The Epic

Well this time we really did have an epic ride, although there were not the usual mechanical issues or even any bad weather although we did have a minute or two of very light hail. What made this an epic was just the time spent in the woods, over 8 hours. It was supposed to be a fun single track way to get to what is billed as the best downhill in Crested Butte, Doctor’s Park. The ride was in the guide book, 26 miles with 4400 feet of climbing. I made sure everybody knew about the 4400 feet, which is definitely a lot especially mostly all above 10,000 feet of elevation. This is the ride that we got rained out of the day before.

It starts above Taylor Reservoir following the Gunnison spur of the Colorado trail. The first mile is along the Taylor creek, just out in the meadow then crossing the creek on a nice bridge. The next couple miles are a grunt up a loose and often rutted trail heavily used by the motorcycles, thus the less than ideal conditions. David and I managed to ride almost all of it with a few stops to catch our breath along the way. After about 800 feet of climbing it started to level out a bit, catching a dirt road, then back to trail. It was not nearly as steep for the most part but still rutted out with a lot of mud puddles all over. I failed to notice the statement in the guide book that this trail stays pretty wet for a couple days after heavy rains, like the ones that we just had. The trail went up and down, seemingly mostly up, but as I watched the GPS elevation, we really were not gaining much altitude over all. The issue was that even on the flat to downhill sections the trail was in such bad, rutted, muddy shape that you could not really enjoy it. At about the 6 mile mark taking a good 3 hours, having walked much more of the trail than he rode, the Madness decided to bail back to the truck. The four of us soldiered on, walking parts, trying to stay out of the really deep mud ruts for a few more miles. There was one downhill section that we lost close to 1000 feet but it was so steep and rutted it really wasn’t that much fun either. That was followed by a section of hike a bike that was at least a half mile of pushing up a really steep section. We new the last 6 miles were all down hill and we were about to the 18 mile mark so we knew the torture would soon be over, but not soon enough. We crested the ridge with a really nice 360 degree view.

There were a couple more old road grunts up to where we diverted off the Colorado trail spur onto 2 really nice miles of single track. We then hooked up with the famed Doctor’s Park downhill for the last 6 miles.

It truly is a great trail, living up to the hype. It starts out at a gentle grade down through the meadow then entering aspen groves getting more technical with rocks and switchbacks. There’s a few nice sections of exposed benchcut between aspen groves.

It smoothes out then a short climb out of the drainage you were in over in to Spring Creek with more flowy single track before a pretty exposed final descent on rocky switchback single track finishing up in a national forest campground, about a half mile from where we left the shuttle vehicle. Ride was 27 miles, total time of about 8 hours. My gps had a moving time of about 5.5 hours although it was probably a little more and just didn’t pick up our snail’s pace up some of the hike-a-bike.

Although the last 8 miles were some of the best single track I have ever ridden, the consensus was that it in no way made up for the previous 18 miles of torture. Most people take the road up close to the top of the down hill or shuttle right up to it, we’ll be like most and take the road next time.