker days, judging from a trail counter) and Quandary Peak (closer to 30,500). CFI counted Mount Democrat along the multi-peak Decalibron Loop as the third most popular fourteener, with estimates between 20,000-25,000 also up year-to-year. 

Decalibron had been subject to private landowner closures in past years. As had Mount Lindsey, which last year saw access restored under a waiver system. It seems that contributed to CFI’s estimated 65% increase in hiking in the Sangre de Cristo range. 

If Mount Blue Sky Scenic Byway was not closed, CFI figured the 2025 report would have included another 18,000 hiker days — bringing the overall count up year over year. 

“Continued volatility stemming from peak closures and re-openings masks the underlying trend that the fourteeners continue to be exceptionally popular hiking destinations,” CFI Executive Director Lloyd Athearn said in the latest report. 

Grays and Torreys peaks and Mount Elbert remained in the upper tier of most-hiked fourteeners, with each attracting an estimated 15,000-20,000 hiker days. Pikes Peak and Mount Sherman were both estimated between 10,000-15,000. Longs and Huron peaks were next in ranges between 7,000-10,000.

Those all contributed to another familiar conclusion for CFI: In 2025, an estimated 59% of fourteener hiking (152,400 hiker days) was focused on the dozen mountains closest to the Denver metro. “The remaining 46 peaks accounted for 103,600 hiker days,” CFI reported.

Along with infrared trail counters, the organization uses other data sources to shape its annual report, including “checklists” submitted to 14ers.com. Based on a Colorado State University study, CFI also every year estimates a statewide economic impact from fourteener hiking. That was $69.4 million for 2025.