Whether you are looking to just get away from the city, do some fishing, hiking, mountian biking or just plain old relax, you will find it all at this mountain retreat.
Take a few moments and browse through our site. You will soon find why they call this Colorado's Best Kept Secret!!
Trading Post Resort
44414 Poudre Canyon
Bellvue, Colorado 80512
970-881-2215
The Cache la Poudre River Canyon is truly a hidden treasure, with majestic cliffs and intrigueing rock formations enveloped in ponderosa and lodgepole pines, sage brush, mountain mahogany and aspen.
The Cache la Poudre River - the place where French- Canadian trappers hid their gunpowder during a raging blizzard in the early 1800s, hence the name - begins high in the peaks of Rocky Mountain National Park, along the Continental Divide. Flowing north and east through Roosevelt National Forest, it tumbles down the slopes of the Front Range and meanders through the city of Fort Collins. From its headwaters to the confluence with the South Platte River east of Greeley, the Cache la Poudre drops 7,000 feet.
The Cache la Poudre River (French for "powder store"), according to hydrologists who carefully study the issue, begins as a small creek in the Never Summer Range inside Rocky Mountain National Park just north of Cascade Mt. The area receives the heaviest snowfall of any place in Colorado. The water flows north through the Kawuneeche Valley that lies in the afternoon shadow of Mt Richtofen, then carries on between the Mummy Range and the Never Summer Range, picking up numerous creeks and seasonal trickles as it progresses. The path of the river is hidden from view by immense tracts of lodgepole pine, dark blue spruce, nimble subalpine fir and airy stands of fluttering aspen that spend more than half the year under a deep blanket of snow. The river forms Long Draw Reservoir in this valley, an increasingly popular tourist destination. After 30 miles, the current veers around to the east and begins coursing through a deep canyon. Near this turning point lies the Big South trail, starting at the junction of the river and State Hwy 14. For the next 40 miles it charges downhill through narrow gorges and wide, smooth-surface glens, all the while closely bordered by a narrow, windy road. Along its sprint to the plains it passes by Profile Rock and Sleeping Elephant, through the sinewy curves of The Narrows, past Grey Rock and Red Mountain, fed during the springtime by Young’s Gulch, Steven’s Gulch, Dadd’s Gulch, Roaring Creek, Hewlett Gulch and the hidden mouth of the South Fork.
The Poudre is Colorado's only nationally designated "Wild and Scenic" River. Colorado Highway 14, which follows much of the river, is designated a Colorado Scenic and Historic Byway between Fort Collins and the town of Walden. The Cache la Poudre-North Park Scenic Byway.
