When the calendar flips to September, most avid skiers start thinking of white fluffy snow. Admittedly, we’re among them. But, at the same time, fall is one our most favorite times in Crested Butte. From mid-September to early October the mountains are glowing in gold, and as the leaves fall, riding them becomes nearly as fun as skiing in blower pow, as leaves swirl around you on every corner. Simply said, Crested Butte can be epic in fall and the riding can be too.

Maybe I wasn’t “on it” after two crashes, or maybe it was just that the final descent was getting highly technical, but either way I decided that a third and final crash would be a good way to end the ride. I wasn’t going all that fast, but I did go over the bars and down a steep embankment headfirst into a tree.

With a full closure of Cottonwood Pass, both this summer and next, however, we needed to find another way to access Texas Ridge. While we could have navigated a series of roads near Cottonwood to access Timberline, we decided it would be more interesting to ride the Timberline Trail from the northern terminus at Red Mountain Creek through the old Pieplant town site.