2010 July 17 & 18 Crested Butte CO Green Lake hike

2010 Crested Butte/ Rocky Mountain National Park


July 17, 2010 Travel Day

Alarm went off this morning at 3:15 to begin our journey. Airport Limo arrived at 4:15 and it was a quick trip to the airport as traffic was not an issue. Touched down in Denver at 730 Mt time. Bused over to Enterprise to pick up our rental that Kathi had diligently found for less and less money as the date came closer. When we were out walking the lot to “pick out a car”, we decided to upgrade to an AWD Ford Edge for a small additional fee which we negotiated. (Kathi’s experience with purchasing and fast mathematical skills gave us an upgrade for only $15 dollars for the week!) We drove out of the lot with our GPS Nuvi in the front window and maps all over Penny’s lap.

We arrived in Crested Butte at 3pm. We did stop in Gunnison for groceries as Crested Butte does have a small grocery, but bigger prices. Gunnison is big on river rafting, so town was loaded with young kids in high school and college. Also a fair amount of RV’s in the grocery parking lot, loading up on supplies. Grocery people loved us so much that they gave us a Safeway card to save additional money and provided us dry ice to keep our items cool while we drove all the way to Crested Butte. I’m thinking it is only 27 miles to CB, but remember it is in the Mountains and those roads twist and turn, which slows down the mph.

Crested Butte elevation is 8895 feet above sea level. Milwaukee is a whopping 780 feet above. And our nearest hiking high point in the Milwaukee area is at 1145 feet above sea level. Walking the groceries from the car up the flight of stairs to the kitchen in our town house in Crested Butte was our big work out for the day! We had plans for getting an acclamation hike in after supper, but it becomes apparent that walking the nine blocks up Elk Street will be more than enough work! CB is about nine block north to south and seven blocks east to west. Everyone in town seems to own two bikes. One bike is a very racy mountain bike and the other is a single gear, beat up rusty, personalized relics. Some have pearls on the handle bars, some with plastic flowers, and some with additional welded pieces to make it look like a bat mobile.) No one uses bike locks, just have signs posted at all of the bike racks that these bikes belong to people and if you are riding one that does not belong to you, than you are riding on stolen merchandise.

We have it on good solid knowledge that we need to go to the Alpineer (Biking and Hiking Store in CB) to “find out about hiking in the CB area”. We have looked all over the Internet for information, sent for hiking books, but mostly everything we have gathered has mentioned will need a high clearance vehicle to get to the good hikes or you need to start from the Aspen side of the Maroon bells. Aspen side is very $$$ so forget that and high clearance vehicles are pricey to rent so forget that also.

We walk up town to the Alpineer. Biking and hiking store… Ya, I don’t think so, more like a Biking store with eight things for hikers. Lots of people in the store getting their flat tires fixed or rims straightened. WE wait in line and when finally at the counter we get some guy who fits the bill of a surfer dude. He is defiantly on summer time. Good information, but delivered at a snail’s pace. He hands us some cartoon map of the area and starts pointing things out for us. Of course this is delivered as if we were going to bike these trails, as he is not a hiker, He is a biker… We walk back to the townhouse to make supper. After supper we struggle back up Elk drive for some window shopping and to see what restaurants are in town. We are slugging down the water and trying to get our bodies hydrated enough to bypass the altitude sickness. After about an hour we are tuckered and walk home. We go home and pack our packs for our first hike in the morning. After the long day, we fall sound asleep. Usually the first night at elevation is a fitful sleep, but I guess it helps when you start so early in the morning!


We piled into the car and drove to the trail head. We should have walked, as I did not know it was so close. Five blocks… The trail head is the Nordic Center. Nordic Center was a hopping place; they were celebrating the last day of the Wild flower Festival. Did you know that CB is the Wild Flower capital of Colorado? What a treat, I did not know this and to think we are here on the last day of the festival! What luck! Three special hiking adventures had already left from the Nordic Center before we arrived. Kathi and I were going to go to Green Lake as it was not a lot of elevation gain. We need to put some easy miles on our lungs and feet. We meet up with seven women who had also gone to the Alpineer to get hiking information. They must have found the same Dude we had as they were vocally less than pleased about the amount of knowledge available for hiking. Don’t worry we all have our cartoon maps and Kathi and I have a Topo map that will only be good for about half of our trip as we will be starting on the map about two inches from the side of the map. (This will be a reoccurring CB battle for us.) All of the ‘good’ hikes are not on the map we have.

Set off on the trip by turning on Brother Jon’s handy dandy GPS and mark out starting spot. The seven women in front are hiking too fast for us. Kathi and & I feel no need to speed hike on our first day. We move like the Rabbit and Tortoise. Kathi and I will play the role of the tortoise. Soon we would find the Rabbit group of 7 standing sucking air and water. We pass them and continue on our slow but steady pace. Once we passed them they did get close one other time, but had to stop and do the double suck thing. Needless to say the tortoise won again!

Oooh that is right this was not a race.

Green Lake is rather small. We sat and had a snack and then went exploring. Since CB has a historic mining past, there is lots of mining talus debris. Large piles of rocks pushed out of the mountain mines so the miners could get at the ‘good stuff’. We gained another 400 feet and some great views up into Gothic Valley. From where were where, we could hear a motorcycle coming and watched it race up a trail that we had seen earlier on our walk up to green. It headed up to Axtell ridge. We decided to descend the debris and hike over to that trail to see where it went. Walked over there and to the top to find it just went down the other side into the trees. Ok, let’s not go down there then. We were hoping to walk some ridge line… Clouds are gathering and hear some rumbles of thunder. Decide to get off of the ridge line and back down to the trees. We only received a few sprinkles on own hike back to town.

After we were finished with the hike, we drove up the road to Mt. Crested Butte to get a look around that Ski resort. It was very posh and not my kind of people. I like people who can decorate their one speed bikes and leave them unlocked!

July 18, 2010 10.7 miles, 2000 foot elevation gain, 1778 calories burned