Crested Butte, CO

Crested Butte, CO - Main Street, August 11, beautiful morning.
Ate breakfast at on of the local coffee joints, Camp Four was the name of the place. Unique way of siding the building, used license plates from all over the nation, earliest that I saw was 1942. Breakfast burritos were excellent!
Crested Butte is home of the National Mountain Bike Hall of Fame. I did not read everything on the wall so I am not sure who governs the deal but there were some sweet old 1990's bikes that bring back lots of memories.
Ride scheduled for the day was one of the local "epics" that from what I learned is a must if you are in the area - the "Trail 401". We started right from the condo and headed up the Gothic Road into a high valley, climbed for almost 2 hours on a rough gravel road.
Scenery was unreal everywhere you looked all the way up.
Still climbing. It was a good decision for Matt and me to come out a week early of the Leadville 100. Today was the 4th straight day of climbing, can't say that it is getting easier, but at least we are understanding what is required to "spin" for a long period of time climbing at high altitude.
The summit prior to heading into the trail head, 10, 707 feet.
Off of the gravel road we kept climbing single track up to a high meadow topping out at 11,700 ft.
This carin was towards the top of the climb. For those who have been to 3101 9th St. N. in Fargo know that we have plenty of carins in our yard.
Chill time before heading down to Crested Butte, we had been in the saddle for almost three hours.
The descent offered up some dicey sections that required jumping off the bike. All of us wondered if the locals were able to clean this section. No way I was going to try it.
This photo shows why this ride is so epic. Ripping across the side of a mountain for miles! Straight up to your left and straight down on the right. Note the road to the right of the photo, it is the road that we climbed to get to this spot.

A deer strolling through a meadow, pulled up and sat down like a dog. I have never seen that before.

We finished the day with the Snodgrass trail that we rode yesterday - 35 miles total with over 4000 feet of climbing. Awesome views all day, the whole group kept it together, no mechanicals and no over the handle bar gymnastics
A lot of the bikes in CB have a cool cup holder mounted on the handle bar. This would not work in Fargo, the roads are too bad and it is mandatory that you keep both hands on the bars at all times.