Crested Butte

Getting to Crested Butte requires a certain commitment, since the town sits at the literal end of Highway 135, with nothing beyond it but the mountain that shares its name. Lia and I drove the thirty miles up from Gunnison through a widening valley, cattle ranches giving way to aspen groves, until Elk Avenue appeared: two blocks of saloon-front Victorian buildings painted in impossible colors, purple and turquoise and mustard yellow, left over from a coal-mining boom that ended decades ago. It felt less like arriving in a town than stumbling into a diorama, except the diorama had excellent coffee and a bike shop on every corner.

Elk Avenue and mining history

Crested Butte was built on coal, not gold, and the last mine closed in 1952, leaving behind a town too remote and too pretty to disappear the way so many mining camps did. We spent our first afternoon wandering Elk Avenue’s wooden boardwalks, ducking into the Crested Butte Mountain Heritage Museum to learn how the town narrowly avoided becoming a molybdenum mine in the 1970s, a fight that helped seed the modern conservation movement here. The buildings still lean at the odd angles a hundred winters of heavy snow will produce, and locals seem genuinely proud that nothing here has been over-restored into blandness.

Wildflowers and the high country

Crested Butte calls itself the wildflower capital of Colorado, and in the last weeks of July, the claim is hard to argue with. We hiked up Washington Gulch and later the Snodgrass Trail, and both times walked through meadows so thick with columbine, Indian paintbrush, and lupine that the ground seemed to hum with color. The town even hosts a Wildflower Festival each summer, with guided botany walks led by people who can name every bloom without slowing their pace. Above the meadows, Crested Butte Mountain itself, a distinctive dark, castle-like peak, stood watch over every hike we took.

Mountain biking’s birthplace

Few know that modern mountain biking traces its roots partly to Crested Butte, where locals rode modified beach cruisers over Pearl Pass to Aspen in the 1970s just to prove it could be done. That heritage lives on in a town with more bike shops than seemed reasonable for its size, and Lia and I rented hardtails to ride a section of the 401 Trail, widely regarded as one of the most scenic singletrack rides in the country, switchbacking through wildflower basins above treeline. We were slow, inexpert, and thoroughly happy by the time we coasted back into town for green chile burritos.

Getting There

The nearest airport is Gunnison-Crested Butte Regional Airport, about thirty minutes south, with seasonal direct flights from several major cities, particularly heavy in ski season. From Denver, it’s a four-hour drive over Kebler Pass or via Highway 50, with Kebler closed in winter, so check road conditions before setting out. There’s no train service, and once you’re in town, Crested Butte itself is entirely walkable, with a free shuttle running up to the ski mountain a few miles north.