“Skinning up” kinda suggests Hannibal Lecter,
the cannibalistic gourmand invented by author Thomas Harris. But people who live near ski resorts use the phrase to describe the early-morning exercise of slapping the equivalent of carpets on their skis and slogging up a ski run to squeeze in a run or two before the chairlifts open. Longtime Summit County resident and current Breckenridge Town Councilman Jeffrey “Biff America” Bergeron talks about this classic ski-town phenomenon. Claire Martin
Q: How many people are skinning up a slope between sunrise and 8 a.m.?
A: It used to be maybe five or 10 of us, people with real jobs that don’t get a chance to ski during the day but want to get some exercise and take a run. But in the last five or six years, it’s a scene: 50 or 60 people. And they bring their dogs.
Q: Doesn’t that get a little crazy?
A: Well, there’s a code of conduct that the ski area’s promoted. When you go up, they want you to skin up in the middle of the run, so the snow-grooming machines can go up and down on either side of the run. And you should pick up after your dog. No one really does, but they should. A lot of us who skin up at 6 a.m. wear a little blinking light so you can see us. And you get out of the way of the snow machines.
Q: Fifty or 60 people! Every day?
A: Seven days a week. With the construction on Peak 8 — they’re building a 500-unit project, so there’s no parking, and construction trucks are in and out all the time — it’s been confusing. We just had a meeting about it to disseminate information. Right now, because there’s no skier drop-off at Peak 8, they’re running the employees out on buses from the town gondola to Peak 8, and they’re letting people who want to skin up use those buses as well.
Q: So the ski resort is cool with this?
A: I’m anything but a ski area apologist, but in this case, Breckenridge is really reaching out and accommodating people. There are a lot of resorts that don’t even let people skin up, even though it’s Forest Service land.
Q: How late do you go?
A: The latest I’ll start is 7:30 a.m. The lifts start at 9. I take 30 to 40 minutes to get up the mountain, take off the skins and ski down, and I’m just in time to take gondola back to town.
Q: Is it mostly ski bums and renegades who skin up?
A: No, it’s everyone! You’ll see our mayor, our town manager. I skinned up with state Senator Dan Gibbs not too long ago. The public safety officer, Dennis Kuhn? He’s the one who called the meeting about skinning. I skin up with him all the time. A lot of us are in our 50s, and you’ll see kids hiking up with their snowboards.
This article has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, due to a reporting error, it misidentified the author who created the character of cannibal Hannibal Lecter.
