Breckenridge zero

So I have a rule for all my trips, never quit on a bad day. Yesterday was a bad day. Today after spending a night in what I considered the best run hostel on the entire CDT, The Fireside Inn in Breckenridge, I needed a day off. Keith, Jim and Bobby rode on to stay at a house of another one of Jim's friends while I stayed in the hostel. I had always planned to take a day or two off here. There was a section of the CDT that I took a shortcut passed by walking the bike path. I wanted to hike that section cause the rest of this part of the CDT was gorgeous and I had heard good things about it. However, that didn't work out. That section of the trail was still snowbound and the portions that weren't had overflowing creeks.

So instead of hiking along the CDT I went up to Breckenridge resort to hike around up there. There is a gondola that takes you from the center of town up to the resort and after riding it up I swore off gondolas forever. It was a windy day and the gondola kept stopping with my rocking and swaying all over the place due to the wind and start/stop motions. Unfortunately the trail I had planned on taking back down the hill was closed so after hiking around for an hour or two to let my stomach settle I got back on the gondola and went back to town.

I ended up taking a second zero and for the first half of the day Keith and Jim called up and suggested we do a nice little 5 mile round trip hike up a forest service road. The hike was really nice there were streams, waterfalls and at the end there was an abandoned mine. When we were exploring the mine a couple of state park employees mentioned there were a few more a couple miles up the mountain. We decided to go check them out since Keith was collecting rocks for his sister.

After getting up to the mines we took a break and admired the views and played a game of throwing rocks to see who had the best aim, I lost. Keith wanted to go up to treeline which we all agreed to but I said I didn't want to go any higher than that since I hadn't brought a jacket and knew it was windy I'd get cold if we went above that.

Of course we didn't stop there and went up to the false summit. It was another great set of views and even though it was cold once we crested the ridge we were able to hide out from the wind and take a nap in the grass.