We round tripped hiked Aspen to Crested Butte for our 5th anniversary last summer in August. We hiked to Crested Butte, stayed Friday and Saturday night, then hiked back to Aspen on Sunday. I did a lot of research before we went, but we still had some hiccups. So I’m going to lay it all out here.
I want to start by saying East Maroon Pass = Aspen and West Maroon Pass = Crested Butte. This confused me when I was researching so I want to make it as clear as possible.
We drove up to Aspen early Friday morning (we left Denver at 2:30am to get to Aspen around 6:00am). We were trying to get a parking spot at the trail head, but we were still not early enough. There are many groups hiking the Four Pass Loop so many of those hikers show up on Thursday.
We had to audible and park in the Aspen Highlands parking lot and then call a cab to take us to Maroon Bells. This all took about an hour to coordinate (driving to Maroon Bells to check if there were any spots, drive back to park in town, then get a cab to pick us up and drive us back to Maroon Bells). If you are going early*, my recommendation is to just park at Aspen Highlands and call a cab to take you to Maroon Bells. The Aspen Highlands bus doesn’t start it’s route until 8:00am. Make sure you have cash to pay and tip the cab because they don’t have service at the trail head. I don’t remember the cost exactly, but I think it was around $25-$35. You can call ahead to get a better idea. We used High Mountain Taxi.
We coordinated a shuttle to pick us up on the Crested Butte side (West Maroon Trailhead) on Friday afternoon and a drop off on Sunday morning. You really don’t want to trek it all the way to town. It’s about a 35-40 min. drive. We used Dolly’s Shuttle and they were fantastic. Our bus was full. I don’t think you will run into any issues of having to solely pay for a full bus since this is such a popular hike now. Dogs are also allowed on the shuttle for the same price as a person. I would just make sure they are small or ultra well behaved because our bus was packed and it’s kind of a long drive.
Be aware if there is a snow plug. This is important because the shuttle could not pick us up or drop us off at the trailhead. These snow plugs are common in the springtime. Even though, we hiked late August, it was still there (avalanches were horrible this year). This meant we had to hike an extra two miles to get to the pick up location.**
We set a pick-up time for 2:00pm for the shuttle. So after losing an hour with the parking fiasco, we basically ran the last four miles to get to the shuttle on time. We aren’t slow hikers by any means. We actually passed every single hiker we saw. The hike ended up being about 16 miles with packs on.
When you are booking the shuttle, you will need to know where they will need to drop you off (where you are staying). We booked Nordic Inn Crested Butte. It is actually on Mt. Crested Butte and not in town. There is a free bus that runs from Mount Crested Butte to the town every 15 min. The Nordic is the oldest ski lodge on Mt. Crested Butte. Mason’s grandparents would always stay there when they visited and now it’s the only place we stay when we go to Crested Butte. It’s very charming and dog friendly.
During the summer, most of the shops and restaurants are closed or have limited hours on Mt. Crested Butte. We took the bus to town for most of our meals. The lift on Mt. Crested Butte is open and heavily used by mountain bikers. I did consider booking extra activities in Crested Butte while we were there like paddle boarding or mountain biking. I’m glad we played it by ear because we were pretty worn out and just wanted to hang around town and hammock on Saturday.
We scheduled our Sunday pick-up for 6:00am so we could get another early start and avoid any storms. We didn’t have to rush as much because we were just heading back to a parked car. Our only time restraint was the Aspen Highland bus stops running at 5:00pm. Since you are catching the bus at the trailhead, they don’t charge you to go to the parking lot.
This is an amazing hike and we highly recommend it. I saw some of the best views I have ever seen in Colorado on this hike. If we build up our pack tolerance, we will definitely want to try and tackle the Four Pass Loop.
*You should go early to avoid afternoon storms. It started raining a little by the time we got over the pass on the Crested Butte side.
**We are dumb and do not have a sense of direction. Make sure to stay left when you get out of the trailhead parking lot. We only knew which way to go because there was a random guy running that confirmed the correct direction.