Trail 403 is a challenging trail that goes from Washington Gulch over to Gothic Road. For this ride we drove to the trailhead. 403 isn’t very long at just 4.2 miles and that’s a shame. After the initial mile long climb, it’s rolling, flowing singletrack through flowers and pine forests and then ends with a steep switchback descent into Gothic campground. That’s 1,800′ of downhill in a few miles. Yeehaw!
We turned left on Gothic Road, stopped to look at the two moose in the meadow, and then climbed up to Schofield Pass. Here’s where things got interesting. We decided to descend down to Devil’s Punchbowl. WOW. I tried to research Devil’s Punchbowl which is on our map… I think it’s the cool waterfall we rode by. We took pics of that and kept going. The gorge was rocky and wild. We love that.
We turned around and climbed back up the way we came, only we turned on dirt road 317 into Paradise Basin and climbed that for awhile. The views of Cinnamon Mountain and the dramatic gulches below were astounding. We looped back around on another dirt road to our truck. Wooo boy ,19.7 miles and 3,200′ of climbing. Crested Butte is mind boggling beauty.
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