Yellow Aspens in Crested Butte

It takes more than four hours to get from our place to Crested Butte, so it's not something we do often. In fact, we hadn't been since 2010. But Abbey has a friend whose family has a house in Crested Butte, and somehow we managed to get ourselves invited to spend a three-day weekend with them. We lucked out and had a couple of days of great weather and cycling. This was last Friday and Saturday, the 19th and 20th of September.

I've lost my Garmin 400! I used it on our Monarch Crest Trail ride, and downloaded the data while sitting at our kitchen table. That was apparently the last time anybody saw it. So no more Garmin logs on our trips unless we can find it.

We drove out on Friday morning, arriving around noon, and wasted no time pulling down the bikes and hitting the trail. It was a short distance to some of the resort trails, so we rode up Prospector, Painter Boy, and Primer trails to the top where the bike lifts drop off riders, and then down Upper and Lower Westside trails back to the park.

Getting out of the car and immediately pedaling up Prospector wasn't easy. Look closely and you can see Cindy and Quinn working their way up the switchbacks below.

Coming down Westside was nice, once we were out of the rocks and into the meadow.

This was crazy. Our friends have this old Scrambler in their garage. It's been completely disassembled and rebuilt with a modern fuel-injected engine and newer drivetrain. It's the engine and drivetrain from a Chevy Suburban under a Jeep frame and body. Most importantly, with three rows of seats, it can carry six people and six bikes. That's Quinn's bike strapped on top of the roll cage. 

A view from the inside, with Quinn's bike on top.

We used the Jeep to shuttle part way up the road to the pass where the 401 trail takes off.

From the pass, the initial climb up the 401 was tough. At the top, there was a large congregation of cyclists. Some of them were really annoying.

Outstanding views down the valley from the 401.

It was hot. This is Abbey's "I'm hot and tired" look.

Once we had finished on the trail, our shuttle driver rode up to get his jeep, while the rest of rode back to the house. The Aspens were ridiculous.

Mount Gothic.

After eating a quick lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at the house, we split up for the rest of the afternoon. Q and I rode Lupine trail, which starts a little down the road from the resort, and traverses westward down the valley wall north of the town of Crested Butte. It' a newer trail, well-designed, fairly easy, fast and fun.

Lupine left us up the valley from town, so we caught the Upper Lower Loop trail back to town, where we met our girls, picked up some groceries, and headed back to the house. We had logged 28 miles that day, none of them flat, although more of them down than up.