Drive the half mile up from town onto Four Mile Road on any Saturday morning right now and you'll pass two things that have nothing to do with each other and everything to do with each other: a runner in a bib number working up toward Babbish Gulch, and a county sign reminding you that campfires are banned on the same stretch of forest that runner is training on. Same gravel. Same road. Two completely different reasons people are using it this month.

If you live in 4 Mile Ranch, that's not a coincidence you can ignore. Four Mile Road, also mapped as County Road 117, is the only route in and out of the neighborhood, and this August it's carrying more simultaneous traffic than most residents probably clock day to day. It's worth knowing what's actually happening on your own road right now, because both halves of that traffic are things you'll bump into whether you're headed to work or just walking the dog.

The Road Only Goes One Way, and Everything Uses It

Four Mile Ranch sits about half a mile up Four Mile Road from town, a small subdivision of roughly 57 homesites tucked between Cardiff Glen and Oak Meadows. Past the neighborhood, that same road keeps climbing, past Babbish Gulch trailhead, past dispersed camping sites in the White River National Forest, and up to Sunlight Mountain Resort about ten miles from town. It's an intermediate paved-to-dirt route that road cyclists use for training climbs, and it's the access point for everyone heading to Sunlight's trail system, the Nordic area, or a weekend of dispersed camping.

That single-road geography is what makes this a genuinely different neighborhood to live in day to day than an in-town Glenwood Springs address. You're not passing through a grid of alternate streets. Whatever is happening up the mountain this month, from race logistics to fire rules, funnels through the same quarter mile you use to get groceries.

The Sunlight Showdown Has the Road Booked Through Mid-September

The most visible thing on Four Mile Road right now is the Sunlight Showdown, a trail race series that runs from late June through September 19, 2026. It's built as a progression: a 5K, then a 10K, then a half marathon that's now in its seventh year, with every course winding through Babbish Gulch and Sunlight Mountain terrain. If you've noticed extra cars parked along the shoulder near the trailhead on a Saturday, or a timing tent set up at the base area, that's what it is.

For residents, the practical piece is timing your own drive. Race mornings mean earlier trailhead parking fills up and more vehicles moving slowly along a road that doesn't have much shoulder to spare. None of this is a problem, it's just worth building a few extra minutes into a Saturday morning coffee run if you're heading up toward Sunlight while a race is loading at the base.

Stage 2 Changed What You Can Actually Do Up There

The less visible but more consequential thing on Four Mile Road this month is fire restrictions. Garfield County, the Glenwood Springs city limits, and the surrounding U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands moved to Stage 2 fire restrictions starting June 26, 2026, and the city reaffirmed the restrictions were still active as recently as July 20. As of early August, there's no indication they've lifted, which means anyone planning to use the dispersed camping sites off Four Mile Road, or thinking about a fire pit gathering at one of the pullouts near Babbish Gulch, is working under a different set of rules than a typical summer.

Under Stage 2, the specific changes that affect anyone using the forest above the neighborhood are:

• No campfires or charcoal fires anywhere outside a developed, improved recreation site
• No new burn permits, and every previously issued permit is cancelled
• Fireworks, flares, and exploding targets remain prohibited on federal land at all times, restriction stage aside

If a fire is started during Stage 2 restrictions, the county has been clear that it can carry felony charges and financial responsibility for damage caused, so this isn't a suggestion so much as an enforced rule with real teeth behind it. The dispersed camping spots along Four Mile Road, the same ones a short walk from Babbish Gulch trailhead, are free and require no permit under normal conditions, which is part of what makes them popular. Right now, that same freedom comes with the campfire ban attached.

What's on the Calendar, and When It Was Posted

Here's a snapshot of the dated, road-specific items that have come through official channels this summer:

That electric outage notice is worth mentioning even though it's already passed, because it's a good example of how the city routes information: the alert wasn't for Glenwood Springs generally, it named Four Mile Road specifically. That's a sign the City of Glenwood Springs newsflash page and Garfield County's emergency alert system are worth having bookmarked if you live along this corridor, since updates that matter to you often get posted narrowly rather than folded into a citywide bulletin you'd have to dig through.

The Trails You Don't Have to Drive To

Not everything worth doing this month requires getting on Four Mile Road at all. The neighborhood itself has its own walking trails woven through the subdivision, and the same wildlife that draws people up toward the national forest shows up inside 4 Mile Ranch regularly: elk, deer, fox, owls, falcons, geese, and cranes have all been documented on the neighborhood's own paths. It's a smaller-scale version of the same landscape the road leads to, minus the drive, the race traffic, and the fire restrictions.

Combined with the neighborhood's views toward Sunlight Ski Area, Mount Sopris, and the Flat Tops, it means a resident who wants a quiet evening walk doesn't need to factor in any of the road's current double booking. That's the version of 4 Mile Ranch that doesn't change no matter what's happening up the mountain.

Once You're Up There

If you do make the drive past the restrictions and the race weekends, Sunlight Mountain Resort's summer trail system is worth the ten miles. The resort maintains more than 16 miles of marked mountain bike trails through aspen groves and wildflower meadows, some of which cross streams or pass through grazing cattle, and offers a shuttle service along with Trek-built pedal-assist e-bikes for riders who want the descent without all of the climb. After a ride, the base area's Grizz Grill and Todd's Tavern are there for food and a drink before the trip back down.

None of this changes because of the race series or the fire rules. It just means that this particular August, the same road that gets you there is doing more work than usual, and it's worth knowing that before you plan around it rather than after.

Living along Four Mile Road means paying attention to a corridor that serves a lot of different purposes at once, and that kind of local detail is exactly the sort of thing that matters whether you're settled in for years or just starting to think about what life here actually looks like month to month. If you ever want to talk through what a specific pocket of the Roaring Fork Valley offers day to day, Aspen Valley REI is glad to walk through it with you. Schedule a free consultation whenever you're ready.