Sometimes, you just gotta dream. Otherwise, you’re simply existing, just idly taking up space. Who wants to be that person?

One of my dreams is taking these trips every summer.

There are many reasons I love them. The open road. The fellowship. The food. The adventure. The blogging. The planning, the anticipation, and then the execution.

Eight years ago, the theme for my trip in 2017 was pursuing one’s bucket list. I wrote a blog post at the start of that trip, describing the importance of a bucket list, or a dream, or whatever you want to call it. 

I don’t have a bucket list. But if I did, it would include these trips.

Brittany does have a bucket list, and it’s uniquely focused on Colorado.

It’s a comprehensive list divided into categories, including adventure seeking, hiking and biking, music in mountain settings, festivals, spectacular roads, communing with nature, visiting Colorado mountain ski towns, and eventually making Colorado her home.

Sarah and I think of ourselves as facilitators of her dreams. During each of her visits to Colorado, we look forward to checking off one box after another.  ✅ ✅ ✅

Bucket List: Riding Independence Pass  ✅

Bucket List: Experiencing Colorado’s Fall Colors  ✅

Bucket List: Hiking from Maroon Bells to Crested Butte  ✅

Bucket List: Ribs at Slow Groovin’ in Marble  ✅

Bucket List: Concerts at Snowmass  ✅

Bucket List: Driving a Porsche over McClure Pass  ✅

Bucket List: Taking a Ski Lesson from a Certified Instructor (me!)  ✅

Check. Check. And Check.  ✅ ✅ ✅

One bucket list category we’re absolutely crushing is Colorado Mountain Ski Towns. On this trip alone, we’ll visit five of them, including Brittany’s all-time favorite, Crested Butte. Check!  ✅

Today will be our third visit with Brittany to Crested Butte. She has fallen in love with the place since first setting eyes on it.

Today’s ride, Day Five of this trip, will be a short one. Just 137 miles.

We’re intentionally giving ourselves plenty of time to explore the vibe and ambience of Crested Butte.

Our day begins in Buena Vista and ends in Gunnison. By Colorado standards, those are two pretty unremarkable places. Surf City, and College Town.

Along the way, we will, of course, knock off one Pass-a-Palooza™. Because it’s on our way to Crested Butte.

We begin by heading south on US Highway 285, then turning west in Poncha Springs on Highway 50. Eighteen miles later, we arrive at Monarch Pass.

Pass-a-Palooza™ … Monarch Pass: 11,312 feet

Monarch Pass is located on the Continental Divide, at the southern end of the Sawatch Range. It’s open year-round. In the winter, Monarch Pass is how you get to the Monarch Mountain ski area, located just a mile from the 11,312-foot summit. Monarch Pass earned Honorable Mention on my all-time Top Ten list.

The ski area’s 10,780-foot base elevation gives it an abundance of snow, about 400 inches a year. Monarch first opened in 1939, with one rope tow running up the Gunbarrel trail. The rope tow was cobbled together with a gearbox from an old oil derrick and a Chevy truck engine, powering a 500-foot lift. Today, Monarch has five lifts, serving about 800 skiable acres. The ski area has been privately owned by Bob Nicolls since 2002.

Hmmm. This Looks Familiar …

A mile past the ski area, heading west, we cross the pass, and begin the 3,600-foot descent to Gunnison, 40 miles away. Along the way, we have a good opportunity to practice speed control. Ten curves have a 35 MPH advisory, and one has a 30 MPH advisory. That’s a snail’s pace on a major US highway. For trucks with a maximum weight of 80,000 pounds, the top safe speed (posted) is 15 MPH. An even slower snail.

So, we ride our two vehicles – each built for speed – carefully and arrive in Gunnison shortly after noon. Seems like we were just here. Well, we were. Yesterday. On our way to Almont.

We continue north on Colorado Highway 135, and 10 miles later, we roll through Almont. Seems like we were just here. Well, we were. Yesterday. On our way to Cottonwood Pass.

From Almont, our destination is only 17 miles up the road: Crested Butte, Brittany’s favorite Colorado mountain ski town, by a long shot. Mine, too.

Tick off another check mark on her Bucket List. ✅

The historic part of town, on Elk Avenue, is unspoiled by development and greed. People actually live in old Victorian houses on the main street in town.

We park the Harley, and the SUV, change into walking-around-town clothes, and begin exploring.

The name Crested Butte comes from the “crested buttes” that geologist Ferdinand Hayden identified in 1873. He surveyed the Elk Mountains, and named the present-day Crested Butte Mountain and Gothic Mountain the “crested buttes,” which he could see from the top of what is now Teocalli Mountain, a 13,208-foot peak. Teocalli, an Aztec word meaning “sacrificial mound built in a pyramidal form,” is just eight miles from Crested Butte.

