{"id":429147,"date":"2017-08-17T10:16:33","date_gmt":"2017-08-17T16:16:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/?p=429147"},"modified":"2017-08-17T10:16:33","modified_gmt":"2017-08-17T16:16:33","slug":"tr-right-hand-north-gulch-barrett-8-5-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/2017\/08\/tr-right-hand-north-gulch-barrett-8-5-17\/","title":{"rendered":"TR:  Right Hand-North Gulch-Barrett 8.5.17"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been bugging my buddy Eric Freson for the past couple of summers to show me a ride that he likes to do in the Fossil ridge area Northeast of Gunnison.  8\/5 was going to be the day- until that morning, when he called to tell us that it rained all night in Gunnison and that loop was likely to be a sloppy mess.  Since Brittany and I were already loaded up and about to head towards Tom Runcie&#8217;s house to pick him up, we figured we would head towards Gunnison anyway and go from there.  After some gas-station side discussions, we decided to head back towards the Needle Creek area to check out Right Hand and Barrett, and maybe even North Gulch.  I&#8217;d ridden these trails years ago, but I certainly couldn&#8217;t remember the exact route that I took, so it was going to be exploration for all of us.<\/p>\n<p>We parked just below the Needle Creek reservoir and quickly started up the Right Hand creek trail.  This was the one section of trail that I knew pretty well, having ridden it twice.  It starts off nicely before getting steep and loose and most of us had to hike-a-bike except for Tom with his giant lungs, legs, and dinner-plate sized gear on his cassette.  Next up, we had a short descent on Right Hand:<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/right-hand-barrett\/f1.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" alt=\"Right Hand creek trail needle creek\" class=\"alignnone size-medium\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/right-hand-barrett\/b1.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"800\" alt=\"right hand trail near gunnison\" class=\"alignnone size-medium\" \/><\/p>\n<p><!--more READ MORE!--><br \/>\nWe made our way to North Gulch, and after a short climb we had another descent.  North Gulch has some great downhill sections, slightly technical but with the ability to play with the trail features.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/right-hand-barrett\/f2.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"531\" alt=\"Needle Creek Mountain Biking\" class=\"alignnone size-medium\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/right-hand-barrett\/f3.jpg\" width=\"514\" height=\"800\" alt=\"Crested Butte Gunnison Trailquest\" class=\"alignnone size-medium\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/right-hand-barrett\/b2.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"800\" alt=\"North Gulch trail\" class=\"alignnone size-medium\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/right-hand-barrett\/b3.jpg\" width=\"645\" height=\"800\" alt=\"mountain biking cochetopa hills\" class=\"alignnone size-medium\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Next up came a long cimb on North Gulch.  While there was definitely some hike-a-bike, there was one long and beautiful stretch of trail that was as close to a perfect ascent as you can get.  We topped out and then did a quick out and back to right Hand so we were sure to get all of our Traliquest miles.  Barrett Creek was next- and this is a great trail if you&#8217;re looking to ride something different.  It was so fun we barely took any photos- but here&#8217;s one of Brittany:<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/right-hand-barrett\/f4.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" alt=\"Barrett Creek Trail mountain biking gunnison\" class=\"alignnone size-medium\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Our day wasn&#8217;t quite done- we had another climb on doubletrack to get back to Needle Creek reservoir, passing some cool rock formations on the way:<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/right-hand-barrett\/b4.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" alt=\"Needle Creek Colorado\" class=\"alignnone size-medium\" \/><\/p>\n<p>All in all, this was a great ride with a lot of vertical and multiple high-quality descents that leaned technical.  We&#8217;ll go back to this one for sure.  Here&#8217;s the map to help you make sense of it all:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/maps\/d\/embed?mid=1DIE3iutHhcQG1ZE9_DlPQF3i3PM\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After some gas-station side discussions, we decided to head back towards the Needle Creek area to check out Right Hand and Barrett, and maybe even North Gulch.  I&#8217;d ridden these trails years ago, but I certainly couldn&#8217;t remember the exact route that I took, so it was going to be exploration for all of us.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":429148,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-429147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biking","category-crested-butte"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429147"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":429150,"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429147\/revisions\/429150"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}