Finally

An enthusiastic "Welcome Back Winter" from all of us on fresh snow this morning!

"Loving it!" declare my happy partners looking back at me when I called out time to
"turnaround and head back" high up on Boreas Pass.

The second half of October and first half of November combined to represent the "hottest & driest" month of Fall in the history of Breckenridge (and all of Colorado too). We have all been going batty waiting for snow to come back to our trails. Well, it FINALLY happened yesterday as winter weather returned to the Colorado mountains and gave us a fresh layer to skijor up/down Boreas Pass this morning.

Here we go.... wheeee!

Laying fresh tracks up Boreas Pass. Max & Zorro were having fun hugging the right shoulder
even though we had the whole wide trail to ourselves. I happily got behind to get a tow up the
right shoulder of Boreas :)

To be honest, there was not a lot of new snow on Boreas - just enough to gently glide over the underlying dirt road. Max & Zorro are very smart and understand sketchy conditions as they will never break into a sprint over 14 MPH if the conditions are not good; instead, they will settle into a gentle 8-12 MPH trot. They understand that going faster on these conditions will only break the human (and then all the fun ends), so they choose a safe pace without any instruction from me!

Gently gliding by Bakers Tank on Boreas Pass. When the conditions are good, Max & Zorro will
automatically kick into "high gear" on this open stretch of trail and cruise at over 20 MPH. But,
sketchy conditions and they smartly settled into a gentle trot instead. Phew :)

You usually get a nice view of Breckenridge Ski Resort across the valley from Boreas. Here is today's "ski resort view shot":

Trotting along as the ski runs of Breckenridge come into view on the mountains across the valley.

Not the best of conditions; but SNOW!!! We were going batty with no snow the last month, so we will take it: 7.7 miles traveled with 600 feet of elevation climbed.

2016/2017 Season to Date: 10 days on the trails covering 65.7 miles with 6550 feet of elevation climbed.

Good News: we have some trail options for tomorrow (and beyond) with more snow than we found on Boreas this morning. Stay tuned for some real fun in the upcoming days....