Mountain Biking the 401 Trail in Crested Butte, Colorado
Since Mike and I had picked a trail race this past Saturday that was located in Crested Butte, we decided to stay for the whole weekend and go on a mountain biking adventure on Sunday. While quite sore, I was rather determined to do the 401 Trail just to see the wildflowers. If you have read any of my other blog posts, you probably noticed that I like wildflowers A LOT. We decided to bike the trail because it would be easier on our joints after the race, but the trail could certainly be done as an out and back hike.
Sunday morning we woke up and headed up to the trailhead in Gothic and started riding up the dirt road that would connect with the 401 Trail. Had we been hiking, I would have started hiking up the 401 Trail itself. The dirt road eliminated some mileage that going up the 401 Trail would have added. The ride up the dirt road was extremely pretty itself as it was in a beautiful basin. When we hit the 401 Trail, single track began, however we still had a bit of uphill to go and the uphill portion of the 401 Trail was pretty steep in spots. I wouldn’t have minded some fresher legs for that part.
We eventually made it to the top and began the most beautiful mountain bike descent I’ve ever done. The flowers were over my head in spots. The whole hillside looked yellow from the millions of alpine sunflowers. I had a huge grin on my face the whole way down. I’ll let the pictures in this post do the talking for how pretty this section of trail was. It was a great way to end what was a really fun weekend in one of the prettiest places in Colorado. Did I mention that Crested Butte’s nickname is the Wildflower Capital of Colorado? You can bet we will be back.
