Today I completed skiing every run that I know of at Breckenridge. I spent a lot of time making sure that I had skied Windows 1-7, The Luge Run in the Peak 9 Chutes and Bong Valley. Here is another secret sign on the runout from The Windows.

Imperial Challenge

The Imperial Challenge is a race held at Breckenridge every year. It is kind of a skiing triathalon where participants ride a bike from town to the base of Peak 8, hike, snowshoe, ski 3,000 vertical feet to the top of Imperial Bowl and ski or snowboard down. The winning times are incredible. The winner does it in about an hour and a half (It takes me a little under 30 minutes to do the last 900 vertical feet of the entire route when I hike peak 8 alone). One of my coworkers did it in about two hours and placed in the 30s. I think a lot of the top competitiors are ironman triatheletes and professional adventure racers. These are all of the participants hiking up the T-Bar line (still about 1200' from the top of Peak 8).

Huge Jump

Another thing that we weren't allowed to do at work was jumps. As a consequence, I didn't get to work on my freestyle skills as much as I would have hoped. I started working on rails a bit, but breaking my nose kind of killed my confidence for doing an activity where I knew I was going to fall a lot. Breckenridge is renowned for its terrain parks. There are four of them ranging from the baby Eldorado park to the massive Freeway park. I'm comfortable in all of the parks except Freeway. The jumps in the Freeway park are huge. They all put you a minimum of 10' above the ground while airborne. There is one sequence of 3 jumps that have 35', 55' and 75' gaps from takeoff to landing. Today I hit the first jump in that sequence shown here. It was the largest jump that I had ever hit, but it was incredibly smooth. The landing was so well built that there was almost no perceptible impact. Small terrain park jumps are more difficult to land than this huge jump. I didn't try my luck with the two bigger jumps below. Now I need to learn some tricks.

Local's Secrets

I've been finding these cool signs on some of the secret runs at Breckenridge. Mr. Toad's Wild Ride starts about half way down Needle's Eye <><>

This run is called Needles Eye. You might ask what run? There is a little narrow chute in the trees shaped like a needle. Today I checked it off my list of runs that I have yet to ski at Breck. I had skied the thinner trees that go off to skiers left near the top, but never the needle itself. It was a pretty cool run. Very steep and tight, but good spring snow conditions.

Strangers on a Train

I just watched "Strangers on a Train", a Alfred Hitchcock movie. It was one of the best movies I have seen in a long time. Even more so than most Hitchcock movies, it was really suspenseful and very well done. I highly recommend this movie.

The Lake Chutes Conspiracy

Pretty much the only thing I wasn't allowed to do at work was hike. As a result I have been trying to ski all of the hiking runs that I have yet to ski this year. All this week I have been really wanting to ski the Lake Chutes as this is the most difficult and least skied terrain on the mountain. It seems like some power has been conspiring against me to keep me from skiing the Lake Chutes. On Sunday they were closed because it was snowing. On Monday they were closed because of poor visibility. Tuesday was a beautiful day, but they were closed because ski patrol was doing a hiring clinic for next year and didn't have the manpower to do the avalanche control in the Lake Chutes so I had to settle for other runs. On Wednesday I didn't hike out from Francie's cabin until after the hikes were closed. On Thursday I got my chance; The Lake Chutes were open. I skied a line I had never skied before called the Zero Chute. It was a bit tricky dropping in (not as bad as the picture looks. I dropped in just about where my poles are), but the snow was very nice. It was really really steep. A very cool run. Later in the day I skied Nine Lives (just beyond the rock band in the center of the picture). Also a lot of fun. I'm building up the confidence to ski this really steep stuff. The spring conditions make it relatively easy to ski once the fear is overcome.

We hiked out on Wednesday morning. I was wearing summer hiking clothes beacuse it was so warm. Hiking on snowshoes is really easy. I had never done it before, but it is just like regular hiking, although we didn't really encounter any deep snow.

Hiking up to Francie's Cabin

The trail started at the base of Peak 9 (Beaver Run) and it was about 4 miles (1,600' of vert) to the cabin. The cabin is located just South of Peak 10. We all hiked on snowshoes except Dan who skinned up on telemark skis. It was a pretty easy hike on a really nice afternoon.

Hut Trip

Ever since I have been here, everyone has told me that I have to do a Hut trip. At first I didn't know what this was, but last night I found out. There are a series of huts located throughout the Colorado backcountry. Last night I spent the night at Francie's Cabin with four of my friends. It was an awesome experience. The best way to describe it is luxury backpacking. The huts are pretty isolated (4 mile hike to Francie's), but are fully stocked with firewood, cooking utensils, solar powered lights etc. Francie's even had a sauna. The cabin sleeps 20 so there were other people there besides our group. It was a lot of fun. It would be cool to stay at one of these cabins for a few nights and use it as a base for backcountry skiing or hiking in the summer. Other info http://www.summithuts.org/

Today I did some more hiking. I wanted to ski the Lake Chutes , but they were still closed so I skied the Twin Chutes <><> (pictured) on Peak 9 and Whale's Tail <><> again. Today the weather was great, but the snow was pretty wind affected and difficult to ski in.

100th Day of skiing/riding

Today was my 100th day of skiing/riding this season. I think this easily surpasses the total number of days I had skied in my life prior to this season. It was a good day of skiing as well. I did two hikes up Peak 8 and skied Imperial Bowl <><> and Whale's Tail <><>. Yesterday the hikes were closed so there was about 8 in of untracked powder on the top part of the mountain today. I was the very first member of the public to summit Peak 8 this morning. It was a great run down Imperial Bowl. Probably the longest completely untracked run I have had at Breck this year. Whale's Tail was good as well, but visibility was pretty bad in the afternoon. Overall a pretty good powder day for April. (Pictured is the run down Whale's Tail)

Yellow jackets riding the E-Chair

Up until this year there had been a competition at Breck called the E-Chair Challenge. The idea is that you try to ski the terrain under the E-Chair as many times as possible during the day. The runs are all double black bump runs which can be pretty steep. This year the E-Chair challenge was cancelled due to insurance reasons (ie too many people got hurt in the past). Today at work, instead of doing what we were supposed to do, myself and three of my coworkers decided to do a mini E-Chair challenge for much of the day. It was my last day of work, so I wanted to go out with a bang. There was a few inches of new snow (not the feet that was predicted) and it snowed through most of the morning. The skiing was great. The runs off the E-Chair have some cool names. The Windows, Tom's Mom, Tom's Baby, Inferno, Satan's, Hades, Purgatory, Devils Crotch, E-Liftline, Mineshaft and The Doors. Our first few runs were all untracked. For most of the morning, probably at least half of the tracks were ours. We ended up skiing 20 runs under the E-Chair today. The lifties hated us because we came by so many times in uniform (they don't get to ski much). We never got caught by our boss, although I doubt he would have cared. It was a fun day and a good way to end my mountain safety career. Best of all, after a day of hard skiing, I've got my skiing confidence back. The picture is of the E-Chair terrain. I patched it together from a bunch of photos I took.