The second half of January resulted in nearly 2 weeks of Crested Butte Avalanche Center forecasts with a rating of at least considerable. Even if you weren’t paying attention to the forecasts, the signs were everywhere and in plain view from highway 135 as well as the ski area- new slides every day.
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If you haven’t tried out different lenses yet, you’re missing out. A yellow storm lens on a snowy or cloudy day can make all the difference in the world between saying “the light is pretty flat out there, isn’t it?” versus “wow, what a great run”.
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The Sharp End pants are a straightforward, no-frills pant meant to combine light weight with durability. That means they don’t have a lot of bells and whistles, but it also means that they aren’t paper thin and one sneeze away from blowing a seam.
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While we probably won’t return to some of these trails, others might be worth a return a trip and Sink Creek and Throughline certainly fall into that category. Unfortunately, both of these trails have to be ridden as out and backs, since the legal riding ends at the West Elk Wilderness boundary.
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I’ll highlight one particular recent episode to give you an idea. Johnny Biggers grew up skiing in the Snowy Mountains of Australia. In the 70’s, he picked up a Skiing magazine at the local newsstand, and it had an article on Crested Butte
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These trails? Well, they’re all west of the West Elk Wilderness, about halfway between Gunnison and Crawford. On paper, it’s a good loop. What we would find on the ground? That was still a bit of a mystery,
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We would have to say that we were pretty impressed overall with the mountain biking at Red Hill. The riding is high quality, and so are the views. This is also a great place to go once the high country has some snow- Carbondale isn’t quite as warm and dry as Fruita or Moab, but the season is certainly longer than other areas and you don’t have to drive all the way to the desert to get there. I’m sure we’ll be back.
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Ah, the Fourth of July in Crested Butte. It’s fun, but it’s also a madhouse and for that reason I prefer to ride my bike somewhere far away. My office was having a big party/fundraiser, however, so I needed to stay at least through the parade. Brittany was convinced that I would drink too many Bloody Marys, so she headed towards Taylor Park to ride Star-Lily and Lily Lake on her own. I kept it under control, however, so in the end I was only an hour behind her. We started at the intersection of Taylor Road (742) and 759, and then headed up the long grind towards Italian Mountain, thankfully with great views.
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Doubletop is well known by Crested Butte locals as “double up, no down”. As in, it’s uphill both ways. And it does feel that way, to be sure, if you’re riding the whole thing. But if you catch the right segment, it’s sometimes downhill the whole way.
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