Wildridge's Trails Don't Close in Winter. They Just Get Smaller.

If you moved into Wildridge expecting the whole West Avon Preserve to be open whenever you feel like a ride, you've probably already met the green gate. It shows up every December on Lee's Way Down, or Saddle Ridge, or Wyse Way, right when the descent gets good. Nothing is broken. Nothing is under construction. The gate is doing exactly what it's supposed to do, and understanding why changes how you plan your year here.

Most people think of the trail network above their houses as one system. It isn't. From mid-December through mid-April, it becomes a much smaller one, and the two trailheads that anchor it work differently depending on which half of the calendar you're standing in.

The Closure Isn't a Blanket. It's a List.

Every winter, the Town of Avon closes a specific set of trails in the West Avon Preserve to protect elk and deer winter range: the Avon Singletree Connector, BLT, Carroll's Cutoff, Lee's Way Down, Saddle Ridge, Wild West Ridge, and Wyse Way. That's the full official closure list, and it runs from December 15 through April 15 every year.

Three trails stay open the whole time. Our Backyard and PB&J remain available for full use all winter. The Beaver Creek Point lookout trail also stays open, but foot traffic only, no bikes, for the duration. That distinction between "closed" and "open with a restriction" is the part people miss when they hear the neighborhood's trails are shut down for the season. They're not shut down. They're narrowed to a specific three, and which three depends on what you're trying to do.

Two Trailheads, Two Different Jobs

Beaver Creek Point and O'Neal Spur Pocket Park aren't interchangeable. Beaver Creek Point is where you park for Our Backyard, a short, nearly flat loop connected to the top of Lee's Way, and it's become the neighborhood's default evening dog walk because of the sunset views over Avon. Parking there is limited, which matters if you're planning around a busy weekend afternoon.

O'Neal Spur Pocket Park, at the intersection of Old Trail Road and O'Neal Spur, is built for more traffic. It's ADA accessible, has a restroom, and includes a water fountain that runs once the freeze cycles end each spring, all detailed on the Town of Avon's West Avon Preserve page. It's also the trailhead for PB&J, short for Pumps, Berms and Jumps, which is why it stays open through winter while the rest of the biking network shuts down. If you're a rider trying to get a lap in during a January thaw, O'Neal Spur is the only trailhead that will actually get you moving.

The Ride That Only Exists for Eight Months

Local riders have a name for the full loop through West Avon Preserve: the Tour de WAP. Vail Daily's trail column laid out the route in January, and it strings together nearly every trail on the winter closure list. You ride west on the Avon-Singletree Connector, climb Saddle Ridge, cross PB&J, descend to June Creek, climb Wild West Ridge, head back east on the Connector, climb Wyse Way, climb PB&J again, and finish with the downhill run on Lee's Way.

That means the ride most locals consider the signature loop of this preserve only exists between April 16 and December 14. For roughly a third of the year, it's not a shorter version of itself. It's not available at all. What is available is PB&J on its own, or the flat walk on Our Backyard, or a foot trip out to the lookout at Beaver Creek Point. The preserve doesn't shrink evenly. It keeps its walking loop and its bike-friendly connector and drops everything with real elevation change.

Why the Gate Actually Matters

The closure isn't a scheduling formality. Deer and elk use this specific hillside as winter range, and the Vail Valley Mountain Trails Alliance has been explicit about the mechanism behind it. When recreation pushes animals into a flight response during winter, they burn fat reserves they need to survive months of limited forage. Burn through those reserves too fast, and animals don't make it to spring. The same logic runs in reverse in April: warming temperatures trigger migration back to high-elevation summer range along historic routes, and pushing animals off that route during the move carries its own cost.

That's a real, specific reason tied to this exact hillside, not a generic seasonal rule copied from somewhere else. It's also why the three trails that stay open, Our Backyard, PB&J, and the Beaver Creek Point lookout on foot, sit in locations that don't cut across the migration corridor the way Saddle Ridge or Wyse Way do.

The Neighborhood Beyond the Gate

West Avon Preserve isn't the only public land Wildridge borders, and it isn't managed the same way as what's beyond it. To the north, Forest Service Road 779, known locally as Metcalf Road, falls under a different set of stakeholders entirely. In 2022, the Town of Avon partnered with a nonprofit called the Wildridge Trail Coalition to secure a $39,745 grant from Colorado Parks and Wildlife for maintenance on that road, the first time that particular OHV grant had gone to a municipality rather than a private group. The coalition's ongoing mission, as they describe it on their own site, is coordinating with the Forest Service, the BLM, and county government to keep both motorized and non-motorized access sustainable on the public land ringing the neighborhood.

That's a different kind of stewardship than the wildlife closures inside West Avon Preserve, but it points at the same pattern. The land around Wildridge isn't background scenery. It's actively managed, by more than one agency, for more than one purpose, and residents who pay attention to which system they're dealing with get more use out of both.

The neighborhood has its own relationship with that land closer to home, too. Wildridge earned Firewise USA recognition from the National Fire Protection Association in 2023, a designation tied to how residents manage the home ignition zone, the roughly 100 feet immediately surrounding a structure. It's a program built on the same idea running through the trail calendar: the open space that makes this hillside worth living on comes with its own set of responsibilities.

What This Actually Looks Like on Your Calendar

If you're mapping out the next few months, here's the version that holds up year to year:

• Open every day, all year: Our Backyard from Beaver Creek Point, and PB&J from O'Neal Spur Pocket Park.
• Foot traffic only, December 15 through April 15: the Beaver Creek Point lookout trail.
• Closed December 15 through April 15, reopening April 16: Avon Singletree Connector, BLT, Carroll's Cutoff, Lee's Way Down, Saddle Ridge, Wild West Ridge, and Wyse Way.
• Full network, including the complete Tour de WAP loop: April 16 through December 14.

None of this makes Wildridge a harder place to live. It makes it a place where the outdoor routine has a rhythm worth learning, the same way locals learn which grocery store lane moves faster or which side of the street gets afternoon shade. The gate on Lee's Way isn't a wall. It's a signal that the preserve is doing exactly what it was designed to do for the animals that also call this hillside home.

If you're weighing a move within Wildridge, thinking about what a property's proximity to Beaver Creek Point or O'Neal Spur is actually worth, or just want a longer conversation about how this neighborhood works month to month, Bloom Group Vail has spent years learning these hillsides trail by trail. Reach out anytime to talk through what living here really looks like.