This could be one of my favorite activities. I get the best of mountain biking...technical riding and I don't have to ride back up.
It was a little odd getting on the chair lift with nothing strapped to my feet. My ankles didn't hurt when I arrived at the top of the lift because there was no snow board dangling below me.
Starting up the lift was beautiful in the summer.
The first time I went downhill biking I thought our group was going to ride down the face of the mountain just like when skiing. Thank goodness that was not the case. You can see a little bit of one of the trails in the bottom of the picture above.
A quick glimpse of the alpine slide on the left and that same trail cutting through the picture.
Breckenridge has a gondola that runs from the town to Peak 8 but it costs $600 an hour to run so it is not in operation in the summer. There is no parking at the top of the mountain because of the construction of 2 very large lodges (1 pictured above) so everyone rides a shuttle bus to
the base of the mountain.
Just one of the streams running down the mountain. Colorado has been very luck this year with lots and lots of moisture so the hills are green and the flowers blooming strong.
This picture just to give a little scale of the trails on the mountain.
Just before the lift goes over the first rise the top of Peak 8 can be seen and the ski runs winding their way down the mountain. It looks so much different in the summer.
The view from the Peak 7 area was amazing. I took 4 pictures and stitched them together in Photoshop to create this panorama . If you click for the bigger version you can see the beetle killed trees on the mountain slopes across from Breckenridge.
On the way down...
Around every turn there were amazing views of the mountains, valleys and streams. Hopefully I can make it back one more time this year.
