The Cliffs Side Trails - June 2026

As our last "training hike" before our upcoming adventure to the Collegiate Peaks near Granite, Colorado, Sam and I took a Saturday morning hike through a nearby USFS area. "The Cliffs", as the area is known to Chadron locals, is more than just the single larger cliff that serves as the backdrop to a beautiful camping and hiking area. The area has a multitude of trails (marked and unmarked, some well-kept and some glorified game trails), a large number of other cliffs, and a wealth of beautiful features.

I planned the trip using both Gaia and OnX Backcountry. I wanted to compare elevation gains, map accuracy of the area, and ease of use. Unfortunately, we would find out that the USFS maps were not as helpful as we had hoped, and led us into some hilarious side-hikes where we would soon be surrounded by poison ivy... and cows.

We kicked off at The Cliffs trailhead - a beautiful place that is fairly easy to get to with GPS and any 2WD vehicle. It's all gravel road which turns to dirt after turning off, but it is maintained and an easy drive. The trailhead itself is stunning in contrast to the prairie not far away. This picture does not do it justice, but it is what I took as we started our adventure.

Not pictured are the 10 or 15 college-age folks that had camped the night before, who I hope had a cleaner idea of fun than I had when visiting The Cliffs at that age.

The trail I intended to take would start on what is called "Windmill Trail" for a short distance. Then, my plan was to take "Forest Road 210" (assuming it to to be a rough two-track) up the side of the steeper hills and end up connecting with "Pine Ridge Mt Bike 1" (a trail we often mountain biked in my youth). It seemed simple enough.

As we hiked, I saw no obvious connection to 210, and soon we hiked several hundred feet past the junction from the maps. I told Sam, "Let's just climb up this little cliff over here, and I bet the road is on top of it." The road was not on top of it.

We ended up making a random loop, zig-zagging where the road was supposed to be. We never found the road, but later discovered a single-track marked as "Trail 210" or something similar. We were able to find it about 500 feet west of where the fire road is marked on the map.

Our off-trail trek was rough on our bodies and took up a huge amount of our time. However, we had a great time and laughed a lot - especially when finding ourselves with few options to avoid the poison ivy. We got a lot of elevation gain in with extreme grades, so it was great training for our upcoming 14ers.

We ultimately returned to Windmill Trail, but not before encountering a group of 20 or so cow/calf pairs. The trail, once we returned to it, was well maintained.

There were a number of crossings of Big Bordeaux Creek, many with obvious pavers underneath.

We took Windmill Trail to a spur that we found on Gaia GPS (though not OnX) that led us to a much more pleasant hike than our tromp through the wilderness. Our final loop took us up the Mountain Bike Trail and to Forest Road 772, then back down Trail 210:

We finished up with some great views (including one area that had a neat overlook feel at the end of Forest Road 772) and a decent workout.

As we finished up, we decided we'd take a short jaunt up to the top of the cliffs, which gave us the best view of the day!