With a population of about 1,600, Crested Butte is a former coal mining town that sits in the Slate River Valley. Tourism drives its economy. But that wasn’t always the case.

In the 1860s and ‘70s, coal and silver mining began to open in the area – Crested Butte and surrounding towns. Mining, along with ranching, formed the backbone of the local economy. But when silver mining began to decline, as it did in so many Colorado towns, many of those towns around Crested Butte failed.

Crested Butte was in a better position than the other communities to survive, because it served as a supply town to the surrounding areas. After the coal mines closed, the town began to shrink, and didn’t revive until a ski area was built on Crested Butte Mountain in the 1960s. The resort rapidly revitalized the town’s economy around tourism – at first, based on skiing at the Crested Butte Mountain Resort, opened in 1960 when Fred Rice and Dick Elfin purchased a ranch on Mount Crested Butte.

The mountain has since become a major Colorado ski resort, with 3,000 vertical feet, 121 trails, 14 lifts, 1,500 skiable acres, and 300 inches of snow a year. The ski area is owned and operated by Vail Resorts.

Today, Crested Butte has a thriving year-round tourist economy.

Throughout the year, the town hosts festivals and parades. In the winter, there’s Torchlight, New Years, Winter Carnival, Butte Bash College Ski Week and Mardi Gras. Springtime, you can expect Extreme Board Fest, Slushuck and Flauschink. In the summer, look for Crested Butte Bike Week, Crested Butte Music Festival, Crested Butte International Film Festival, 4^th of July, the Crested Butte Wildflower Festival, Alpenglow Concert Series, Festival of the Arts and Ball Bash. And in the fall, there’s Fall Fest, Vinotok, and Paragon Peoples’ Fair.

What a lineup! Party in the mountains, just like Telluride.

It’s a fun, charming, unpretentious town. We’re quite fortunate that Brittany will share it with us every few years.

Our favorite places to stay in Crested Butte – Cristiana Guesthaus, and Elk Mountain Lodge, were both unavailable tonight And maybe that’s OK; Brittany’s stayed at each of them on previous trips.

So, after an early dinner in Crested Butte, we head back to Gunnison for the night, our last one on the road. Tomorrow evening, we’ll be home in Carbondale.

To see today’s route from Buena Vista, over Monarch Pass, to Crested Butte and back to Gunnison, click here.

***

Today’s Not Quite Pass-a-Palooza™ … Pearl Pass: 12,713 feet

As we left Crested Butte and headed toward Gunnison, south on Colorado Highway 135, we drove by the turnoff to one of the most spectacular rides in the Elk Mountains: Pearl Pass.

Today’s Not Quite Pass-a-Palooza™ is the road over Pearl Pass, which will take you across the 12,713-foot pass, then down to the ghost town of Ashcroft, and eventually into Aspen.

The turnoff to Pearl Pass is about four miles south of Crested Butte. From Crested Butte, you’ll make a left onto Forest Service Road 7738 and begin climbing nearly 4,200 feet to the pass.

The road follows a path miners built in the early 1870s, taking them from Crested Butte over Pearl Pass, and on to Aspen. It’s a notoriously difficult road, with an abundance of boulders, steepness, and unforgiving scree fields. Pearl Pass is the highest jeep road in the Elk Mountain range.

Name Origins of Pearl Pass. After much research, I discovered Pearl Pass was named after nearby Pearl Mountain, 13,262 feet above sea level. Pearl Mountain is the 349^th highest mountain in Colorado. But who (or what?) was Pearl Mountain named after?

Minnie Pearl (actual name Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon), who performed at the Grand Ole Opry from 1940 through 1991? Singer Pearl Bailey, who you knew from the Old Ed Sullivan Show? Or, Pulitzer-prize winning writer Pearl Buck (The Good Earth), who would have turned 133 on June 26? The name origin of Pearl Mountain is a mystery that may simply be unsolvable.

For what it’s worth, nearby West Pearl Mountain 13,312 feet, is also known as Oyster Peak. Pearls, in nature, come from oysters. Yes, they do.

The road over Pearl Pass crosses the Continental Divide between Pearl Mountain and Star Peak, 13,527 feet above sea level. Because of heavy snow, it’s generally best travelled in August and September. Sometimes it’s open in July, but can still be snowed in. Some years, the snow doesn’t melt sufficiently to allow passage at all.

From Crested Butte, it’s about 18 miles to the crest of Pearl Pass.

Tagert Hut, as Nature Intended It. As you begin the 5,100-foot descent to Aspen from Pearl Pass, you’ll roll past the Tagert Hut, part of the 10^th Mountain Division Hut Association system of huts. By the time you get here, at 11,280 feet, you’ve already descended about 1,400 feet in three miles from the Pearl Pass summit.

