Questions, answered from the source

One question at a time, answered from primary sources and dated so you can see how fresh it is. If a source changes, the answer changes. Anything we do not have standing to answer, we point you at people who do.

Is Powerline on the 2026 Leadville Trail 100 course?

No. Powerline is not on either 2026 course. Hagerman Pass Road, Sugarloaf Mountain and Powerline all sit inside the Willow Fire burn area and the Forest Service closure, and the Leadville Race Series removed all three from both the MTB and the Run.

The replacement is the same in shape on both courses: riders and runners still head west from Harrison Avenue, then turn and come back east around Turquoise Lake instead of climbing over Sugarloaf, and rejoin the traditional route lower down. The MTB rejoins at the bottom of the Powerline descent heading into Outward Bound. The Run rejoins heading into Outward Bound as well.

What the reroute does to the numbers

Figures published by the race on its official event pages. The MTB has long been described at roughly 12,000 ft of gain, so this year's route is meaningfully less climbing. The Run's number stays close to a normal year because Hope Pass, which supplies most of it, is untouched.

The aid stations moved too

On the Run, May Queen is gone. Carter Summit (mile 10.6, limited hydration and nutrition) and Turquoise Lake Dam (mile 20.5) take its place early, and the rest of the order is unchanged: Outward Bound 26, Pipeline 29.6, Half Pipe 31.8, Twin Lakes Village 40.3, Hope Pass 45.4, Winfield 52.2, then back the same way. Half Pipe is still an aid station this year. On the MTB, the outbound order is Carter Summit 10.6, Outward Bound 22.3, Twin Lakes Dam 38.2, then the Columbine Mine turnaround at 50. If you built a plan off last year's splits, rebuild it.

Correction, 2026-08-15: an earlier version of this answer said Half Pipe was not an aid station on the 2026 Run. That was wrong. The official aid-station list has it at mile 31.8 outbound and 72.6 inbound, and our course data has been corrected to match.

Update, 2026-08-20: on a re-read two days before the race, eight of the official Run mileages read 0.1 to 0.4 mile lower than they did on our 2026-08-17 read. The figures above and in our course data are now the Aug 20 official ones. See the dated list in the answer below.

Is there an aid station at Pipeline on the 2026 Leadville Trail 100 Run?

No. Pipeline is crew access only, and aid is at Half Pipe 2.2 miles later. The official page said both things until recently. On our re-read the evening of 2026-08-17 it says only one, and it is this one.

When we first answered this on 2026-08-15, the event page's aid-station list named Pipeline at mile 29.6 outbound and 75.1 inbound, while the same page's crew section stated plainly that Pipeline is a crewing location only, that no aid station is available there, and that aid would be provided at Half Pipe instead. We published the disagreement rather than picking one silently, and planned off the conservative reading.

As of the evening of 2026-08-17 the aid-station list runs to twelve stations with Pipeline absent: Carter Summit 10.6, Turquoise Lake Dam 20.5, Outward Bound 26, Half Pipe 31.8, Twin Lakes Village 40.5, Hope Pass 45.6, the Winfield turnaround at 52.3, then Hope Pass 59.1, Twin Lakes Village 64.2, Half Pipe 72.8, Outward Bound 78.7 and Turquoise Lake Dam 84.2. The crew section is unchanged and still lists three crew locations, Outward Bound, Pipeline Alternate and Twin Lakes Village, with Pipeline described as crewing only. The two halves of the page now agree.

As of the evening of 2026-08-20, two days before the race, the same twelve stations are listed but eight of the mileages have moved: Carter Summit 10.6, Turquoise Lake Dam 20.5, Outward Bound 26, Half Pipe 31.8, Twin Lakes Village 40.3, Hope Pass 45.4, the Winfield turnaround at 52.2, then Hope Pass 59, Twin Lakes Village 64, Half Pipe 72.6, Outward Bound 78.3 and Turquoise Lake Dam 84.2. The crew section moved with it: Pipeline inbound now reads 74.9 rather than 75.1. Every change is between 0.1 and 0.4 mile, all in the same direction, and all ten cutoffs are unchanged. We cannot tell from the page whether the race republished these figures after Aug 17 or whether our Aug 17 read was imprecise, so we are not going to claim either. Our course data and every personalized race plan built from it now use the Aug 20 numbers.

