Difficulty: Easy to Moderate
Duration: 60-90 minutes
Distance: 1.5 miles, with options for longer hikes

For the next couple of hikes we’re going to combine a bit of history with some spectacular foliage. Starting around the second week of September we should start seeing our annual fall foliage display and Aspen Alley is an excellent location for both history and leaf peeping. These posts rely on pictures from previous years to highlight the views that can be had.

Be warned: the hike starts at the Breckenridge Sawmill Museum on Boreas Pass Road, southeast of the ice rink. The parking area is small and only fits about a dozen cars, so during September it may be necessary to park at the Ice Rink lot and walk 3/4 of a mile up to the Sawmill Museum. Parking should be easiest early in the day, but late in the day you get golden hour sunlight on the trees that is just spectacular.

The sawmill exhibit is like the Sallie Barber mine site in that it provides a nice end-to-end display showing how power was generated onsite (initially via steam and then by internal combustion engines) and then used to power the equipment that transformed logs into lumber.  The exhibit is described here with further details available here. For those wanting to see the internal plumbing that allowed combustion byproducts to heat a pressurized tank full of water, the museum includes a cutaway steam plant.

A word of caution: the Aspen Alley trail is popular with both hikers and bike riders.  Keep an ear open for riders above you and be prepared to stand to one side.

Once done at the sawmill exhibit, you can proceed up the trail on the south side of the exhibit. As with previous hikes, this one includes an optional extension. The basic Aspen Alley hike is an easy-to-moderate 1.5 mile up-and-back hike that rises 350 feet taking 60-90 minutes. Just turn around once you run out of aspens and return.

Along the way you’ll see a moderate tailing dump with a steam plant on it (see photo in map above). A bit further along there is another mine with a smaller dump featuring track, an old ore car, and a locked mine that you can look back into (photos in map).  All along the path there are views of the town and Breckenridge Ski Area.

If you choose to continue, Boreas Pass Road is just 1.25 miles from the Sawmill Museum.  The Boreas Pass Road follows the railroad route over Boreas Pass and down into Como where the Denver, South Park, and Pacific Railroad built a 6-bay roundhouse to service trains.  The road is passable to passenger vehicles and the Como Roundhouse can be visited on a few open house days each summer.

Going another quarter mile along Boreas Pass Road brings you to Rocky Point where engines would stop to provide visitors with a spectacular view of Breckenridge after crossing over Boreas Pass.  Another half-mile up the road includes more photogenic aspen scenery and views of Goose Pasture Tarn between the aspens.  For those with time and conditioning, getting to this point before turning around is highly recommended.

But for those looking to get more exercise, continuing up the road 2.5 miles takes you to Bakers Tank which was one of the narrow gauge train stops for refilling with water. This portion of the hike is long but pretty easy since it follows the railroad grade.

From Bakers Tank, you can turn around and return the way you came OR you can hike back to the Boreas Pass Trailhead via the Bakers Tank trail.  From the trailhead, just head back down the Aspen Alley trail. The full Aspen Alley to Bakers Tank loop is just shy of 8 miles and a moderately strenuous hike with nearly 1300 feet of elevation gain taking 4-5 hours.

Every leaf season is different and the latest projections are for a good display in 2025.  Happy hiking!

Preston