401 Via Snodgrass

Im running a little behind on the blog, plenty of excuses but no need for them here. We had our last ride in Crested Butte on Saturday although Pooh and T were sticking around a few more days and I hear had a great ride on Doctor's Park. Anyways, they still needed to do the classic 401 ride and since it is rather short by itself we decided to start near the Snodgrass trailhead and start and finish with it. A short gravel road ride and a climb up through a grazing pasture put us in the Aspen as pictured above. Phoenix Scott came on the ride but State College Scott opted to head over to do some desert riding at Hartman Rocks since he had already done these two trails. A few miles through the Aspen on great track, some climbing then down a bit of a dirt road and we were on Gothic Rd. A couple slight downhill miles to Gothic then the climb to schofield pass. It was a Saturday so we expected some company but it was just crazy. The normal parking spot, there just past Gothic was full to over flowing already and the number of cars creeping up Gothic road was unreal.

Pooh had been riding really strong so far so he went first and followed up the singletrack climb to the fun stuff. Its a real grunt but makeable, HO, David and I had all done it last year. We waited a couple minutes for the rest of the group to get up and howie went ahead to get some pics of us coming up. At that point a huge group of riders, probably close to 20 who were in for a wedding caught up to us, heres a few of them behind T.
Then its across the benchcut, just have to be careful not gawk at the views too much


Then down through aspen groves on switch backs, often with the wild flowers as high as your shoulders

The ride sort of "kisses" Gothic Rd before heading back up then down at Gothic. T was starting to feel all the riding and wanted to save some legs for the next few days so she headed back into town down Gothic Rd at that point. We had left and extra vehicle in case anybody needed to bail. Pooh continued to ride super strong making all the short and not so short grunts in this section. I kept up with him for the most part, hoping that he would get off the bike and give me an excuse to do the same but never happened. I did fail to make one, as my front wheel got up and wandered off trail. Down to Gothic, chatting with some of the wedding guests at the end. It was a couple miles slightly back up Gothic road to head back on Snodgrass. The thought of another 1000 feet of climbing was a little more that phoenix scott was up for so he bailed back the road into town and found T, both were waiting for us at the Brick Oven when we got back. The ride back Snodgrass was great, getting most of the climbing out of the way at the beginning and getting to really roll through the aspen the way it was meant to be ridden. 30 miles later we were back at the truck with an estimated climbing of about 4000 feet.
Pooh gave it huge thumbs up, saying that it was probably the prettiest ride he had ever done, and he has done alot out west with us over the years.
We shared some pizza and then headed back to camp, Pooh had broken a chainring bolt early on so he need to get that fixed.