McLain Flats Access This Fall: Slaughterhouse Reopens as Stein Closes

Ride out from McLain Flats toward Aspen this week and you'll hit a chain-link gate where the Stein Bridge used to be open. No detour signs waving you around, no confusion about why. Pitkin County posted the closure two weeks ago and the contractor mobilized on September 8. If you're headed for the Rio Grande Trail from the west side of the river, the crossing you've used for years is simply gone until November.

What's easy to miss, standing at that gate, is that this isn't the first bridge on this corridor to go dark this year. It's the second. The projects took place in sequence, with Slaughterhouse Bridge back in service before Stein Bridge closed.

Two Bridges, One Corridor

Slaughterhouse Bridge, also called the Cemetery Lane Bridge, carries McLain Flats Road traffic over the Roaring Fork and ties into the Rio Grande Trail at Stein Park. Built in 1993, it had never had a structural overhaul, only repaving, until this spring. Pitkin County engineer Andrew Knapp brought in Rifle-based contractor Frontier Paving starting April 6, and warm, dry weather let the crew start earlier than planned. The work included bridge deck repairs, a new waterproof membrane, resurfacing, new railing, and sidewalk connections. Full closures ran in stretches through May, and the bridge was back in service by summer.

Stein Bridge sits downstream, closer to the Aspen Business Center and Burlingame Ranch, and connects that side of the valley to the Rio Grande Trail via Stein Trail. Pitkin County Open Space and Trails hired Mueller Construction Services of Glenwood Springs for a roughly $250,000 project that raises the bridge's abutments, a change driven partly by boaters who've had to duck under the span when the Roaring Fork runs high near the Slaughterhouse Falls rapid just upstream. The contractor mobilized September 8, and the work is expected to run through November.

How the Bridge Projects Unfolded

Here's the part that isn't obvious from either press release alone. Stein Bridge closing blocks access to the Rio Grande Trail from the population centers on the west side of the river, the exact area Slaughterhouse Bridge is now positioned to serve as backup. Pitkin County's own materials describe Slaughterhouse as the closest alternative crossing once Stein goes down.

That timing left an available crossing for west-side trail users during Stein's closure, though the published materials don't explain why the schedules were arranged that way.

What It Means for the Ride Into Town

If you're on McLain Flats Road, you were already used to a workaround before any of this started. McLain Flats Road runs 4.3 miles between Cemetery Lane and Woody Creek, and it's long served as the paved bypass for the stretch of the Rio Grande Trail that stays unpaved between Cemetery Lane and Woody Creek. Road cyclists who don't want gravel under their tires have been taking McLain Flats Road for years regardless of what's happening at either bridge.

What's changed is what that road connects to. With Stein Bridge out, anyone trying to reach the trail from the ABC or Burlingame side now has to come around through Slaughterhouse instead, which puts more of that traffic onto the same stretch of Cemetery Lane and McLain Flats Road that locals already share with horses. This is still working ranchland in places, and the caution longtime users know already applies: watch the shoulder for grazing horses near White Star Ranch and White Horse Springs, and expect the occasional rider on the Rio Grande Trail itself.

Pitkin County has been direct about the tradeoff. As senior environmental planner Lindsey Utter put it when the Stein project was announced, the inconvenience can't be helped. The upside, per Knapp's comments on the Slaughterhouse work, is that the rehab there was built to preserve and extend the bridge's lifespan, which means the crossing residents are now leaning on as backup should hold up through whatever construction comes next.

Planning for the Rest of the Season

The practical upshot is that if you're planning a bike commute or an evening dog walk down toward Stein Park before November, check which bridge is standing before you leave, not which one you remember being open last month. Slaughterhouse Bridge is your crossing for the Rio Grande Trail from the McLain Flats side through the fall. Stein Bridge is out until the county's projected wrap-up in November, and Pitkin County has already flagged that timeline as a target rather than a guarantee, since bridge projects on this stretch of river have run long before when conditions turned out worse than expected.

The two bridge projects took place in sequence: Slaughterhouse reopened before Stein closed. If another project gets announced on this stretch before the snow flies, check its schedule rather than assuming it will follow the same sequence.

For updates on the Stein Bridge timeline, Pitkin County posts progress on its Open Space and Trails newsflash page, and the Slaughterhouse project details remain archived on the county's Cemetery Lane paving page if you want the full history of what got fixed this spring.

If you're new to this stretch of the valley or just want a local read on how a season like this one actually plays out, from road work to river access to what's next on the county's list, The Shea Team has spent years tracking McLain Flats from the ground up. Connect with The Shea Team whenever you want that kind of on-the-ground perspective.