A snowstorm canceled one work weekend. A hellacious rainstorm postponed another. Legal battles over a quarter-mile of private land waged for six years. Almost two decades after it was conceived, the Dixon Trail is finally finished and providing passage to hikers looking to scale Cheyenne Mountain. Located inside Colorado Springs’ Cheyenne Mountain State Park, the difficult Dixon Trail zigzags up 2,000-plus feet over 3.25 miles to connect with the previously inaccessible, three-mile Top of the Mountain trail system, completed in 2015. Together, the paths provide a lot of new track to tread—something runners at the Cheyenne Mountain Run will discover on October 20. The four-year-old race will expand from 10 miles to a half-marathon this year, as the Dixon Trail leads runners through old-growth pine and past the remains of a crashed T-33 aircraft. (The mountain was the headquarters for NORAD until 2006.) Along the way, they’ll catch views of Fort Carson, the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and the city of Colorado Springs—a scenic reward well worth the agonizing wait.