The original Tagert Hut was a dam-keeper cabin for a hydroelectric plant during the silver mining of the late 1880s. It’s named for Billy Tagert, an Aspen pioneer and teamster who hauled supplies to mining camps in the Elk Range. Originally the term teamster meant a person who drove a team, usually of oxen, horses, or mules, pulling a wagon; that’s what Tagert did — and for his efforts, he has a hut in his name. Today, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters has more than 1.4 million members, mostly truck drivers and warehouse workers, but no huts.

The current Tagert Hut, rebuilt at the same location, is at the foot of the rugged Pearl Basin. It was the first popular ski hut destination in the Elk Range. You can rent this or any of the other huts in the 10th Mountain Division system. The Tagert Hut sleeps seven, and goes for $320 a night.

A 10^th Mountain Division Hut trip is on Brittany’s Colorado Bucket List. It’s gonna have to wait ’til another visit.

Ashcroft, Another Ghost Town. From the Tagert Hut, it’s another five miles, and a 1,700-foot descent to the ghost town of Ashcroft, a former silver mining town that went boom to bust in a very short time. Originally founded as Castle Forks City in 1880, the name was changed a year later to Chloride, and then Ashcroft the following year. Ashcroft may have been a misspelling of the name of early prospector and entrepreneur TE Ashcraft, for whom the town was named.

By 1885, Ashcroft was home to as many as 3,500 people. It had six hotels and 20 saloons, was bigger than Aspen, and closer to the railroad in Crested Butte. Ashcroft was booming. Its mines initially produced 14,000 ounces of silver per ton, enough to induce Leadville silver millionaire Horace Tabor to invest in the nearby Tam O’Shanter – Montezuma Mine. The town was bustling. Stage service ran over Taylor and Pearl Psses. Ashcroft’s population was bigger than Aspen’s, and the future seemed bright.

But, as Aspen grew, Ashcroft went bust by the turn of the 20^th century. At that time, only a handful of aging, single men lived in Ashcroft. All owned mining claims, but spent most their time fishing and hunting, or reading and drinking in a local bar. The town’s last resident, Jack Leahy, died in 1939, officially making Ashcroft a ghost town.

As Ashcroft was fading into history, interest in the area revived as skiing started to become more popular in the US. Investors bought the Ashcroft town site and surrounding land at the base of Hayden Peak, where they hoped to build what would have been Colorado’s first alpine ski resort. In the late 1930s they constructed the Highland-Bavarian Lodge a few miles north of Ashcroft, received a US Forest Service  permit for their resort, and even secured a state bond issue to build an aerial tram. But the start of World War II derailed their plans, and Aspen – not Ashcroft – because the center of the area’s ski development.

Today, in addition to a number of well-worn structures, Ashcroft is home to an upscale restaurant, the Pine Creek Cookhouse, open year-round. It’s a popular place for weddings and all sorts of celebrations, billing itself as “American alpine cuisine at its finest.” For lunch, you can get a Rocky Mountain Elk Bratwurst ($39), or for dinner, you can score a Deconstructed Venison Wellington ($62). In the winter, you can combine a sleigh ride or cross-country skiing / snowshoeing, with dinner afterward.

The End of the Ride. Weddings, more commonly called elopements, are popular in Ashcroft, whether at the Pine Creek Cookhouse, or the Ashcroft ghost town. It’s easy to get to from the Aspen side, the views are other-worldly, and it’s less expensive than the glitz of Aspen.

In Ashcroft, the road from Pearl Pass transitions to pavement. From here, it’s an easy – and fun – 12-mile ride into Aspen. You’ll descend another 1,600 feet, and pass both the Aspen Highlands and Aspen ski areas on your way into town. 

All told, it’s about 38 miles from Crested Butte, over Pearl Pass, and into Aspen. The journey can be done by a four-wheel drive, high-clearance vehicle. You can also ride your bicycle.

Every year since 1976, the oldest mountain bike event in the world takes cyclists from Crested Butte to Aspen, over Pearl Pass. It’s believed to be the longest-running organized mountain bike ride in the world. The event is staged annually on the second weekend in September.

The Pearl Pass Tour leaves the Crested Butte Mountain Heritage Museum at Fourth and Elk Street, at 9 am sharp. You still have time to get in shape for the ride. If you wanna go old school, grab a vintage bike for your ride. The bikes are generally one speeds, with balloon tires, and are known as “klunkers.” That’s how they rode it originally, and some still do.

The Pearl Pass Klunker Tour. Why not?

To view today’s Not Quite Pass-a-Palooza™ route from Crested Butte, over Pearl Pass, through Ashcroft, and into Aspen, click here.