Great weekend of riding in Breck.

Johanna and I just spent the weekend hanging out with friends and riding in Breckenridge.  We shot out of town a little early on Friday to beat the traffic and did a couple of great rides on Saturday and Sunday.  Before this we had only been to Breckenridge twice so we were still on our first handfull of rides in the area. My favorite thing about the trails is how much it reminds me of Virginia riding.  Don't get me wrong, the chunky, dusty front range riding is awesome but we came up riding the loamy, rooty, swoopy trails of central Virginia.  Breckenridge is much like VA but about 7,000ft higher.

The first day Johanna really wanted to try and get up to the Continental Divide.  Her first (ridiculous) ride plan involved climbing up to 14,000ft...which just wasn't going to happen.  Our friend Rebecca wisely suggested an alternative that would get us just under 12,000ft at Georgia Pass.  We started on Tiger Run Road in Breckenridge and did a 16 mile out and back.  8 miles up, 8 miles down... Sort of. The first half of the climb was really just some nice rolling terrain to soften you up for the real gut kicker.  The next two miles were brutal basically making up the bulk of the 2,000ft of climbing. The last 2 miles of climbing we fairly chill gradually bringing us up to Georgia Pass.

Day 2 was a dog-friendly loop that topped out at about 11,000ft with much less climbing all around. I was feeling surprisingly good until the last road climb but after that it was all perma-grin downhill.

If you care about the details you can see the Strava info for the Georgia Pass and Burro/Spruce Rides.