Living Colorado Springs » Breckenridge

Summer Fun in Breckenridge

Rick Van Wieren — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 22:22:26 +0000

We took a mid-week day off yesterday, and my wife and I headed up to Breckenridge for a little R&R. Living in Colorado Springs has some great advantages, and one of them is the ability to go to some really nice places in a pretty short amount of time.

Breckenridge is about a 2 hour drive, a little more with traffic or weather issues. This time of year it is very pleasant, it was not yet 70 degrees when arrived. We had a nice lunch next to the river (we have a little patio cafe we like at the south end of Main St), and did a lot of strolling along the Blue River, a little shopping, and too much eating. We rode the free gondola up from town to Peak 8 (where the summer activity stuff is), and also took a short drive up Boreas Pass Road for a nice overlook. Although it did rain as we were finishing our desert, the drive home over Hoosier Pass was uneventful, and the storm had quit by the time we got to South Park.

This slide show is not all from our trip yesterday, but gives you some idea of why we like the mountains in the summer so much!

Colorado Springs Foreclosures Are Real

Rick Van Wieren — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 15:34:00 +0000

Colorado Springs foreclosure and distressed properties are not as prevalent as in some areas of the country, but we have our share. Last month the bank owned and distressed properties made up 34.5% of our sales, which is why prices appear to be down so far. When digging behind the numbers, I discovered something interesting (at least to me!). Homes with more than 2500 finished square feet were only 14.5% of the “distressed” sales, and when looking for more than 3000 finished square feet, it was only 9.3% of the mix. What that means to me is that our averages are being drawn down a lot by homes that are both distressed and on the smaller side. Larger homes are not as big a part of either the distressed “pool”, or of the kinds of homes being sought by investors or bargain hunters. Homes that have larger areas for living space are much more likely to be a normal sale, and likely to be owner occupied after sale.

The El Paso County Trustee’s office does a nice graph of foreclosure trends for Colorado Springs, here is the link to the current report: El Paso County Foreclosure Report

We got a dusting of snow overnight, but it is expected to pick up a bit during the day, with another couple of inches supposedly coming. Given how cold it is (it was 18 degrees this morning), it is very light and more “broom” type than shovel type snow.

Today’s photo was taken from Highway 9 south of Hoosier Pass in June. I thought of it as ski season is finally getting underway, with over 30 inches of base at many resorts. I like it closer to 40 myself, as the rocks are still showing some at 30, but with it being all nice and fresh, I am getting the itch to go! Vail reportedly got 24 inches this week, there should be some nice stashes of powder for while now. I love the web cams they have at many resorts, here is Copper Mountain’s.

Rick Van Wieren — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:33:00 +0000

Official July statistics for Colorado Springs real estate sales won’t be out until after the 4th of July holiday, but preliminary figures show that while our sales continue to be anemic, some good news has started with prices and supply. Prices have been rebounding since December, and both the average and the mean price have increased to $256,824 and $222,000 respectively. The percentage of distressed units has dropped sharply, to 17.65%, from a high of 26% in February. It remains to be seen whether this is a trend or a blip, but I have felt for a while now that the percentage of distressed units has been drag on prices. The inventory of unsold homes has dropped almost 4% since last June.

We have some new clouds on the economic horizon, with Hewlett Packard announcing they will be shifting employees from some Colorado Springs operations to New Mexico starting next year, and to Ft Collins. The Fort Collins folks may take the transfers, as there are some great lifestyle issues to be had in Ft Collins, but the New Mexico transfers will not be as popular. We’ll see how it shakes out. By then we should be seeing more returning troops to Ft Carson from Iraq.

Today’s photo is the Blue River from downtown Breckenridge along the river walk. Today will be the hottest day of the year so far, around 90, and the I always think of the cool mountain air and ice cold waters of the mountains on days like this.

Rick Van Wieren — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:20:00 +0000

Coming back to Colorado Springs from several days in Breckenridge is probably one of the only times I get mixed feelings about coming home. While it has been in the mid 80′s in the Springs all week, it was just around 70 every day up in the mountains. There is still snow on the peaks. The place we stayed, Tannenbaum, is right on the Blue River, just on the south side of town, so the rushing river and its special sound were our constant companions. It was nice, especially for being only 2 hours from home. We really enjoyed the family reunion we had up there.

We usually book our lodging with Ski Country Resorts. They represent lots of different properties, and also rent bikes. Some of our favorite activities include hiking, shopping on Main Street in Breck, taking the chair lift at Copper Mountain and hiking down the mountain, walking along the Blue River, horseback riding, biking, and of course, eating! At night we usually do puzzles, play games, or watch a movie.

The top photo is the Blue River just as it enters the town, and the bottom one are the mountains on the south side of Hoosier Pass.

Rick Van Wieren — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 21:20:00 +0000

We are getting ready to have a family reunion of sorts up in Breckenridge this week. Our California relatives that are coming out are suffering some amazingly hot weather, in the hundreds, and are looking forward to some days where it might not even hit 70, although it will be sunny. The temperatures are so much cooler at 10,000 feet than they are even at 7,000, it is really a nice summer break when hot weather hits. We plan to take full advantage of the hiking and biking trails in particular, plus some general R&R.

Today’s photo is from a few years back, taken at Crater Lake in the Maroon Bells, near Aspen.

