Crested Butte, Colorado

Every year since 1989 I have traveled to the Mecca of mountain biking, Crested Butte, Colorado.  On each one of these summer trips I have been joined by several others from our mountain bike riding group.  Although my friends and I go to Crested Butte for the mountain biking, you don’t have to ride a bike to revel in the experience there.  I offer the following recap of our adventures there from which you will likely come to understand why we keep going back to the place year after year.

In 1989, after reading a bicycle magazine article about a mountain bike festival in Crested Butte, four riders from our group decided to go.  Pat and I were part of that foursome.  We drove about 900 miles from Riverside to get there.  The scenery just kept getting better the closer we got.  After we arrived, I remember stopping our car at a vantage point from which we were presented an overview of the old town of Crested Butte.  I was just “taken” by the beauty of the surrounding Rocky Mountains and this small town nestled in a wide valley in which the Slate River flowed.   I felt like I was looking down on an idyllic small town that might be found in a perfectly constructed model railroad display.  Crested Butte is an old mining town and, over the years this heritage has been kept alive by keeping that “old mining town look” in the down town area.  If it wasn’t for the automobiles parked alongside the main street, you could easily be fooled into thinking you had passed through a time warp.

After our arrival in Crested Butte, we signed up for what was billed as the oldest mountain bike festival in the country.  We were not alone.  Several hundred other riders signed up also.  It was a great experience! The festival was well orchestrated by a sizeable crew of guides, sponsors, registration aides, and other helpers.  They provided no less than six guided rides each day ranging from a “cruise” through the prolific wildflowers to a “hammer-fest” with the “locals.”  I emphasize the word “locals” because our numerous guides lived year-around in Crested Butte and were fully acclimated to the thin air at 9,000 feet.  We were not.  For us “hammer-fest” was a bit of an overstatement.  On the rides we gasped a lot but actually did pretty well in keeping the “locals” in sight.  The festival had a variety of daily events besides guided rides.  There was something new to see or do each day.  They had a chainless downhill race with a Le Mans start, a dirt bike criterion through the alleys of the town, a cross-country race, a ski slope slalom competition, a bicycle limbo contest, a contest to see who-could-go-the-slowest on a bike, a log pull (drag race dragging a log with a bike) and an introduction to mountain bike polo.  They also staged a trials competition as well as  trials workshops.  They held a mountain bike rodeo at town center bringing everyone together for fun, food, and drink.  There was never a moment during our stay in which we weren’t doing a mountain bike activity of some sort.

We rode hard every day in Crested Butte.  The rides were on some of the best single track we had ever seen.  Many of the trails took us through Rocky Mountain wildflowers higher than our handlebars. The trails were all accessible from town.  We didn’t ever need our car for any reason.  Mountain bikes and cruiser bikes were everywhere, in the streets, on the sidewalks, leaning against poles and parked against storefronts.  We also saw about as many dogs roaming the streets as we did bikes. The beauty of all of this was that no one seemed to give one “hoot” about the roaming bikes or the roaming dogs.  Everyone was relaxed and friendly, as were the dogs.  We also noted that none of the “locals” ever bothered to lock their bikes.  We loved it there.

After a few years of going to the festival we learned pretty much all there is to know about the local trails.  We didn’t need guides anymore so we arrived in town whenever it was convenient for us instead of when the festival was held. Over the years we kept bringing more and more people with us so we sort of had our own fat tire festival.  For example, two years ago, we had a total of 19 people in our group (only two were not mountain bikers).

During our earlier visits to Crested Butte, before we got old, we had several favorite mountain bike routes we thought captured the true spirit of what it was like to ride there.  The names of these trails that come to mind are Teocali Ridge, Trail 401, Deer Creek, the Dyke Trail, Upper Loop, Snodgrass, and Lower Loop.  These days we tend not to choose some of the more difficult rides that typically touch 11,000 feet elevation or so and ride the lower routes.  The lower routes only go up to around 10,000 feet.  So, you can deduce from this that there is no such thing as an easy ride in Crested Butte.

Our group has managed to rent a house in Crested Butte on each of the years we went.  This provided us an opportunity to enjoy each other, the rides, and the local area.   We manage to get in a good hard ride each day followed by great meals almost every night.  Best of all, we seem to manage to laugh a lot at each other and what each of us does while riding.  It is all just pure fun.

Summer weather in Crested Butte can range from the most ideal weather to your worst nightmare.  Unlike predictable Southern California, when you’re in the Rockies at 9,000 feet, almost anything can happen.  We have seen it all over the years - snow, sleet, rain, thunderstorms, lightning, hail, and wind.  Usually we start our rides around ten in the morning and try to finish by the time the afternoon thunderstorms start.

Riding a mountain bike is not the only thing that Crested Butte has to offer. The restaurants, shops, people, and the scenery make it a pleasure to be there no matter what the activity.  Just a stroll down the main street, Elk Avenue, offers the visitor's eyes with a pleasurable variety of scenic vistas of mountains around the town to interesting stores to window shop or browse though.  Just sitting on a bench on the main street is entertaining as well - people and dog watching.  Crested Butte has a very wide variety of restaurants to choose from and two micro breweriies.  You won't go hungry or thirsty while ambling around town.  One of our favorite "after ride" hangouts is the Eldorado Cafe, or, the "Eldo".  The Eldo is not only has a micro brewery but has a balcony on which to sit and continue to dog and people watch while quaffing a cool one.

Every year it is hard for all of us to pack up our “stuff,” load our dirt rigs on racks, and drive away from Crested Butte.  Once we're home we’re left with just rifling through the photographs of the trip.  Although those images do bring back good feelings about our adventures in Crested Butte, they can’t quite capture the real Crested Butte.  A person has to be there to know what it is really like.  I am as “taken” by Crested Butte today, as I was in 1989.  For me it will always be the Mecca of mountain biking – the best place in the universe to ride dirt and the best place in the universe to spend a vacation.