The last time Linna and I hiked in Colorado was two years ago during my birthday week where I summited Colorado’s highest peak Mt. Elbert. This trip we flew an early morning flight from Seattle to Denver via Alaska Airlines. Once we landed we still had a 4 ½ hour drive from the Denver airport to Crested Butte…this can be a little tiring after a while driving two lane highways behind large trucks and RV’s.

This year we met up again in Crested Butte with basically the same group of friends but with a few more people this time. Our group rented a huge house in the Mt. Crested Butte area overlooking mountains and the Crested Butte village.

We spent four relaxing days enjoying fabulous homemade Chinese food, local hiking and the mountain scenery. Our first group hike was off of CR734 on Augusta Mountain with an elevation gain of 3,000 feet. This was supposed to be an easy hike but we took a different route and ended up adding more adventure to this hike with a river crossing and some rock scrambling.

Our second hiking day was the opposite, it was supposed to be the longer hike up to West Maroon Pass but was pretty much a photo shoot of beautiful wildflowers on West Maroon Valley. An easier hike was totally cool with me especially with the first few days consisting of flying, driving and hiking.
The four day trip ended up with a stupid move on my part by leaving our car keys in the vacation rental house…our car was parked at the SeaTac airport; I called a good friend of mine Mike Curry for a ride home.