Day 6 - Crested Butte - Trail 401
Riders Trail - 4 hours - 14 miles
Riders A B S M D
Today was our first full day in Crested Butte. Upon arrival, the Fat Tire Festival was winding down but still plenty of
mountain and roadies left over. We stopped at a local bike shop to see if
the pass was open to access the top of 401. They said there was some considerable snow on top and there would be
some hike-a-bike. Out and back it is.
Once we passed through the resort we were greeted with a lush green valley floor surrounded by snow capped peaks on all
sides. Waterfalls spilling over cliffs from snow pack high up on the mountain side. Once at the trail head, we embarked on one of the most beautiful and punishing rides I've been on. About 20 minutes into the ride, Steve is just hammering his Salsa up this steep grade on the trail....then out of no where
pa-ching!!!!! His freewheel hub takes a dump. in other words.... Steve's got no pedal power. Steve is pissed, but handles it well by throwing his bike down into the woods. We are all bummed at this point, what do we do? Steve decides he is going to walk his bike as far as he can and then turn around. The trail was nothing but climbing, so much so that Steve was able to keep up by walking
and then coasting down what little down hill there was. The trail wound through Aspens, wild flowers and Skunk Weed up to our
handle bars. At this point you can barely see the trail in front of you. Then came the switchbacks. Climb, climb, climb and then a small break to recover and then climb some more. We took some breaks along the way to
fuel up and get ready for the next section of trail. Oh wait! who's that? That is Steve walking his bike up the trail. Most impressive. Up towards the top there were a couple of water crossings. One was pretty tricky, we all walked it except for Steve, because he's a professional....and he did it with no pedals.
Here is Micki up ahead near the top of the climb crossing some snow melt. She is a climbing machine, she just keeps on toughing it out. Not far behind is..........you guessed it, Steve. He pushed his Salsa 6 miles up to the top. That is perseverance folks. Once on top, we all took a breather and fueled up and took some photos, had some laughs and got back on our trusty steeds for the descent. Steve has the honors of going first, since he walked up from the valley of the shadow of Crested Butte...and he is very skilled at the downhill. Not to far into the bomber run, Steve encounters a problem with his navigational skills, he wanted to go strait and the trail said hell no, go left. In short, Steve stacked his bike into the same crossing you see above. It makes a left turn just before you hit the water run off. So Steve is down and dirty, bike jacked up even more, handle bars all cockeyed, front rim is tweeked, GO PRO camera is all fugged up........in short, Steve is not having a good day. He calmly breaks out his tool bag
and fixes the damage so we can resume our descent. He has the crash on video, I hope he will share, the quality is excellent. We finish the downhill portion of the ride, even Brooke did a great job considering that the right side is her "weak" side on the downhills. We get down near the bottom and we come to a 14'creek that is flowing pretty rapidly. Steve has already crossed it and is waving me to the other side. So I go for it. Half way across the front of my bike just sinks into the water like Red October. The water comes up to my steer tube and down I go into the icy cold water. All of my senses go into shock, it felt like I was under for at least 5-7 seconds. Everyone said that I just jumped out of the creek like the Matrix. Boy was it cold, but it felt real nice after a long climb. The ladies walked across............in the shallow section.............where Steve was trying to direct me. But I wasn't paying attention. Everyone is safely across and we pedaled up to the road that would take us back to our vehicles. But having wet riding gear on was no fun, it was actually kind of cold. So I took off my shirt and rung it out and traded it for my riding vest that I had just purchased at the Pearl Izumi store just days before. I looked like the Techno-Viking and did the dance for my buddies. They all laughed at me, but I was cool;). We had about 2 miles to get to the cars and Steve had no pedals, he could coast on the slight downhills but the ups were going to be a pain. Techno-Viking to the rescue, I had to drag Steve's ass almost all the way back to the car by pulling on his Camelback. Thank GOD I have the moxie to pull off a vest and drag Steve back to the car or it would've taken forever. Just kidding Steve, good times. After we got back into CB we at Teocalli mexican restaurant. Very good stuff. After that we headed back to camp and did some bike repair (we'll Steve did, I just watched) and did some group crossword puzzles and went to bed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1nzEFMjkI4 <---- Technoviking copy and paste
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