A JEEP JOURNEY TO SCHOFIELD PASS (CRESTED BUTTE - THE DRAGON & DRAGON SLAYER & PEPSI HORSE METAL STATUES; PARADISE DIVIDE; BEAUTIFUL GLACIER LILIES; STUCK IN A SNOW BANK ADVENTURE; WON'T MAKE IT TO SCHOFIELD PASS DUE TO SNOW; HAD LUNCH AT PARADISE BASIN; STOPPED AT HIGH ALPINE BREWING COMPANY FOR A BEER; & ANOTHER TRIP TO GUNNISON FOR A DELICIOUS LUNCH AT OL' MINER STEAKHOUSE) - Thursday, June 27 - Friday, June 28, 2024

Thursday, June 27, 2024

Mel and I left the Blue Mesa Thousand Trails campground around 8:00 a.m. and headed out for another jeep adventure. Our friends, Mike and Judy Pluto had left the campground on Tuesday, June 25, because they had to get back for a birthday celebration. We decided that today was as good as any to go out again on the mountain trails.

Our plan was to drive along CO Hwy 135 North toward Crested Butte. 

So when we got to Crested Butte, we headed towards Schofield Pass, and then around the trail and on to Gothic -- that is there if there wasn't any snow blockages in our way.

As we got closer to Crested Butte, it began to sprinkle with the sky looking dark and stormy.

We have now arrived at Crested Butte, Colorado. It is 9:15 a.m. Crested Butte, with a population of 1,639 was a former coal mining town nestled in the Slate River Valley. It is now known as a destination for skiing, mountain biking, and outdoor activities.

The East River Valley where Crested Butte is located was once used as a summer residence by the Ute people. However, they were quickly displaced when European-Americans first entered the area. The first white people to explore the valley were beaver trappers, shortly followed by surveyors. Captain John Gunnison (after whom Gunnison County was named), was one of the early explorers to enter the area.

In the 1860s and 1870s, coal and silver mines began to open in the surrounding area and many little mining towns formed. Mining, along with ranching, formed the most of the local economies. However, when silver mining began to decline, many of these towns failed. Crested Butte, however, was in a better position to survive because it served as a supply town to the surrounding area.

When the coal mines closed, the town began to shrink, and eventually the local high school was closed. Students had to travel to Gunnison to go to high school. The town did not revive until a ski area was built on Crested Butte Mountain in the 1960s. The ski resort was constructed on the former Malensek Ranch, in what is now the neighboring community of Mt. Crested Butte. The resort rapidly revitalized the town's economy around tourism. 

The town has changed from a mining town to a tourist retreat catering to the affluent as the ski resort has taken over the local economy. This has led to a housing crisis -- with the average home in Crested Butte worth over $900,000. And finally, the Colorado General Assembly in 1990 designated Crested Butte as the wildflower capital of Colorado.

This impressive scuplture (shown above) is called Dragonslayer. It is located in a park that also houses the Crested Butte Art Center. The artist of this piece is Sean Guerrero. Sean previously resided in the mountain town of Crested Butte, Colorado and traveled frequently to his second home in the Bordeaux region of France. He now lives in Denver, Colorado, where he grew up. Early on he realized that he had the ability to create sculptures from recycled materials such as wood, steel and plastic. Once Sean discovered the unique opportunities of working with chrome plated steel, taken from old automobile bumpers, it became his preferred medium.

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AN INTERESTING STORY ABOUT ST. GEORGE THE DRAGON SLAYER AND THE DRAGON

St. George was the patron Saint of England. The struggle of St. George and the dragon represents Christianity overcoming the pagan rituals. St.George was a Roman soldier born in eastern Asia. At the time, the emperor Diocletian's army was in search of those who had accepted Christ as the Son of God. George, who was fairly high up in the army, told Diocletian that what the emperor was doing was wrong, and left the army. He was put to death by Diocletian's men in the vicinity of Lydda, Palestine. His death inspired Christians to continue being true to their faith during troubled times.

Meanwhile, near a village in a far distant land lived a dragon. Villagers there lived in fear of the dragon, for it was so powerful. Flames shot from its mouth and smoke billowed from its nose. Huge claws protruded from its strong paws and its tail left a path of destruction. Villagers would leave part of their hunt everyday for the hungry dragon.

Finally, all the animals were gone so the villagers decided to send in a human. Lots were cast and the loser was the daughter of the king of the village. She was taken to the dragon and left by her people. As the dragon approached a young knight, George, appeared and battled the dragon with only a sword. George thrust the sword deep into the bosom of the dragon, killing the dragon by piercing his heart and saving the princess. When George returned to the village, the people were overjoyed at the return of the king's daughter. George then told them the story of Jesus Christ and baptized them.

