Best Frisbee Toss and a Beer 2015 | Globeville Landing Park and Black Shirt Brewing | Best of Denver® | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Denver | Westword
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Best Frisbee Toss and a Beer

Globeville Landing Park and Black Shirt Brewing

Mark Antonation

Globeville Landing Park, at 38th Street and Arkins Court, is home to the only disc-golf course within the Denver city limits, and although it's small and a little rough, it has its charms. Don't own any discs? Hop on the Platte River Greenway or the Cherry Creek Trail and ride to REI to pick some up, then head to the park. The tees are hard to see, so you may want to find a course map online first. After playing nine holes, get back on your bike and ride carefully down 38th and over the bridge to Walnut Street, then walk in the welcoming red door at Black Shirt Brewing. At the brewery, which specializes in beautifully crafted, hoppy red beers, you're likely to find a saison or a porter to help quench that recreational thirst.

Best Way to Meet an Outdoorsy Type Indoors

LuvByrd

When LuvByrd founder Mike Keshian was living in Crested Butte, he realized that it's not always easy for people who love the great outdoors to find like-minded romantic partners, particularly in smaller towns. That was the seed that grew into LuvByrd, a matchmaking website that caters to ski bums, river rats and everyone in between. After signing up, LuvByrd members can choose their favorite activities from a list of dozens, then start making dates to indulge in their passions.

Best Mountain-Bike Trail

Colorado Trail

The Colorado Trail celebrated its fortieth anniversary in 2014, and although it was designed for hiking, the trail's 28 segments are mostly mountain-bike-friendly, too (with the exception of six wilderness areas that you have to detour around). If you were so inclined, you could pedal out from Denver and end up in Durango some 535 miles later in a couple of weeks or so. Colorado Trail "completers" tend to throw around phrases like "life-changing," but even a day trip along any of the trail's segments is worth doing. Either way, get copies of the Colorado Trail Foundation's official guidebook and the CT map book at coloradotrail.org to plan it out properly.

Readers' choice: Lair o' the Bear

Best Mountain-Bike Park

Bike Snowmass

Bike Snowmass wasn't messing around when it named its 2.75-mile, 1,400-vertical-foot-drop downhill bomber trail "Valhalla" — but that's just one recent addition to a singletrack and freeride trail system that now spiders out over fifty miles across the mountain resort. The park, which boasts jumps, wooden wall rides and other freeride features, was designed and built by Gravity Logic, the crew behind the Trestle Bike Park at Winter Park and the Trestle Bike Park at Barnum North in Denver. A $41 day pass or $199 summer pass grants you and your bike access to the Elk Camp Gondola and Elk Camp Chairlift, and Four Mountain Sports offers bike rentals, body armor (no, seriously) and clinics. The park typically opens in late June and operates daily through Labor Day, then on weekends through the end of September.

Best Bike Path in Metro Denver

15th Street Bikeway

It's easy to cycle on the Cherry Creek Trail and the Greenway Trail along the South Platte River, but pedaling gets a little trickier once you surface and merge into the urban grid. In 2013, Denver installed its first protected bike lane downtown — on 15th Street between Cleveland Place and Larimer Street — and then updated it last year. Riding this short but important route still takes guts, especially during rush hour, but the trip is worth it, especially if heavy use encourages city planners to add future bike lanes in the city.

Readers' choice: Cherry Creek Trail

Best Dog Park

Berkeley Lake Dog Park

It's no secret that Denver is a dog town — our canine friends are everywhere — and Berkeley Lake Dog Park gives our four-legged kings and queens plenty of room to roam off-leash. Its rolling terrain is mostly gravel, which is great for letting pups blow off steam without getting their paws all muddy. There's a separate area for lower-energy dogs to have fun, too, so older pooches and smaller hounds have as much of a chance to go wild as the bigger, giddier fellows. Lovely views of historic Lakeside Amusement Park to the west and Berkeley Lake to the east make the dog park equally inviting for the mutts' people friends, the ones who drive them there.

Readers' choice: Chatfield State Park

Best Skate Park

Arvada Skatepark

Three years after it opened, the 40,000-square-foot Arvada Skatepark remains the biggest and baddest — and most photogenic — in the state. This one was designed by Team Pain with a "build it big and watch them rise to the occasion" mentality that has clearly come to pass. Go there on any given day to see skaters of all ages tearing around the deep end of the massive snake-run section, carving over a full-sized doorway arch, boosting airs out of the big bowl, and getting creative on some of the most innovative street-course features ever built.

Readers' choice: Denver Skate Park

Best New Skate Park

Huck Finn Park

Leadville and Lake County raised nearly a million dollars over the past five years to overhaul Huck Finn Park, adding tennis courts, an ice-skating rink and one hell of a skate park. The 21,000-square-foot concrete arena was built by Native Skateparks with help from a $350,000 grant from Great Outdoors Colorado (your lottery dollars at work) and sources as diverse as the Tony Hawk Foundation, Leadville Elks Lodge #236 and the Climax Molybdenum mining company's charity golf tournament. The park features a huge left-hand kidney bowl that goes from six feet in the shallow end to nine feet in the deep end; an 8,000-square-foot flow-bowl section; and a straightforward but well-designed street section. Pro tip: Bring plenty of water and sunscreen, because you'll be feeling the 10,200-foot elevation as soon as you start skating.

Best Place to Learn to Ice-Climb

Ouray Ice Park, Ouray

Climbers in Colorado often have to hike for miles to find frozen waterfalls to scale. At the Ouray Ice Park, all they have to do is walk down the street. Located in the southwestern Colorado hamlet of the same name, the manmade Ouray Ice Park features more than 200 ice and mixed routes up the walls of the Uncompahgre Gorge, a steep canyon that cuts right through town. Every January, the park holds the world's best-known ice-climbing festival, a four-day affair whose competition draws some of winter climbing's top athletes. The park is free to the public, though gear rental will still cost you; San Juan Mountain Guides (ourayclimbing.com) teaches lessons for beginners.

Best Terrain Park

Breckenridge

Breckenridge gets its park and pipe up early — in time to host the Dew Tour each December — and keeps the pro-class setup running all season long. Most of the action is accessible from the Peak 8 base area: start in the more moderate Trygve's terrain park, then take Chair 5 up to scope out the bigger features in Park Lane, and watch for thrills and spills on two different triple jump lines and a wide selection of boxes, rails, wall rides and other features. Warmed up? Go big on the four make-it-or-break-it booters and other features in the Freeway terrain park and its 22-foot superpipe, where you'll be joined by more Dew Tour athletes and Olympians than you can shake your GoPro extension pole at.

Readers' choice: A51 Terrain Park, Keystone

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