Crested Butte Vacation Travel Blog

The West Maroon is a wonderful trail to visit all summer, but it is best at its wildflower peak which is normally late July. Flowers are blooming up there for quite awhile, but at its peak they are waist high and offer a variety of colors. The trailhead is up past Schofield Pass and is best accessed by a SUV. It is 4 miles up to the West Maroon Pass and roughly 2000 feet elevation gain. This side of the pass offers a great variety of flowers and views. If you were to continue over this pass, you could hike through the evergreen forest into Aspen.

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The Carbon Trail is a neat trail I only discovered this year. It is part way down Ohio Creek Pass, scenic route to Gunnison. This trail can be used to connect up to Green Lake and back into town if one so desired. However, I recommend it for a short hike to see a bit of local history. In the Great Race for the first Transcontinental Railroad this was the team that lost. The South Park Line ends here just southwest of Crested Butte. The sign early on the trail describes the whole event and what happened. The picture in the top right shows a dry stack bridge of rocks that was constructed, but never finished. It is amazing how well this bridge, referred to as the "Great Wall" by locals, has survived with out falling for well over 100 years.

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The KBUT Friday Night Fish Fry is a local's favorite event. KBUT is our one and only radio station here in town. The shows are all hosted by locals and are one of the great things that make this town so great (not to mention qwurky). Every year they host the Fish Fry to raise money and keep them on the air. The event offers an expanded fish fry buffet, a great variety of beer and live music. If you are around, this event is not to be missed.

For more on local Crested Butte Festival and Events visit our Crested Butte Events Calendar.

Crested Butte Land Trust Wine and Food Festival just celebrated their second year of the wonderful festival. This festival offers a wide variety of activities and allows you to choose which ones you would like to attend without having to pay for all of them. Activities include wine tasting, wine seminars, dinners and lots more. Their two main events this year was the wine tasting up on the mountain and a new Friday evening tasting on Elk Avenue in town known as "Evening on Elk". I decided to visit the Evening on Elk in order to do my "research" for my guests. Here they had more than 250 different wines being offered and samples of food from local restaurants all for the ticket price of $45. If you are into wine or just like outdoor festivals where you get to walk around tasting great wines and great foods, I would highly recommend this festival.

For more on local Crested Butte Festival and Events visit our Crested Butte Events Calendar.

For more information on The Crested Butte Wine and Food Festival click here.

For more on local Crested Butte Restaurants visit our Crested Butte Restaurant Directory.

This lake is a local's favorite. With a short drive out Washington Gulch, you can be here in no time. The parking area is right after the last houses from which you start a short, yet steep, climb up to the lake. This lake offers small beaches, few people, a rope swing and often times an old canoe for community use. For a day when you just want to get away and enjoy some sun and swimming, this is the place.

Crested Butte's 401 Trail is a great ride. It can be ridden several different ways, but I suggest two of them. The first way is to drive up past the old mining town site of Gothic and park at the Judd Falls parking area. From here you can ride up the dirt road to Schofield Pass and jump on the 401 trail to the right. After a challenging 1000 foot elevation gain in 1.5 miles you reach the top. Following the trails signs you will complete this 13.7 mile loop returning to your car. Total elevation gain is around 2,750 feet. The second option is to continue driving up past the Judd Falls trailhead until you reach the Rustler's Gulch trailhead. By parking here to start your loop, your ride is cut down to 8.5 miles and only a 1,650 feet elevation change. This way also cuts out the second climb towards the end of the full 401 Loop. On this particular day I had gone out to ride at 6:30pm doing the shorter loop to enjoy the last hours of sunlight before dark.

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This driving loop gets you up into the mountains offering spectacular views. This is my favorite driving loop in the area during the mid summer. Most SUVs can do this loop as long as there is no snow and you are comfortable driving along steep drops. I have been doing this loop over the years in my Subaru Outback, but cannot recommend it to fellow owners being that I scrape my front and back end through several sections of the road. That being said, the trip starts in town and heads up Gothic Road past the ski resort where the road turns to dirt. As you continue up the road you will pass the old mining town site of Gothic, several trailheads and even a beautiful lake called Emerald because of the color it receives from the snow melt. Once you reach the pass on Gothic (known as Schofield Pass) you will take a left to head into Paradise Divide. At Paradise Divide you will have great views of several surrounding mountains, including Purple Mountain in which this Crested Butte Bed and Breakfast was named after. You then can continue on heading back by taking the only road off to your left. This road winds down along a steep drop off that can bother some folks. Once you have passed this section in the road you have a choice of taking your first left and coming back Washington Gulch Rd. (my favorite way because of the views) or continuing down in which you will drive down a series of switchbacks until you get to Slate River Rd. Either way will lead you back to Gothic Road which, with a right hand turn, will bring you back to town. On this day I happened to see a deer which you can see in the bottom left-hand picture. If you do not feel like driving this I am happy to help you set up a 4x4 guided trip. Some guests who like to mountain bike on dirt roads also enjoy this loop for a ride.

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Lake Irwin is a great little getaway for a picnic by a lake. The trip requires no hiking, just a 9 mile drive from the Bed and Breakfast. You simple head out of town on Kebler Rd until you come to the right hand turn off for Lake Irwin. From the turn off it is only 2.5 miles further until you drive up to the lake itself. Lake Irwin is a great place to take a picnic (may I suggest take out food from Why Cook...) and a great place to fish along its shores.

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Copley Lake is a wonderful hiking trail up the backside of Mount Emmons right outside of town. The trail head is about 5 miles from the bed and breakfast up Kebler Rd. At the small pull off parking area, the trail heads up the left side of the creek climbing around 1,100 feet in elevation up to Copley Lake. Copley Lake offers an incredible meadow of Elephant's Head wildflowers with view of the distant mountains of the Ruby Range. The hike is about 4.5 miles round trip.

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The Brush Creek Trail is probably one of the best bets for early season wildflower viewing. It is an easy hike (once a farm road) that leads hikes out along the east side of Mount Crested Butte for about two miles. As you can see from the above picture, there are an abundance of flowers and great views of the Brush Creek Valley. Cattle grazing fly fishermen fishing and views of the pyramid like mountain, Teocalli, are just a few of the sights you will have along this very easy hike. No matter what your hiking abilities, this hike is worth doing just for the early season flower display.

For more information on Crested Butte Trails click here.

Forth of July in Crested Butte always offers a great time for vacationer and locals alike. Everyone heads out to Elk Avenue to either participate in, or cheer on, our parade. The parade floats line up down along 8th St. before making their way all the way up to first. However, unless you want to get wet, you should be sure to stay below 2nd St. Between 2nd and 1st on Elk Avenue turns into a giant water fight with the fire trucks getting involved. (Then again, if you have friends heading up here for the event you might suggest this section to get the “full experience” of a Crested Butte 4th of July.) After the parade there is a free concert in the park offering a lot of patriotic orchestra music. Around 5:30pm things wind down allowing you time to grab some dinner before another free concert starts around 8pm which leads into a generally large firework display to wrap up the day’s celebrations at dark.