Trails of spring sanity

With not a lot going on in town, the idea was to write about something on the world scene. You know, the one-year anniversary of the BP oil spill, a nuclear reactor melting down in Japan, the richest people paying a lot less in taxes this year, Paul Ryan’s Ayn Rand budget proposal, Obama’s crazy Libya policy, Trump’s crazier birther policy, Charlie Sheen, and a hundred other things.
But then waking to a foot of fresh in late April gave me flashbacks of bee-lining it to the Eldo to wait out the storm.

Facebook posts spotted online by 8:15 Tuesday morning:
___if you are enjoying off season here in crested butte and have not yet looked out the window yet…don’t look…just go back to bed….trust me…
___mother nature must be PMSing.
___goodness gracious, look at all that new snow, it’s positively dumping out there. gee whiz.
___WTF! snow! and a LOT
___Nooooooo!
___Should have listened to the Arts Center marquee
___Don’t look outside if you wish to remain sane. This is brutal.
 ___is not sure why long time inhabitants of a Colorado ski town still freak out when it snows in April, and is going shredding.

Now the Gadfly tapped out that last perspective and it is probably sound, valuable advice for those who stay here and want to remain sane during spring in Crested Butte. Roll with the flow and if it snows, go ride the white. By the way, the Gadfly is on strike writing for the paper just because the media executives won’t pay him in anything more than booze. I bet he’s sorry about that now.
Anyway, he, along with the other Facebook posters, was referencing the 12 inches of fresh spring snow on my deck Tuesday. It was heavy snow, too—it would have been 25 inches in February.
In my younger days, I might have headed straight to the Eldo to wait out the storm. Now I start thinking about Hartman Rocks. And given the miracle of the Internet, it appears that will be the place to go for a while.
For example, the weather in Crested Butte on Thursday calls for highs in the 40s with rain. In Gunnison, the forecast calls for a high of 59 and a 20 percent chance of precipitation. Hello Hartman’s.

Having been to Hartman Rocks on Sunday, the trails are in great shape and it is likely a place a lot of people will be Thursday and for the next month. It is a vortex of warmth in the spring and fall.
Given the other miracle of a gas-powered vehicle, you can go from Crested Butte, which as I write this probably has a foot of slushy snow piling up, to a high-desert oasis with rolling trails and sagebrush. Thanks goes out to Dave Wiens and all the others down there who maintain those trails and have marked them up in recent years so it is harder to get lost.
That area just outside of Gunnison is a great get-away and a place for those who choose not to shred on boards like the Gadfly but on wheels. Every place has its off-season and spring is ours. Hartman’s makes it bearable and easy to wait until summer when the days in Crested Butte are as sweet as anywhere on the planet.
Like a lot of people, I still might head up for a spring ski or two in the next couple weeks but riding a bike indicates a change of season even when the seasons seem to be going backwards. Hartman’s provides that forward perspective. It provides an oasis of sanity when the weather up here at the headwaters turns ugly.
The Eldo still has its place during weeks like these, mind you, and for some, helping to pump up off-season sales tax numbers is probably appreciated and one road to sanity. But for now, having a desert trail 35 minutes away is more than beneficial… it is needed and appreciated.