| Name: | From Marble to Crested Butte (almost) | 
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| Description: | After planning to spend the Labor Day weekend with the family in Marble, Co, I spend a few dollars on a 15 year old MTB guide book for Aspen surroundings which gave me the idea to ride from Marble to Crested Butte and back. The distance of 50 miles with about 6000 ft elevation gain on dirt and 4wd roads seemed reasonable. First wrench in the plan was a quite rainy period that we came in. Instead of original Saturday I took off on Sunday, when it luckily did not rain but the roads were full of puddles. The second issue was the rockiness of the 4wd roads which essentially started right in Marble. That made my going quite slow, it took me 1.25 hrs to get to Crystal, 5 miles away, following the scenery along the Crystal River. Crystal is a small village consisting of a dozen or so seasonally inhabited cabins. The road got steeper and rockier past Crystal, soon after entering the Devil's Punchbowl gorge for about 1/2 mile with steep cliffs around and a rocky road in it. Past the Punchbowl was another obstacle in the form of a ford of the Crystal River, a true ford of knee deep and ca. 10m wide cold river. Here I met a couple with their teenage daughter who were hiking across America - the only people apart from a handful of jeepers and ATVers. Past the ford there was about 25 cm deep puddle I had to ride through, and another mile of rocky road till I got to Schofield Flat, a flat upper basin right below Schofield Pass which separates the valley going to Marble with that going to Crested Butte. Here the road smoothed out for quick sailing. It took me 2.5 hours to cover the 10 miles and a bit under 3000 ft vertical change to the pass from Marble. At the pass I was met by hordes of mountain bikers that drove from Crested Butte to shuttle Trail 401, one of the scenic CB trails. At this point I figured that it'll be more fun to ride this trail and head back to Marble instead of riding on a dirt road to CB and then back Slate River valley on roads of unknown quality. So, I hopped on trail 401, climbed a bit on wet dirt and then went down, a little up, and down again for good 7 miles of singletrack. That took about 1.75 hours, it was 1.30pm, so I headed back to Schofield Pass on the dirt road. The climb back to the pass was only about 1000 ft vertical but felt more than that. The way down to Marble was faster than I thought it would be, so, I made it back a little after 4pm, making it just shy of 7 hours. Bottom line, a good exploratory ride which is good to do once in a lifetime, it was nice to see the Crystal River valley, town of Crystal and Devil's Punchbowl, but, riding on the rocky jeep roads was not that much fun. Next time it'll be better to head to Crested Butte for some smoother singletrack. | |
| URL: | TopoFusion Home Page | |
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| Total Distance: | 35.91 miles (57.79 km) |
| Total Trip Time: | 6:48:38 (6:21:53 moving time) |
| Total Climbing: | 6989 feet (2130 m) |
| Total Descending: | 6453 feet (1967 m) |
| Average Speed: | 5.64 mph (9.08 kph) |