Rick Van Wieren — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 14:56:00 +0000

While I was skiing yesterday, the Federal Reserve dropped interest rates again. This sure can’t hurt. I’d like to think that we are finally where we need to be on such things, but I kind of doubt it. What would help OUR industry is a stable period of mortgage rates in the mid 5′s, but they never ask me

The snow was great at Breckenridge. Spring break is starting across the country, and it was busy, with people from about everywhere you can think of. Here in Colorado Springs, spring breaks are staggered a bit, and while CSU is out this week, D20 and Pikes Peak Community College have theirs next week. There was almost 2 feet of new snow in the last week, including 5 inches the night before, so it was great. I really needed the break, I think I had not had a real day off in 2 or 3 weeks. The season only has 1 month left, and this is often my favorite month to ski. We get the most snow in March and April usually, and the temperatures are more comfortable, which makes it twice as good. Spring skiing in the sunshine is a beautiful thing! This week the Colorado legislature decided to make skiing and snowboarding the official sports of the state of Colorado (as if they weren’t already without them talking about it), so what better excuse to go could I have?

The photo above was taken last year at Copper Mountain when my brother (on the right) and his family came out for ski vacation.

Rick Van Wieren — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 16:06:00 +0000

Yesterday was a ski day for me in Breckenridge. I thought I would share a few things that are peculiar to living here that came from the day.

1. The weather. I left the Springs under sunny skies and mid 30′s. It was still sunny when I got to South Park (yes, it is a real place along Highway 24, west of the Springs), but it was -7! The temperature fluctuated dramatically along the whole route. It was 18 degrees at the top of Wilkerson Pass (where the top photo was taken), and -7 just 5 minutes later! Once I crossed Hoosier Pass it was snowing off and on the rest of the day, and very cold and windy. I left Breck on the early side, and it was still mid 30′s and sunny when I got home to the Springs. Lesson? The weather is hardly ever the same in the mountains as it is in the Springs, and always dress for the coldest scenario when skiing, especially at Breckenridge.

2. The Drive. It was 2 hours and 15 minutes, and 115 miles, both coming and going. Highway 24 always has some slow traffic situations (it is a 2 lane state highway), but it hardly ever stops like I70 can. I saw elk just west of Hartsel, and a large herd of antelope right along the road just east of there. The buffalo herds in South Park were also very close to the road, and it made for a very scenic drive.

3. The Skiing. They had about 4 inches of fresh powder, and conditions were excellent, except for how cold and windy it was . They were actually stopping the lift periodically on Peak 7 because the blowing snow made it impossible for the upper lift operators to see the chairs coming in. There were virtually no lines except for right after lunch break. The new gondola from the village up to peak 8 is very nice, although the new parking setup is a bit sketchy (they have eliminated a lot of the free parking they used to have, and charge $5 to park in the old free lots).

4. The International Snow Sculpture Competition. This was a little surprise, first that it was going on, and secondly how interesting the sculptures are. They have people from all over the world who come and create ice sculptures, and they are very ornate. I have included a few photos here.

Rick Van Wieren — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 14:53:00 +0000

We just returned from our annual “pre back to school” retreat in Breckenridge. It was a great break from the heat, highs in the 70′s up there while it was almost 90 here in Colorado Springs. The 2 hour drive is really so worth it, it is such a great getaway. We usually book our lodging with Ski Country (http://www.skicountry.com/), they usually have a pretty good selection of rooms.

We took advantage of the Breckenridge Music Festival held every summer at the Riverwalk Center in Breck, and really enjoyed the symphony concert. We also had a surprisingly good meal at the The Dredge Restaurant, don’t know why we had never tried it before. We always enjoy riding the chair lifts up and hiking down, and did that at both Copper Mountain and Breck. We were a little disappointed to see that Copper had done away with their free chair lift rides, it was $10 for the day, although my season pass from this past season got one of them free. Breck is $5 per ride. We skipped some of our usual favorites, like canoeing at Frisco Marina on Lake Dillon, doing the bike path from Breck to Frisco and over to Dillon, etc, but we still had a great time.

We missed the first sermon by our new pastor, Brady Boyd at New Life by being gone, but heard it went well, and we’ll get more chances over the next couple of weeks. They have been good enough to post a special page for him to help people get aquainted, Click here to see New Life’s Page on Brady Boyd, as well as hear some of his sermons.

The rain and hail yesterday was a wonderful cool down, I have to admit I am looking forward to more fallish weather soon!

Breckenridge Is Our Home Away From Home

Rick Van Wieren — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 23:55:00 +0000

Everywhere I’ve lived there has been a special getaway spot for us that we go to recharge our batteries. In California it was Monterey, in Michigan it was the beach, but here, it is Breckenridge (www.gobreck.com).

We decided to celebrate the end of the school year for Holly with a last minute trip, since it is only 2 hours or so from home. Now “mud season” (end of ski season to the beginning of true summer in the mountains) is not the very best time to go. The weather tends to be a little cool and wet, and there are lots of restaurants and shops that close for a month or 2 during this time. Still, we were not sorry we went.
Due to all the snow this year, the Blue River ran very full, and we enjoyed a nice time along the river when we weren’t browsing shops and galleries. We saw lots of antelope on the way (we took Hwy 24 through South Park), and a fox with a bird in it’s mouth ran right in front of our car, across the road practically in the downtown of Breckenridge! We dodged the rain some (it came and went, mixed with some sunshine) and really had a nice time.