Breckenridge – Although few skiers actually pause long enough to tap the coordinates into a GPS unit, the theory behind the naming of Summit County’s Tenmile Range is somewhat obvious.
The same might be said for the abundant alpine ski terrain falling within the 10-mile spine.
However you choose to measure it, from Officer’s Gulch to Quandary Peak, Frisco to Hoosier Pass, the numerically named snow-capped peaks of the towering Tenmile Range are evident long before you reach the town of Breckenridge nestled at their base. Most obvious among them, of course, are peaks 7 through 10, claimed by the Breckenridge Ski Resort long ago.
Their attraction has elevated the resort to elite status in terms of popularity, at times earning the area more skiers and snowboarders than any other in the nation, even as so many other aspects of the rugged range remain untapped.
“You can ski this all the way down to Peak 3, really,” said Dave Gelhaar, a longtime local and co-founder of the Breckenridge-based Fat-ypus ski company. “Just north of Peak 5 there are some nice long, mellow pitches. It’s best to come back into the area, but you can ski it all the way down to (Frisco) and come out kind of by the Peaks Trail area.”
Gelhaar and Fat-ypus Ski partner Jared Mazlish have been riding the Tenmile’s above-treeline terrain for some 20 years, they say, learning long ago to make use of the local lifts to access uncrowded off-piste slopes on some of North America’s highest peaks just outside the backcountry gates.
As if to follow their lead, the ski area has brought several of their favorite stashes inside resort boundaries in recent years, offering lift service up to the steeps of Peak 8’s Lake Chutes, controlling access to the nearby Snow White terrain and drawing up plans for two new lifts on Peak 6 in as few as two years from now.
Falling just north of Breck’s current ropeline along a slope known as “The End,” Peak 6 has become a hotbed for Summit County’s growing cadre of “sidecountry” skiers. As the Tenmile’s notoriously fickle snowpack begins to stabilize in spring, properly outfitted skiers and snowboarders willingly slog the hour or so required to reach the 12,573-foot summit and ride the expansive bowl surrounded by technical, expert chutes before the clock expires and lift access becomes available to the vacationing minions who ultimately finance resort expansions.
The trend is hardly new, although Summit County – with lift expansions mapped out in Breck and already underway at nearby Arapahoe Basin – seems particularly ripe. The result is an increased sense of urgency among sidecountry skiers who realize they will likely have to move farther out the ridges to find a similar experience.
“The idea behind (the expansion) is kind of cool, but it needs to be done right,” Maz- lish said. “Snow White, for example, is already closed for the rest of the season when it’s at its prime. The end result is that we probably get to have more fun out here with it as backcountry.”
Peak 6 hardly qualifies as Breck’s lone sidecountry stash, however, and even if the master plan is approved and comes to fruition by its 2009 target date, other areas of the Tenmile Range will remain available to those in the know.
“Fourth of July off of Peak 10 and (Peak) 9, that’s a great loop. We go up there all the time,” said Liam Doran, a local photographer who often makes use of the striking backdrop above 13,000 feet. “You skin back up the shoulder of 9 and then there are all these great little chutes down below that. If you’re feeling like you’ve got a lot of energy, we’ll rip a couple laps down in there.”
Hiking any length on skis at such high elevation can be considered a labor of love, especially when other Summit County sidecountry stashes – such as Montezuma Bowl or The Beavers outside of Arapahoe Basin – are accessible almost right off the lifts. But as Kent Hyden – a Fat-ypus pro rider who drove from Salt Lake City to join Doran, Mazlish, Gelhaar and fellow Breck local Rich Banach for a photo shoot on Peak 6 last weekend – noted, the opportunity to ski untracked winter-quality snow in mid- April makes the walk “worth it.”
“It’s a sweet hub,” Mazlish added. “Summit has the longest season anywhere. We road trip a lot to get other people’s pow, but we ski from … October to June, every year.”
Staff writer Scott Willoughby can be reached at 303-954-1993 or swilloughby@denverpost.com.
