RT Length: 3.39 miles
Elevation Gain: 1575’
I was meeting some ladies in Breckenridge for a weekend getaway, and to take them up their first 14er. Boreas Pass was along the way, so I decided to make a quick stop to summit Boreas Mountain. I drove up Boreas Pass, and parked at about 11500’. Boreas Pass road is a 2WD dirt road, and easy to navigate.
I started by heading east, up the slope to the ridge.
Here’s the overall route I took, staying just to the right of the willows.
And some step-by-step pictures of the route to the ridge. There was some talus to deal with, but this entire hike is class 2.
Once on the ridge, I travelled to this point
Now it was a ridge hike on loose rock, heading south. There were game trails to follow, which made route finding easy.
I continued following the ridge south. This part is choose your own adventure as well, as long as you keep heading south you’ll eventually see the summit (currently hidden). There were cairns here, so I followed the cairns
The true summit was difficult to ascertain, as many points looked like the highpoint. When I used my altimeter, the furthest point south was the highpoint, with a wind break at the top (and a summit register).
I summited Boreas Mountain at 1:50pm
Boreas Mountain:
I took the same route to descend as I did to ascend, and re-traced my steps
Then I headed back down the slope, once again using the willows as my guide, this time keeping them to the right of me.
There’s a cairn at the base of the slope that I aimed for (circled in red)
I made it back to the trailhead at 2:45pm, making this a 3.39 mile hike with 1575’ of elevation gain in 2 hours.
On to the next trailhead!
Wild Wanderer 