SkiBreck | Breckenridge Vacation Rental

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Breck is back!

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After a crazy busy summer, Corona ups and downs, kids learning remotely, and a shifting jobs and real estate market, we can’t even begin to explain how happy we are that BRECK IS BACK!

We took the opportunity of all of our kids and jobs being remote and spent quite a bit of time in Breckenridge this year. We hit two resort opening days (Keystone and Breckenridge) and skied 20 days straight at the beginning of the season. This allowed us to do a couple things:

  1. Learn the ins and outs of the Breckenridge reservation system. It’s busy, but not “hard;” the system is easy to use and straightforward, but it’s going to be a bust year with pent up demand and limited capacity on the mountains. If you have the ability, try to ski mid-week (Tuesday-Thursday) to get the best access. Friday – Monday you’ll need to log in to the reservation platform as soon as it opens.
  2. Test out the pool reservations system. Again… it’s busy, but to keep corona at bay they had to limit capacity as well. You can get reservations at ColumbinePool.com which opens at 9am each morning for reservations the next day.
  3. Taught our 3 year old how to ski! This was quite an accomplishment because while I am an avid skier, I don’t define myself as a “good” skier. For our other kids, we leave ski lessons to the professionals at Breck Ski & Ride School, but they have not opened lessons for little kids yet. So, we loaded the princess onto borrowed skis, took her on the bunny slopes and magic carpet, and she LOVED it. By the end of the day she was on Quicksilver and skiing down the mountain with a harness. On day 3 she skied 20 miles!
  4. We joined the Carboy Winery Club. We were literally the last customer they had before they closed indoor dining. The wine was great, and we are looking forward to our first box of wines. In fact, our Christmas guests might even have a little treat under the Christmas tree…

All in all, Breck is doing a great job keeping lines in order, masks up, and getting everyone on their way to a great day of skiing or riding. Peaks 7, 8, and 9 are mostly open, and 6 & 10 are just around the corner. The biggest difference off the mountain is the lack of indoor dining… hopefully they town gets that figured out soon so we can eat without a jacket!

Our biggest recommendations are:

  • Book early! Don’t wait for lift ticket and reservations. Get them now!
  • Be patient. In traffic, in lift lines, or on the slopes.
  • Be kind to the lifties (and each other). I understand some of us don’t like wearing masks, but the kids on lift duty don’t make that rule.
  • Slow down towards the bottom. Remember, beginners (and parents with their 3 year olds!) are struggling to stay upright after a year of quarantine. We can all enjoy this mountain together!
  • Be generous with your servers – they had a ROUGH early 2020, and the ones that are showing up for work need our support. After all, they could be sitting at home on unemployment benefits, but they are out here helping us get back.

Breckenridge is open!

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We have seen a lot of people asking “Is Breckenridge open?” recently… and the answer is an emphatic YES!

Our family got to head to Breckenridge for a few weeks and enjoy the fresh mountain air, water, and – of course – support of friends’ local businesses. While it was definitely different from past summers, it was nice to see everything open after a very quiet spring. Here is some of the fun we enjoyed:

Rode the gondola from town to Peak 8, then took the ski lift even higher. It surprises me every time how much colder it is in the middle of July by going up those few thousand feet. If you have a season ski pass, you ride the ski lifts for free!

We rented a pontoon boat from Dillon Marina and tootled around the open lake, catching plenty of wake from the dozens of power boats cruising around. Afterwards we hit up The Dam Brewery for happy hour 1/2 price appetizers.

The kids grabbed bikes and roller blades and hit the bike parks several times. Their ability to remain upright amazes us constantly.

We enjoyed some of our old favorites – The Blue Stag, The Canteen, Giampietros, and Ollies (now on the dredge). We tried some new places too… and were pleasantly surprised by how good Nueva Vallarta in Frisco was (my Texan wife has a a pretty high TexMex standard!). That same Texan wife wasn’t overly impressed with the new BBQ place on Main Street, but we gave them a shot anyway.

We met up – socially distanced, of course – with friends in our building, chatting about the season and the phenomenal snow.

The kids swam while we hot tubbed in the finally-open pool just below our balcony. The first week we were there it was closed and the water just waved at our longing kids.

Our three year old made her first walking-hike across the continental divide! She’s done it in a back pack before, but she was pretty excited to do it herself.

We tried to hit up rafting, but it was so busy we waited too late and they didn’t have any openings for us.

So… yeah, Breckenridge is open. The Town of Breckenridge obviously has some pretty strict mask mandates, but when it’s 60-70 degrees it doesn’t feel at all cumbersome. And if that what is takes for Breckenridge to open, I’m pretty okay with it.

What a ride!

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Well, if you had asked me in January what the season was going to look like, I certainly would have guessed INCREDIBLY wrong! Breckenridge was booming in January, February, and early March… and then that came to a screeching halt. Breckenridge (owned by Vail Resorts), which had been making plans for skiing well into May or even June, suddenly closed for the entire season. Personally, we had both condos fully rented for the remainder of the season including a large trip with our friends – the first in many years. Lots of plans cancelled in the blink of any eye.

Airbnb did the right thing by our mutual guests and quickly implemented a refund program for cancellations from Corona virus. It hit MANY hosts hard to lose their income literally overnight, and many of those hosts have sworn off of Airbnb. But, we think they did the right thing, got money back into the hands of our guests, and while it hurt to lose a big part of our business we’ve weathered the storm.

And now signs of life are creeping back in! Main Street will soon turn into a pedestrian mall with expanded restaurant patios. Bike rentals are open for business, rafting companies are pushing off, and fishing guides are social-distancingly (made up a word) casting their lines. We are excited to see Breck return to some normalcy, and are very excited to get back to work!