On the day before daylight savings takes away our morning light I took advantage of the earliest sunrise possible to skin up the Breckenridge Ski Resort. Once again I started at the base of Peak 9 and went to the top of the Mercury chair. Had a nice sunrise looking across the Blue River Valley to 14ers Grays and Torreys.
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I was on my skinny nordic backcountry skis again, so the 2,000 foot trip up took only an hour. I mostly followed the Cashier run back down and felt I was doing a descent job of linking parallel turns on less-than-optimum downhill gear. I passed someone else skinning up on full AT gear who smiled when he saw my skinny planks.
Next I caught a Summit Stage bus up Boreas Pass Road and then had to walk the last half mile to the winter closure and trailhead. It hadn’t snowed in quite some time and the hour trip up to Baker Tank (about 3.5 miles in) was frustrating on the re-frozen sun crust. However, the sun was out and the views of nearby peaks were wonderful.
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I took a short break at the tank, then decided to keep pushing on until noon or I reached Boreas Pass.
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The snow improved above the tank, it was still icy but had a tiny layer of powder snow on top. I reached the pass about 11:45 and thought about visiting Ken’s Cabin until I noticed smoke coming from the chimney and decided not to bother those staying at the cabin.
The clouds had been building and the expected snow looked ready to make an entrance any moment. As I started back down the old railroad grade snow began falling. The new snow made the downhill run 100 times more pleasant than the slippery climb and I was enjoying myself even as the snow was plastering to my face.
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Work paged me as I was nearing the trailhead and I ended up on a phone conversation with a coworker that was occasionally interrupted by passing snowmobiles (thankfully, the only two I saw all day). Once I reached the road I walked back down to the bus station and endured a measly 5 minute wait for the next bus. Some people look to have waited a lot longer.
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