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INFO ABOUT THE STATUE

The statue, St. George the Dragonslayer is actually almost three tons of chrome made from the recycled remains of cars from the 1930's and 1940's and other recycled objects. It was created by artist Sean Guerrero, who made a study of the subject before building the statue. St. George is clothed in traditional garb of a Knights Cheval, who were trained and bound by a code of ethics -- hence the word chivalry. The knight on the chessboard was created with the Knights Cheval in mind. The dragon is a massive creature with a wingspan of 23 feet.

There were several other metal sculptures around Crested Butte, including the Pepsi Horse (shown below).

Sean Guerrero is the artist responsible for the majestic beast (shown above), that welcomes people to Crested Butte. The Pepsi Horse, with its mane and tail flowing and his chrome muscles bulging, seems to propel itself right off of the pedestal upon which it has been mounted. This sculpture is truly a local creation with the majority of the pieces in the Pepsi Horse coming from the Rozman Ranch, located just down Highway 135. It’s an important part of Gunnison Valley history, where stories of hard-working ranchers and their horses abound, while old cars were horsepowered beasts of a different sort.

However, there’s more to the story than that. An unfortunate event with corporate America left Guerrero cynical about branding and marketing.  Since he was 14 years old, he’d held onto a Pepsi sign he had salvaged from an old ice machine and suddenly its destiny became clear.  He embedded it in the flank of this noble beast, thus cross-pollinating the idea of marketing with creativity; of corporate branding versus the branding ranchers of yesteryear employed; of mainstream America versus that which is untamed and wild.

With our destination in mind, we followed CO Hwy 135 North about 0.8 mile from the visitor center in Crested Butte, turning left on to Slate River Road that is also known as County Road Hwy 734 (see below). It was now about 9:20 a.m.

The road to Paradise Divide was mostly unpaved -- being only paved for the first 3.6 miles out of Crested Butte and then turning into a dirt road. The pass road is about 14.3 miles long, running south-north from Crested Butte to Schofield Pass.

After about 10 minutes along our journey, Slate River Road turned to a wide graded gravel road (as you can see below).

After going about five miles along Slate Road, we passed by the beautiful Nicholson Lake. At nearly 10,000 feet elevation, Crested Butte has many beautiful lakes. Nicholson Lake is just one of the smaller lakes that is owned by the Alpine Meadows homeowners. The lake parallels the beautiful Slate River which feeds this lake. The reflection in the lake (shown below) is of the 'Oh Be Joyful Mountains' in the water.

We continued along a somewhat muddy road because to the recent rain.

We were told that lots of people ride their bikes along the jeep road, and today we did see a few brave bikers.

Next, we drove by the 'Oh Be Joyful' recreation area and campground on our left (see picture above), and many primitive campsites (as shown in the picture shown below).

Paradise Divide was now only seven miles away.

We continued on and we didn't meet very many other vehicles.

As we continued climbing towards Paradise Divide, the road became a narrower shelf road and was much steeper. We soon realized how important it was to have a high-clearance vehicle like our jeep.

We are now beginning to see banks of snow alongside the jeep trail.

After about an hour in along the narrow trail, we have now found some pretty vegetation.

One of the first flowers to bloom as the snow melts is typically the Glacier Lilies (shown above). As this is a 'new to me' wildflower -- I found out the entire plant is edible and very important to the wildlife. Bears will dig up large areas to find it's bulbs.

At 12 miles in and around 10:00 a.m., we have arrived at Paradise Divide. It has an elevation of 11,250 feet.

 It was here that we stopped at a small snow melt lake to stretch our legs and take a few pictures.

Next, from here we will be entering Paradise Basin and heading towards Schofield Pass. Schofield Pass is now only two miles away. Below you can see the winding road ahead of us.

We crossed over more snow on our journey.

The pictures above and below show more of the beautiful Glacier Lilies in the tundra area.

Paradise Basin is a high mountain pass at an elevation of 11,309 feet above sea level that is located in Gunnison County, Colorado, near the summit of Schofield Pass.

I have identied the white daisy-like flowers shown above and below as Dwarf Rock Jasmine.

We have now come to a water crossing -- and Rubi, our jeep, has no problem getting us through it.

Once again, we have found more snow.

Next, we came to another snow melt water crossing -- and go right through it.

We see numerous streams and little waterfalls along the way!

And then as passed the turnoff for the Devil's Punchbowl trail, and continued on toward Schofield Pass, we spotted a vehicle stopped in the middle of the road ahead. It was now 10:20 a.m. Mel decided to get out of the jeep and go see what the problem was -- and oh no -- it was a huge drift of snow blocking the road. And as bad luck would have it, a vehicle was stuck in a drift where he had tried to go across it.

