Jay Silveira
New member
Saturday was the last day of the conference, and since there was a special afternoon session that started at 2:30 P.M., it meant only 2.5 hours to ski. Jon was heading out for sure, and although I was catching lunch with a few colleagues, I gave him a radio so we could possibly meet up if I got back in time. Well, I didn’t get back until around 1:00 P.M., and figured I wasn’t going to head out and pay money just to ski for an hour or so. I called Jon on the radio, checked in with him, and found out that he was on Peak 10, the far skier’s right of the resort. He didn’t give any glowing reviews about the terrain or conditions, so I was pretty sure I would stay in. I told him that I’d contact him on the offhand chance that I headed out, and signed off. <BR> <BR>Then, I sat in my room for a few minutes deciding what to do. Thus came the session I’ve attended so many times when time is short for turns. To ski or not to ski? I quickly looked through the meeting schedule to make my final decision; if the first few talks of the afternoon session weren’t interesting, I was going to go out. Even if the conditions sucked, I could try to get a workout. It’s hard to turn that option down when the slopes are literally outside your door. Either Jon or I had to be at the session to time the presentations, but Jon said he would cover if I wanted to get in some turns. The session chair had also just told me to skip the session if I wanted to ski, especially if there weren’t any interesting topics. I looked at the names and titles of the 1st few talks, and my decision was made… off to the slopes. I let Jon know via radio and I was out the door. <BR> <BR>In order to get over to Peak 10, I took the QuickSilver Super6 Chair. This was yet another interesting lift that Breckenridge possessed. After finding my way to the gate that let me in, I noticed that this lift did not load just 1 chair at a time, but in fact, the incoming chairs split onto two different tracks and loaded in a staggered pattern. I’d ridden six pack lifts before, but nothing like this. It had to be the epitome of chair lift capacity. A quick trip brought me to the flanks of Peak 10, where I took the Falcon SuperChair to the summit (Breckenridge has all kinds of super, high speed chairs). <BR> <BR>I raised Jon on the radio, and he said he said he had worked his way back to the chair above the resort (Beaver Run SuperChair). He was taking one more run before he headed in, so it looked like I was on my own. I decided to head down some of the north facing terrain off Peak 10, in hopes that it would provide some nice snow. I chose the trail called Spitfire, and all I got was horrible, icy, bumps. It definitely made me reconsider my decision to come out, but I was here so I was going to make the best of it. I decided that the woods might have softer snow, so I cut left into the trees and started exploring. The snow was generally crappy, just a couple inches of dust on crust, except for one spot. As I roamed around in the woods, I eventually came upon a small bump of terrain. On top of this bump was a homemade sign that simply read “Mary’s Nipple”. I passed by the sign, and on the back side of the bump, I actually got about 100 vertical feet of soft snow. Soon I came out onto a blue trail “Upper Lehman” and decided to cruise my way back to the base. The cruising terrain was really icy, and without sharp edges, I had to try to pick my around the slick stuff and find snow. This effort was without much luck, and I scraped my way down to the base of the mountain. <BR> <BR>I decided that under the conditions, my best bet would be to find some mellow terrain that wasn’t scraped down to the bone, and enjoy some cruising and carving. I didn’t have time to head over to Peak 8 where we’d found the best snow the previous day, so Peak 9 would have to do. I took a first run down some trails to the skier’s right, but they were horribly icy until I approached the green slopes near the bottom. Since the right side didn’t work, I decided to try the left. I hit a blue trail called Volunteer, and although things were still quite firm, I found overall better snow. I wandered my way below that into some remote blue/green terrain and found carveable snow. That combination of slopes was good enough that I repeated it before heading back in to catch the rest of the meeting. <BR> <BR>My impression from a few days at Breckenridge is that it’s a high-capacity place that might get crowded during the high season. It has a pretty posh atmosphere in general (close parking costs money, lots of high speed lifts and upscale lodging) but there is some pretty raw terrain out near Peaks 7 & 8. Loveland (Basin) was much more basic, and seemed to have a lot of steep terrain (even though I didn’t get to visit much of it). Overall, even though the conditions in Colorado were pretty crummy, it was fun to experience the Summit County area. I had never skied in Colorado, and it has its own unique vistas unlike anywhere else. There appear to be a lot of backcountry opportunities, but of course many of them look very sketchy in unstable snow conditions. But, as long as one plays it relatively safe, you could still get great backcountry in the area (as Matt has reported to SkiVT-L time and time again). Matt did tell me that a guy died a few weeks ago after the big storm, in treed terrain that seemed relatively safe, so anything can happen. Hopefully I’ll get out to visit Matt again at some point with better snow; I’d love to hit some of the steep stuff at A-Basin and Loveland with powder. <BR> <BR>J.Spin