Stage 1 · Leadville loop
Prologue: Turquoise Lake
Short interval-start opener around Turquoise Lake; seeds the GC.
Indicative candidate route, not a final course. Lines follow real public roads, but the final course depends on land-manager permits, the safety plan and the landowner. Distances and climbing are approximate.
The route
From Harrison Avenue the route drops west out of town on Turquoise Lake Road, passes Sugar Loaf Dam, rounds the west end of the lake near May Queen Campground and returns along the north shore road to Leadville.
| Distance | ≈ 22 mi (candidate line) |
| Climbing | ≈ 1,700 ft (sum of gains, USGS elevations) |
| High point | North shore of Turquoise Lake; highest sampled point 10,695 ft |
| Surface | Paved in this candidate line: town streets and Turquoise Lake Road (Lake County Roads 4 and 9). About 0% unpaved by OpenStreetMap surface tags. |
| Start | Leadville, Harrison Avenue |
| Finish | Leadville, Harrison Avenue |
| Aid, cutoff, crew and alternates | Race operations for this stage, below |
Map and profile
Google's driving route through the stage waypoints. It follows the same lake loop as the candidate line.
Elevation profile
Miles (x) and feet (y). Elevations sampled every 300 m from the USGS 3DEP elevation service along the candidate line. Approximate.
ProposedPlanned aid
Every location below is a candidate, subject to permits, land-manager approval and the safety plan. The proposed support model is self-supported with neutral aid, fully swept: riders carry what they need between aid points, aid stations are neutral, and a sweep follows the last rider.
| Candidate location | Approx. mile | Services | Crew access |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sugar Loaf Dam, Turquoise Lake Road (candidate) | about 5 | Water | Yes |
| West end of Turquoise Lake, near the campgrounds (candidate) | about 10 | Water, basic mechanical help | Yes |
ProposedCutoff basis
Candidate cutoff at the finish. The prologue stays below treeline, so this cutoff is about closing the course on time rather than storms. It would be set generously, since the stage exists to seed the start order. Times will be set in the course design with the medical plan.
IllustrativeTo show the scale: the finish is about 22.1 miles into the stage. If a cutoff there fell 2.5 hours after the start, a rider would need to average about 8.8 mph, stops included, to make it. That window is an illustration for planning, not a proposed cutoff time.
ProposedCrew access
Candidate crew zones, subject to permits and road access. Some high sections will have no crew access. The table above marks which candidate aid points a crew could reach by ordinary vehicle. See crew and support for how crews would work.
PendingFire and closure note
The loop runs on Turquoise Lake Road. Lake County listed County Road 4 west of Sugar Loaf Dam as closed during the 2026 Willow Fire, and the first evacuation order covered the roads and campgrounds around the lake. No closure is known to affect this stage's roads as of September 2026, but conditions for 2027 are unknown. Like every stage, it follows land-manager closure orders and the smoke and air-quality go/no-go described on the course page.
Sources: VeloNews on the 2026 LT100 MTB reroute, Vail Daily on the Willow Fire, Forest Service closure order, Lake County fire page.
Under considerationBad-weather or closure alternate (candidate)
Mineral Belt Trail town loop. If Turquoise Lake Road west of the dam is closed, the prologue would move to the Mineral Belt Trail, the paved loop of about 11.6 miles around Leadville that starts and ends at Ice Palace Park on Harrison Avenue. It is a public multi-use trail, so racing on it would need permission from the city and county. Any alternate is subject to permits, sanctioning and insurance, and the rules for shortening a stage are in the rules and policies.
ProposedGPX
Indicative candidate route, not for race-day navigation. The line follows public roads from OpenStreetMap data and will change with permits and the safety plan.
How it races
The candidate format is an interval start, as in a road prologue. Riders go off one at a time, and the gaps at the finish are seconds to a few minutes. That is enough to set the start order for the queen stage and put an early name in the leader's jersey.
The loop stays between about 9,700 and 10,700 feet, so pacing matters as much as power. The north shore climbs gently away from the water before the run back into town, and riders who go out too hard on the dam road tend to pay for it there.
A version with gravel sectors through the mining district east of town could replace part of the lake road. That choice depends on the permit conversations described in the playbook.
History of the road
Turquoise Lake is a reservoir. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation built Sugar Loaf Dam, an earthen dam about 135 feet high and more than 2,000 feet long, as one of five reservoir dams completed between 1965 and 1968 for the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project.
The project brings West Slope water east. Water from the Fryingpan basin runs through the Charles H. Boustead Tunnel, 5.5 miles under the Continental Divide, and empties into Turquoise Lake. From there the Mt. Elbert Conduit carries it south toward the Mt. Elbert power plant near Twin Lakes.
The start and finish sit inside the Leadville Historic District, designated a National Historic Landmark in 1961. The district takes in the Harrison Avenue corridor and 67 mines in the mining district east of town.