GORC Crested Butte Trip - Day 2: Lupine / Lower Loop

On Day two, the group started our "real" rides with a nice easy introduction to the trails around Crested Butte - the fairly new Lupine Trail and the more established Lower Loop.  These trails were easily accessible from the house we were staying at, so after we all got together, we rode down Gothic Road and into the Saddle Ridge subdivision where the trail started at the end of the cul-de-sac (How cool would that be to have a mountain bike trail literally start right next to your driveway?).  From there, we climbed about 100' along a mostly grassy hillside before we got our first descent.  Then we got a nice quick descent to a gravel road where we would then climb again for a while before descending to the valley floor on some more singletrack.

Along the gravel connector road

View from the gravel.

 

About to head down the second piece of singletrack.

On the way down.

 Once we were down in the valley, we crossed a bridge to another gravel road which started climbing up on the other side of the valley.  Some of the aggressive guys went a few switchbacks too far here and climbed about 1000' feet up this road (and may have taken another trail as well), but the trail we were looking for only required a 100' or so of climbing and the rest of us found it at the second switchback.

Either more descending or in the valley.

At that point, we had a couple miles of mostly flat to downhill singletrack that would take us into Crested Butte, where we stopped at a place called Brick Oven Pizzeria for lunch. They had a nice sized outdoor patio in front of the building, so we commandeered a few tables and kicked back for some adult beverages, appetizers, and of course, pizza.  While they didn't have the Blue Moon that I would've preferred, I did get something that was kind of similar (but not good enough to order more than one - water after that), and the pizza was really good.  Good enough, in fact, that we wound up ordering it again for dinner that night, though I will say that it was much better at the restaurant than at the house after it had cooled off somewhat.

View from our table on the patio.

One of many full bike racks in town.

The only bad thing about being on our bikes at lunch was that now we had a 3+ mile ride back to the house.  This isn't normally an issue, but Mount Crested Butte sits about 500' above Crested Butte, so we had to climb that on full stomachs.  It was time to pay for that 40 mph downhill we had at the beginning of the ride.  It took us probably a half hour to climb that hill, but we eventually made it.  I was happy that I was staying in the offsite condo here, so at least I didn't have to climb quite as far as the guys that had to go back to the house.  Later that afternoon though, rains came through again and we were treated to this nice rainbow off of the patio.

One of the crisper rainbows I've seen.

Unfortunately, I didn't do a very good job of picture taking today, but this evening I was fortunate enough to secure a MicroSD card (Thanks Tom!) that would work with my phone (I'm forever pushing the limits of my phone's picutre capacity), so for the rest of the trip, I would have plenty of room for pictures on my phone.