For the Love of Snow: Breck!

March 6, 2022

Breckenridge, Colorado

Game on! The last time I skied was March 14, 2020. Elizabeth and Catherine invited me to Beaver Creek for Beaver Creek year so I threw my hard earned money down and bought and Ikon pass. It doesn't take too many days at $239 a day to pay it off. Plus, Beaver Creek is as close to hobnobbing with the rich and famous as I'll ever get...or want to be. The bonus is that the mountain is great and it's big enough and exclusive enough that you rarely stand in line.

This trip took some preparation. First, physical prep. I'd been running a little, but not enough to get in shape for skiing at altitude. I decided that multiple morning rides over at Graham Swamp was the program to get my sorry butt in shape. It's about a six mile loop that exceeds anything I expected in Florida. Lots of up and down, some very challenging climbs that will get the heart rate way up. Plus the weather in February is very conducive to outdoor activities.

Florida Sasquatch sighting at the swamp.

My skis also needed some work. Prepping skis by the pool with my little helper. It was 80 degrees in Flagler Beach when I left Friday afternoon.

Kayla pick me up at DIA at 1:00am. My flight was delayed about 20 minutes and Kayla got stuck in I-70 midnight construction. It was 1:45 when we got to her new place. It was a little blustery on the drive up to Fort Collins Saturday morning.

Parker and Brooke were already there getting prepped for the big week. Brooke and the darling Chelsea (aka baby snooks).

Lindsay gets a turn.

It snowed Saturday night. Catherine and Parker took the pups out for a walk in the morning before I left to pick Garth. Seemed like a good omen to start off the trip with snow down in town. The plan was for me to go over to Garth's Sunday morning and ski Breckenridge. The rest of the crew would come up later in the afternoon.

Everyone was telling me stories about how bad it was on weekend mornings and how we would probably take three plus hours to get to Breckenridge. It took a little more than two hours. Traffic was amazingly light. Garth on the BreckConnent gondola that took us from the parking lot up to the mountain.

The moment of truth was on the first ride up - I was hoping for no glitches with the pass. Scanned like a champ and we were off. We rode up Peak 7 and did a warm up run and then took the T-bar to get over to Peak 8. That's right, the T-bar. I would have taken a picture but it seemed like a good place to lose my phone so I didn't. At any rate, the T-bar took us over to the Imperial lift that takes you up nearly to the top of Peak 8. The Imperial lift also happens to be the highest lift in North America topping out at 12, 840 feet.

Rocky Mountain High.

Highest life in North America. It was very cold - I didn't check the temp, but I'm guessing it was in the 0 F range.

Conditions at Breck were good and bad. The Imperial Bowl run down from Peak 8 clearly had some serious sun exposure recently so it was dust over brown ice moguls. That was enough of that for the day. We then skied down to the 6 lift. Conditions on those runs were also less than ideal. Garth suggested we do it again. It wasn't any better the second time.

We then went over to C lift and did a bunch of runs. The snow conditions were much better - little hero bumps with a little fluff on top. Catherine called around 3 and told us Vail Pass was closed due to truck accidents. No hurry to leave then. We stopped at the Vista Haus after taking a few runs down the lower part of Peak 8 to warm up. We did one final run and caught the BreckConnect gondola back to the parking lot.

We hit I-70 about 4:30 and traffic was backed up to Copper. The drive back to Denver must have been awful.

Vail Pass was not a big deal. There was quite a bit of traffic, but nothing eventful. We listened to the new Jethro Tull album "The Zealot Gene" on the way over Vail Pass.

Rising avalanche danger.

We arrived in Avon a little after 5. I felt pretty good after the first day of skiing and didn't feel like my legs were going to be sore.

I checked the snow report to get a grip on what Monday was going to be. Interesting report - looked like about 20" of Fuck Putin. We've never skied those conditions, but weren't going to pass up the chance.