The 49ers will not fly home after their game in Dallas. Instead, the team plane heads to Colorado Springs tonight, and the next stop for this 49ers game buildup is a week at altitude before next Sunday night’s trip to Mexico City.
Kyle Shanahan said the plan is meant to give San Francisco a better chance against the Vikings at Estadio Azteca, where the air will be thinner than it is in Denver. He said he grew up mainly in Denver and knows how quickly altitude can wear people down, even if they are in shape. For him, the benefit is not dramatic, but it is real. A week at altitude, he said, could make the team a couple percent better.
That is why the 49ers are changing their travel routine now. The game in Mexico City is next Sunday night, and this will be their second international game of the season after opening in Australia. They also arrived a week early for that trip to get used to the time difference, and that early arrival was credited as one reason they played so well against the Rams. This time, the adjustment is about elevation rather than clocks, but the logic is the same: remove as much of the outside stress as possible before kickoff.
Shanahan also thanked Troy Calhoun for allowing the team to use Air Force’s practice facility in Colorado Springs. That facility has a clear value for a team preparing at altitude, and the 49ers have done it before, using it in 2022 before their Mexico City game. Air Force’s Falcon Stadium sits at 6,621 feet, while Estadio Azteca is listed at 7,280 feet, exactly 2,000 feet above Denver’s Mile High elevation. The numbers explain the choice better than any speech can.
Still, Shanahan was careful not to oversell it. Altitude, he said, is not make or break. The 49ers are not treating Colorado Springs as some magic fix, only as a useful edge they can stack before a difficult road game. The plan also raises the practical question that matters most now: how a team spends a full week at altitude without losing the rhythm of a normal practice week. That balance, more than the flight itself, will tell whether this trip is merely smart or actually decisive when the 49ers reach Mexico City.
