Skiing Breckenridge

I know what you’re thinking.  This section of the blog is called “Ski East Coast,” but here I am talking about Breckenridge.

Eh.  What can I say?  It was a good trip.

Breckenridge from mid-mountain on Peak 6.

I left last Friday, flying to Colorado Springs out of LaGuardia on a 7:30 am flight.  I left the house early, so the drive down to Queens wasn’t bad, and I got through airport security in less than five minutes, but friends, the LaGuardia Airport itself is a disaster.  They’re building a new airport essentially on the same site as the existing one, and it has absolutely destroyed the local traffic patterns.  Driving around the terminals is a nightmare, and there is literally nowhere to park that is even remotely nearby.   I got a spot at the Hyatt Place Flushing using the Way app but then had to take cabs to and from the terminal.  That was neither cheap nor convenient, and once I got situated, I discovered that the terminal itself didn’t even have a restaurant for breakfast.

Argh.  Not recommended.

Dallas airport

Airport #beertography

The flight to Colorado Springs wasn’t bad, but in retrospect, I should have tried a little harder to go direct given that I’d already decided to fly out of New York City.  I was lucky on the way out in that my first flight arrived in Dallas on time, allowing me time to catch both a leisurely lunch and my connection while my bags did the same, but the trip back was nowhere near as smooth.

My buddy Brian picked me up at the Springs airport around 5:00 pm local time.  We went to his place, dropped my gear, and headed into town for a truly epic dinner at The Famous, a well-known local steakhouse.  We then hit one of the local bars -- speakeasy-style for you hipsters -- but we didn’t stay long since we’d already planned to get up early to go ski.

The bad thing about Breckenridge is that it’s really not near anything.  It’s a two-hour drive from Colorado Springs and maybe a little more than that from Denver.  The drive up from the Springs is very pretty, but we caught some traffic going through one of the mountain passes and didn’t actually get into town until just after 10 am.  We stayed with a friend of Brian’s and were therefore able to park at his house just off the mountain, but if we hadn’t caught that break, yikes!  Parking can be a real challenge out there.

Wide open spaces on the drive out to Breck

But we’re allowed to get lucky, right?  Brian and I are both West Pointers, and now that we’re in our 40s, we’ve both made a bunch of really useful connections.  Those connections helped a lot during this trip.

The good thing about Breckenridge is that it’s a giant ski resort with an actual town sitting right at its base.  The town itself sits at a base elevation of some 9600 feet, which is high as all Hell if you’re not used to it.  You can then take lifts to nearly 13,000 ft, and if you’re feeling particularly froggy, you can hike even further up from there to ski legitimately deep virgin powder off the ridge line.  We parked at Justin’s house, which sits behind Empire Burger at the base of Peak 9.  We then hoofed it all the way up to the Beaver Run Chair, skied over to 6-Chair, and then caught the Imperial Express Super-Chair way up into the sky.

Breckenridge Trail Map.  There are five separate peaks!

Crazy.  I didn’t feel the altitude much when we were actually skiing, but I found myself breathing ard whenever I bent over to do up my snowboard bindings once we got up into the real elevations, and that first hike up to the Beaver Run Chair was a legit slog.  I also caught a really bad hangover Saturday night and Sunday morning that I think that had more to do with the altitude than alcohol.  Some Advil and yoga put me to rights, and I wound up skiing really well on Sunday, but Saturday night itself was tough.  That said, if you’re not a former D1 swimmer and/or regular yoga practitioner, you might want to be a little careful out there.  I felt way, way better during my second day at altitude, but that first day was tricky.  By the time we got to the top of the Imperial Express Super-Chair, Brian told me the air had just 60% of the nominal oxygen content you’ll find at sea level.  I’ve been living at sea level for the past twenty years, and I could really feel the difference.

Just off Imperial Bowl.  I stuck the landing.

We worked our way on foot out onto the Imperial Ridge.  This put us into deep powder, and full disclosure: my board is just not made for that stuff.  I probably need a longer, stiffer board for the way I ride anyway.  My shorter, more flexible board really wasn’t optimized for Colorado snow, and it was actively bad at navigating deep powder.  To say that I fell a few times is a massive understatement.  Nevertheless, it was an amazing experience navigating those giant bowls hundreds of feet above the treeline.  I’m sure that I could have gotten the hang of it with a little more practice, but in the moment, I wound up tumbling on my ass and rolling some fifteen-plus feet downhill before I managed to get back to rights.  We skied the Imperial Bowl twice, and both times were absolute yard sales.  It was quite an experience.

We came down off the Imperial Bowl and got into probably the most challenging terrain of the weekend -- the tree-lined mogul runs that feed into Boneyard.  My shorter snowboard isn’t too bad on moguls, but I was tired by this point and got frustrated with it.  I skied Outer Limits at Killington just a few weekends ago and fell exactly once, so it’s not like I can’t handle the terrain.  However, handling those whales on steep slopes takes focus, nerve, and determination, and by this point in the afternoon, my nerve in particular was feeling a bit frayed.  I’m good for maybe two to three tough mogul runs per day.  Including the Imperial Bowl, we put in four or maybe five on Saturday.  I fell a lot on the last couple.

Chairlift into the sky: the Imperial Express Super-Chair

On "the beach" with Brian

Ten-Mile Station

We ate a packed lunch at Ten-Mile Station, a mid-mountain lodge towards the base of Peak 10, and after that we kept it simpler.  I think we mostly skied Peaks 9 and 10 that afternoon.  We hit American, Columbia, Spitfire, and a bunch more, and on Sunday, we came back and did laps on Cimarron.  Cimarron and American were probably my favorite trails of the weekend, though I also really liked the blue runs off Peak 6.  We took the chairlift into the sky to get to Peak 6 on Sunday morning, and that let us ski off the side of the mountain on virgin corduroy under bluebird skies.  Magnificent! Alas, somebody got hurt pretty bad up there early that morning.  We only got two runs on Peak 6, but what we got was breathtakingly good.

We went for dinner Saturday night at Castaways Cove, the world’s highest tiki bar. Brian’s friend Justin owns both the bar and the house where we stayed. Awesome place! We had beer and spicy beef wontons (Happy Hour Special: $1 each!) to go with some miso soup, and then we switched to mixed drinks served up by Castaways’ genius bartender Mick. Looking back, I probably should’ve eaten more given the altitude. As it was, I thoroughly enjoyed myself — right up until I hurled in the middle of the night.

Castaways Cove (Instagram)

Robert Lewis at Castaways

Despite the overindulgence, Sunday was another great day, mostly involving laps on Peaks 9 and 10. We ate lunch again at Ten-Mile Station and then sat out on “the beach” for a while to soak up the sun. It was gorgeous out there, and honestly, I felt blessed just to get the opportunity to hang out.

Overall, I’ve got to say that Breckenridge has the great snow Colorado is famous for along with enough terrain to keep you exploring for an entire week if you’ve a mind to do it.  The place is not cheap, but if you want to ski some of the best snow around, it’s absolutely doable.  Sure, it takes some effort to navigate the deep powder and some of the tougher mogul runs, but it’s worth the effort, and anyway, that experience isn’t one that a lot of other resorts can replicate.

Breckenridge

Alas, Monday involved a travel odyssey to get back home. I’ll spare you the details, but I’ll note that as of this writing, I’m still waiting for my luggage to catch up with me. My one piece of advice involving Breck is to fly direct if it’s at all possible.

Other than that, go and enjoy!