What this means in practice has not changed: plan your nutrition around Half Pipe, and plan to see your crew at Pipeline. If you are crewing, Pipeline has open parking and no restrictions, and setup begins at 5:00 AM.

The cutoff attached to that stretch

The same re-read cleared a second inconsistency. The 12:15 PM outbound cutoff used to be labelled Pipeline in the race-week schedule block and Half Pipe in the cutoffs table; both now read Half Pipe. The times were consistent throughout, 12:15 PM outbound and 2:00 AM Sunday inbound, and only the location label was moving. If you are running close to cutoff, the time is still the part that matters. Note that the race labels its own cutoff list subject to change.

Updated 2026-08-20 after a race-eve re-read of the official Leadville Trail 100 Run event page, which moved eight aid-station mileages; updated 2026-08-17 after an earlier re-read; first written 2026-08-15, when the page contradicted itself. The earlier state is described above on purpose: anyone who read the page in the first half of race week saw the contradiction, and it was real. Aid stations, cutoffs and crew rules are the race organization's to set and change, and the official page is the authority. We are an independent site and not affiliated with Life Time or the Leadville Race Series.

How much climbing is the 2026 Leadville Trail 100 Run?

The official page now states 13,357 feet of gain over 99.7 miles. Through race week the same page stated 13,552 feet over 100 miles, and its own GPS file returned 12,983 feet on Garmin Connect. All three describe the same rerouted course. If you have seen more than one figure and assumed one is a typo, or that the course changed again after the reroute, it did not.

Correction, 2026-08-24. This answer previously led with 13,552 feet over 100 miles, which is what the official event page published when we read it on August 16 and what this site carried through race week. On a post-race re-read of the same page on August 24 its Details block reads 99.7 miles and 13,357 feet, and 13,552 no longer appears anywhere on it. Our own course data was corrected the same evening. We cannot tell you when the page changed. Our race-eve check on August 20 compared the aid-station table, the cutoff ladder and the crew rules field by field and did not re-read the Details block, so the move could have happened at any point between August 16 and August 24. The table below is left as a dated record of the three readings rather than rewritten, because the older figures were on the page and people planned off them.

Here is every figure, with the date each was read:

The 2026-08-24 row is the figure the official page carries now and the one this site's course data uses. The three 2026-08-16 rows are kept as a dated record of what the page and its linked course files published during race week. The race organization owns these numbers and can change them; the official page is the authority.

Why the same file gives two answers

This is not a course disagreement, it is an elevation-processing disagreement. Cumulative gain is not measured, it is computed: a platform walks the track point by point, adds up every rise, and first has to decide which rises are real terrain and which are noise in the elevation data. Different smoothing windows and different underlying elevation models produce different totals from identical coordinates. Ride with GPS and Garmin have never agreed on this, and 569 feet across a hundred miles, about 4 percent, is an ordinary gap for a route with this much rolling ground. The surface split moves for the same kind of reason: the two platforms classify paved and unpaved from different map data, which is why one says 71 percent unpaved and the other 64 percent.

Through race week the published 13,552 ft matched the Ride with GPS reading of the course file exactly, which is why we said then that Ride with GPS was the platform the race was standing behind. The current 13,357 ft does not match either platform's earlier reading, and the page links a different Ride with GPS route than it did in race week, so we are not going to tell you which computation produced it. What we will tell you is which number is on the page today, which is 13,357 ft, and that it is the one our course data now carries. If your watch was loaded from the Garmin course, its climb totals and any ClimbPro segments will run a few hundred feet light against it. A barometric altimeter records a fourth number again.

