Boreas Pass Is At Peak Colors

I drove up to Boreas Pass Road from Denver this past Monday afternoon to check out the Aspens, and the colors were spectacular. I always like to drive that particular gravel road in the fall, not only because of its many Aspens, but also because there are plenty of places to pull over, get out of your car, and take photographs. And on weekdays, there may be other cars up there, but not too many, and everyone politely pulls over to let the oncoming vehicles pass, if necessary. Boreas Pass started out as a railroad pass between Denver and Leadville during the Colorado Gold Rush. It is now open to cars, bikes, and hikers spring, summer, and fall, and to cross-country skiers during the winter.

Boreas Pass Road starts just south of Breckenridge, Colorado. For the first few miles, it is a paved two-lane highway lined with homes, small subdivisions, and resorts. Eventually the pavement ends, there is a parking lot for hikers and cross-country skiers, and then it heads up to the top of the pass as a gravel road, with views of the Blue River Valley below, as seen in the photograph on the right. You can also see the ski runs at the Breckenridge Ski Resort on the other side of the valley. Years ago, my then wife Lisa and I would drive up there and do some cross-country skiing in the winter. As I recall, it was not a very steep grade for the first few miles, and by the time you got to the steeper part of the road, you were ready to turn around anyway.

The best part of driving Boreas Pass Road in the fall or doing some cross-country skiing in the winter is that you can turn around and quickly head back to Breckenridge, walk the quaint 19th Century business district. and have a beer at any number of outdoor patios. And these days, Breckenridge is pretty lively any time of year. The only problem is that driving up to the mountains from Denver on the weekend takes forever, especially on Friday afternoons. People blame this on the huge increase in Denver's population in recent years, but I distinctly remember it was just this bad years ago, too. Lisa and I used to spend a three-day weekend every October at a large condo complex called Wildernest in nearby Silverthorne. We would drive up Friday afternoon, and it would take forever to get there. We would stay through Sunday night and drive back to our jobs Monday morning, avoiding the drive home Sunday afternoon, which is bad now and was also bad back then, too. But still worth it to see those fall colors, I might add.