A new report released by the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative (CFI) has revealed the most popular 14,000-foot mountains for hikers in 2024, and how closures and reopenings have impacted overall use.
CFI has worked to protect and preserve these mountains since 1994 through stewardship, field work and education. As of this publishing date, they have constructed sustainable trails to the summits of 37 of these peaks. As part of their work, they published an annual hiking use report to reveal usage on these iconic mountains.
The number of hikers who visited Colorado's fourteeners inched up by 1.9% in 2024, indicating an estimated 265,000 "hiker use days," which represents one person hiking one peak in a single day.
CFI collects these numbers using compact infrared trail counters placed at 23 locations that lead to 22 fourteeners between May 26 and Oct. 5, and missing data is modeled after similar times and use levels on similar peaks. CFI also takes into account projections on crowdsourced “14er checklists” submitted to 14ers.com. The usage numbers for mountains without a trail camera are determined by looking at the relative frequency of reported hiking on all peaks and using data points as anchors for peaks that had the trail counters, CFI said.
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The small year-over-year increase in usage from 2023 to 2024 is mostly due to two factors: the reopening of the DeCaLiBron loop (Mount Democrat, Cameron Peak, Mount Lincoln and the Mount Bross bypass) and the revised calculation system for Mount Blue Sky, CFI reported.
Declines in hiker use days at some other summits offset the increase for the most part.
CFI breaks down hiker use days by tiers:
- Tier one: 25,000-30,000
- Tier two: 20,000-25,000
- Tier three: 15,000-20,000
- Tier four: 10,000-15,000
- Tier five: 7,000-10,000
- Tier six: 5,000-7,000
- Tier seven: 3,000-5,000
- Tier eight: 1,000-3,000
- Tier nine: <1,000
Denver7 is diving into the stats from the 2024 hiking use report.
The most popular 14ers
Anybody familiar with fourteeners in Colorado won't be surprised here: The most popular fourteeners in 2024 were Mount Bierstadt and Quandary Peak with 25,000 to 30,000 hiker days, according to CFI's report.
The trail counter for Mount Bierstadt indicated that hiking use actually dropped a little from 2023. It is estimated at 28,000.
Meanwhile, the trail counter at Quandary Peak — an increasingly popular place for not just summer hiking, but winter activities — recorded more than 26,500 hiker days during the full season.
Third place for hiker use days goes to Mount Blue Sky, which landed in the second tier in 2024 with an estimated 20,600 hiker use days. This summit saw a notable increase in usage, moving up from tier four in 2023. These 2024 numbers counted both hikers who started at Echo Lake, which is about a 17-mile round trip, and hikers who started higher up at Summit Lake, which is a 5.5-mile roundtrip.
Fourth, fifth and sixth on the list of most popular fourteeners are Mount Elbert, and Grays Peak and Torreys Peak. The latter two are frequently done in one go. All three had been in tier two in 2023 and fell to tier three in 2024.
CFI reported that their best estimates are 17,200 for Mount Elbert and 18,400 for the Grays-Torreys combo.
Last on the list of most popular fourteeners is the DeCaLiBron Loop, which consists of two official 14ers with accessible summits (Democrat and Lincoln), one with a private summit and a public bypass (Bross) and the unofficial fourteeners Cameron (it does not have enough "prominence," meaning it does not drop and gain at least 300 feet from its neighboring summits). Due to a landowner's closure, the loop fell to tier five in 2023, but rebounded the following year to tier three as it reopened to the public. The estimated number of hiker use days last year was 15,300.
About 54% of statewide fourteener use happened on these eight peaks, along with these four others:
- Pikes Peak (10,000-15,000 hiker use days)
- Longs Peak (7,000-10,000 hiker use days)
- Sherman (7,000-10,000 hiker use days)
- Huron Peak (7,000-10,000 hiker use days)
These 12 peaks add up to about 144,344 hiker use days, according to the report. All the other fourteeners in the state accounted for about 120,656 hiker days.
The least popular 14ers
CFI's report includes 24 of fourteeners that were in the bottom two groups — tier eight (1,000-3,000 hiker use days) and and nine (less than 1,000 hiker use days). All of these peaks are several hours away by car from the Denver metro area.
The tier eight 14ers include:
- Castle Peak
- Maroon Peak
- North Maroon Peak
- Capitol Peak
- Pyramid Peak
- Blanca Peak
- Ellingwood Point
- Crestone Peak
- Crestone Needle
- Humboldt Peak
- Mount Wilson
- El Diente Peak
- Wilson Peak
- San Luis Peak
- Mount Antero
And the tier nine 14ers include:
- Mount Eolus
- Windom Peak
- Sunlight Peak
- Kit Carson Peak
- Challenger Point
- Culebra Peak
- Mount Lindsey
- Little Bear Peak
- Snowmass Mountain
Mount Lindsey's access was closed during the entire season due to landowner liability concerns, CFI's report reads. People still trespassed in 2024, but at lower levels than usual, the report continues.
What influences hiking levels?
Every year, the number of people who visit the state's fourteeners is typically governed by proximity to the Front Range, difficulty of the climb and legal access.
Lloyd F. Athearn, executive director of CFI, explained that various mountains had opened and closed over the past few years, which caused a significant fluctuation in hiker numbers.
“With Mount Democrat becoming public land in 2024 and an electronic waiver system also in place by the landowner of Mount Lincoln, hiking use levels on the Decalibron Loop effectively doubled last year compared to 2023 when the loop was closed for half the season," Athearn said. "However, reduced hiking use on perennial top-tier peaks, including Grays and Torreys Peaks and Mount Elbert, largely offset this increase. Tweaks to the modeling code also resulted in swings in estimated use for both Mount Blue Sky and Longs Peak that largely offset each other.”
Overall, 14er visits peaked in 2020 and have returned to the mean number of visits since then.
Hiking numbers fell in the Sawatch Range by 8.9%, in the Sangre de Cristo Range by 15% and in the Tenmile Range by 1.9% in 2024. Those numbers went up in the Mosquito Range by 55%, San Juan Mountains by 9.2%, the Front Range by 2.4% and Elk Mountains by 20%, according to the report.
The number of hikers headed up fourteeners may also be impacted by the relatively recent slower population growth when compared to prior decades, the report reads, citing data from the State Demographer’s Office.