What actually changed in 2026

The reroute around the Willow Fire closure took Hagerman Pass Road, Sugarloaf Mountain and Powerline off the course. The Run's gain figure stays close to a normal year anyway, because Hope Pass supplies most of it and Hope Pass is untouched. The MTB, which lost proportionally more climbing, dropped to 9,897 ft against a route usually described at roughly 12,000 ft; the MTB page's Details block was re-read on 2026-08-24 and still says 101.3 miles and 9,897 ft, unchanged.

Answer written 2026-08-16 from the official Leadville Trail 100 Run event page and the two course files it links. Course data is the race organization's to set and change. We link their files; we do not host them. Independent site, not affiliated with Life Time or the Leadville Race Series.

Where this comes from

This answer was written from USFS order 02-12-01-26-33, signed Aug 10 2026 and in effect from July 30. Correction, 2026-09-11: that order was superseded on Aug 21 by order 02-12-01-26-36, which runs through Sep 30 unless rescinded and carries a different list of closed recreation sites, and the Forest Service has since removed the earlier order's alert page. The 2026 course changes stand as described: they are the race organization's own, announced in the July 31 letter from the race director and detailed on the event pages. We transcribe those pages; we do not host their maps or GPX files.

• USFS: Updated Willow Fire Area Closure, order 02-12-01-26-36, the operative closure and its described area
• Leadville Race Series: letter from the race director, July 31 2026, where the three closed sections are named
• Official LT100 MTB page and official LT100 Run page, course maps, aid stations, cutoffs and crew access

Answer written 2026-08-14. Courses can change again; the official pages govern, and this site is independent of Life Time and the Leadville Race Series. For the hour-by-hour forecast along the revised corridors, see the course weather matrix.

Is Mount Massive closed for fall 2026?

Yes, through September 30 unless the order is rescinded. USFS closure order 02-12-01-26-36, signed August 19 and in effect from August 21, closes the Mount Massive Wilderness and lists as closed: Mount Massive Trail 1487, Highline and Native Lake Trail 1489, the Willow Creek Trailhead, Elbert Creek Campground, the Halfmoon East and West Campgrounds, and Colorado Trail Segment 11 at the Mount Massive Trailhead. Both standard approaches to the summit are on that list, so a September Massive attempt is off the table while the order stands.

Mt. Elbert is a different question. The order this one replaced listed North Mount Elbert Trail 1484, Windsor Lake Trail 1490 and North Halfmoon Creek Trail 1485; the current order lists none of the three. The closure boundary itself is set by the map exhibit attached to the order, not by its recreation-site list, and Elbert Creek Campground on the same access road is still closed, so confirm any specific Elbert routing with the Leadville Ranger District at 719-486-0749 before driving up Halfmoon Road.

The order expires at 11:59 PM on September 30, but that date is not a promise: the previous Willow Fire order was replaced mid-stream on August 21 with a different site list, and this one can be extended, rescinded early or replaced the same way. Separately, Stage 1 fire restrictions (order 02-12-00-26-37) run through November 14 across the district: campfires only in permanent Forest Service fire pits or grates at developed sites, no fires at dispersed sites, charcoal included. Check the Pike-San Isabel alert page before an autumn trip.

Answer written 2026-08-30 from the order text and the forest alert list, both read that day. Closure orders are the Forest Service's to change; the alert page and the district office govern.

When does the snowpack usually start near Leadville?

At the Fremont Pass SNOTEL station, 11,310 ft on CO 91, the median date for the first snow water on the ground is October 12. That is the NRCS median across the station's record (snow water equivalent measured daily since 1979): half of all years have a measurable snowpack established by that date, half do not. The same record puts the median peak at 20.8 inches of snow water equivalent on May 11 and the median melt-out on June 22, so a typical pass snowpack lasts a little over eight months.