Luckily, we had a shovel in the back of our jeep, so the process of digging out the stuck vehicle began in earnest.

The pictures above and below show just how badly he was stuck in the snow.

The above picture shows how deep the snow was around the tires and frame of the vehicle -- indicating just how badly he was stuck in the snowdrift.

Shown above, everyone does whatever they can to help clear out the path of snow.

After the stuck vehicle was dug out, the owner backed it up to where the snow wasn't that deep, and the process of clearing the road continued with everyone digging snow out of the way (even using their hands as scoops) and placing large boulders along the road area to make a more driveable pass.

As our GPS in the jeep indicated, we were very close to North Pole Basin Road at this point.

And now at 12:10 p.m. (after 1-1/2 hours) of digging in the snow, the first vehicle tries to go across the newly open road.

And everyone watches in anticipation.

And then woohoo!!! Everyone hoops and hollars while at the same time throwing their arms up in the air to express their joy and excitement as the first vehicle makes it across. 

Next, the second vehicle attempts to cross (see above and below).

And now it was our turn to cross -- Mel told me to hold on tight because he was going to have to gun it. 

And away we go!!!

We are now over, and have pulled over to make sure that the last two vehicles also get across.

With everyone across, we continued along the road toward Schofield Pass.

And once again, we are starting to see a lot of snow on the road.

And then, once again everyone in the vehicles ahead of us have stopped. Mel hops out of the jeep to go check it out.

And believe it or not, we find out this time that the snow drift is enormous -- this gigantic snow drift crossing our path now is probably the size of three football fields combined!!! We have now come to a 'point of no return' and we won't be continuing on to Gothic, but thus we all must turn our vehicles back around and retrace our steps.

So at 12:30 p.m., we have now turned back around and are on our trek back to the first snow bank where the vehicle had first gotten stuck. The next several pictures shows our journey back.

As shown above and below, we are now back to that first snow bank crossing.

Mel guns it and Rubi once again gets us through it. We have decided to stop back at Paradise Divide and have lunch -- some of the others in our "snow drift" caravan have decided to join us there.

Onward we go . . .

We just now have entered Paradise Basin again.

We have now made it back to one of the water crossings.

We cross over and continue.

It's now around 1:00 p.m. and we have now made it back to Paradise Divide to have lunch.

Shown above, Shirley takes a selfie at Paradise Divide.

As shown below, Mel has begun eating his lunch. This is a spectacular place to have lunch with a view!

Shown above, Mel visits with Marcus and his dogs. This is the guy who got his vehicle stuck in the snow bank that we helped get out.

Shown above and below is Emma (wife of Marcus) and their two children, Jasper (their son) and Cedar (their daughter). They have stopped in the same area as us to have a snack while we ate our lunch.

At 1:40 p.m., we had finished our lunch and were on our way back to Crested Butte and then back to the campground in Gunnison.

The mountainous views going back were extremely beautiful.

The shelf road was narrow on the drive back.

The mountains were breathtaking!!!

The pine tree silhouettes against the lighter background of the mountains and sky were very impressive!

Down, down, down we go . . .

Twisting and turning all our way down . . .

We began to see lots of pretty blue flowers along the road -- which I believe were Larkspur (see the closeup below).

We continued our journey down the mountain . . .

We have come upon an area where there seems to be millions of dandelions!!!

There also was a nice stream (Slate River) that flowed along beside the Slate River Road.

We're now back to Nicholson Lake.

It was now 2:30 p.m. and we're driving through Crested Butte and heading back toward the campground.

On our way back, we stopped at the High Alpine Brewing Company in Gunnison as Mel wanted to get a craft beer. High Alpine Brewing Company opened its doors the summer of 2015 and is surrounded by an epic terrain that locals embrace all year round.  

Mel lifted his glass of beer in celebration of another great day on on the jeep trail.

Friday, June 28, 2024

Today we decided to drive into Gunnison and check our text messages. We set up in the little park as we had in the past. 

Then we decided to eat at the Ol' Miner Steakhouse in Gunnison.

Mel had a Reuben (which was a sandwich with sliced fresh corned beef, melted swiss cheese, sauerkraut and 1000 island dressing on marble rye bread) with sweet potato fries.

While Shirley had Chicken Fried Steak (a tenderized steak lightly battered, fried, and topped with classic white gravy) served with fries.

We both thought the food was very good. I'm sure we will dine there again.

WOW, what a wonderful couple of days we have had in the Gunnison area! Until next time, happy days and . . . HAPPY TRAILS!

Shirley & Mel