That is a snowpack date, not a first-flake date. Early-season storms above 11,000 ft routinely fall and melt within days in September, and the station reads zero until snow water persists on the pillow. Town sits about 1,150 ft lower at 10,152 ft and its accumulating snow generally arrives later than the pass, but no equivalent measured record exists for town, so this page does not put a date on it. The homepage water section shows the current pass reading against that day's median once snow is on the ground.

Answer written 2026-09-05 from the NRCS station page and the AWDB data service's median fields for 485:CO:SNTL, read that evening. Medians move slowly as years are added; the figures here are the ones the service returned on that date.

Is Turquoise Lake Road open?

No. County Road 4 has been barricaded from the Abe Lee parking turnoff to Hagerman Pass since April 7, 2026, and the Forest Service alert carries no end date. The lake itself is still reachable, just not by that stretch of road.

The closure is for asphalt damage. What the alert says, in full: the road is barricaded from the Abe Lee parking turnoff to Hagerman Pass; access to Turquoise Lake remains available via County Road 9C and County Road 9 as far as the Hagerman Pass intersection; and the Abe Lee fishing site is still open and reachable from County Road 4. That is the whole published scope. The alert names no campgrounds, trailheads or boat ramps, so this answer does not say anything about them either.

The Alert End Date field reads N/A, which means the Forest Service has not published one, not that a date exists and is being withheld. As of tonight the closure has stood for five months and a week. It was in place through the entire 2026 race season, including the weekend the rerouted Leadville Trail 100 Run course went around the lake.

If your plan depends on the closed stretch specifically, call the Leadville Ranger District at 719-486-0749 rather than driving up to find out. A reopening would appear on the forest alert list, which this site re-reads every evening, and the closure is carried on the homepage notices board with its check date.

Answer written 2026-09-12 from the Forest Service alert page for the Turquoise Lake Road (County Road 4) closure, read that evening: start date April 7, 2026, end date N/A, contact the Leadville Ranger District at 719-486-0749. Road closures and their timing belong to the agencies that post them; this page only reports what they publish and when we last read it.

Does it snow in Leadville in September?

Usually, yes. In 13 of the 16 years from 2010 to 2025, measurable snow fell in town on or before September 30, and the median date for the first of it is September 22. An inch on the ground is a different question: that happened by September 30 in only 6 of those 16 years.

Freezing arrives first and it arrives for everyone. Every one of the 16 years reached 32 F in town before the end of September, 13 of them by September 15, with a median first freeze of September 12. So a September visit that dodges a frost is the exception, while a September that produced no measurable town snow at all happened in 3 of the 16 years: 2015, 2018 and 2019.

Same record as the table on the winter guide, which gives the year by year dates.

September snow here rarely stays. The earliest inch in the record, September 8, 2020, is the only year whose first 32 F, first 28 F, first 20 F, first measurable snow and first inch all fall on a single date, which is what a strong early season front looks like in this data. The practical reading for a mid-September trip is that an overnight freeze is close to certain, a snow shower is likely, and driving conditions in town are usually unaffected. Above treeline is a separate matter: the peaks around Leadville run 2,400 to 4,300 feet higher than town, and snow that never reaches the valley can be sitting on Elbert or Massive at dawn.

If you are asking about snowpack rather than snowfall, the answer is later. The nearest automated station, Fremont Pass SNOTEL at 11,310 ft, has a median first measurable snow water equivalent of October 12. Snow that falls in September at that elevation typically melts before it accumulates; see the snowpack answer.

Answer written 2026-09-13 from the first freeze and first snow dataset behind /winter/: Open-Meteo's historical archive at the Leadville town grid point (39.2508, -106.2925, model elevation 10,164 ft), search window August 1 to December 31 each year, model pinned per year as ERA5 reanalysis through 2016 and the ECMWF IFS 9 km analysis from 2017 on, pulled 2026-09-10. These are model grid cell dates, not observations from the airport station. A grid cell smooths the valley's cold air pooling, so the valley floor can freeze a night or two earlier than these dates, and a narrow snow shower can miss the cell entirely. Snowpack medians are from the NRCS AWDB data service for station 485:CO:SNTL.