Summer Travel: Small Town // Big City

{ No.9-Small & Big: Summit County } Noah Caldwell

For east coast transplants who find themselves in Colorado, a bitter pill to swallow is the lack of large bodies of water in which to frolic throughout the summer. Boulder Creek is fine, if you’re fond of lazily bumping off of rocks on your cheap inner tube, hoping that your case of Coors (buoyant in a tube of its own) doesn’t capsize, forever lost. But it’s still just a creek. Upon arriving in Boulder, I missed the interminably blue Atlantic stretching away from the tip of Long Island, and the distant shore of upstate New York, across Lake Champlain from my childhood home in Vermont.F

But these reservations dissolved after hearing rumors of people sailing on a lake up in the mountains. It seemed a mythical thing—intrepid boatmen raising the sheets of their hobies in and out of secluded fjord-esque inlets. Like something out of a Hiyao Miyazaki film, an aquatic stage for the young protagonist’s quest to sail back to a once-forgotten homeland.

In reality, it’s Dillon Reservoir. But the mystique need not fade just because these rumors were verified by reality. Also known as Lake Dillon, the reservoir is perched at 9,000 feet above sea level, making its substantial 26 miles of coastline a mountainous rarity. (It’s not lost on this writer that the reservoir is man-made; the effect is still the same.) The Dillon Marina, on the northern bank, is the world’s highest deep-water marina, if you keep track of those sorts of things. Sailing lessons at the marina start at $40 an hour for semi-private, and tours of the lake start at a reasonable $50, in case you didn’t bring your Topsiders.

The lake itself is a delight, but more abstractly it makes the case for reevaluating Summit County through the lens of summer, not winter. The more you think about Summit as a summer destination, the more it makes sense. No creeping traffic at the Eisenhower tunnel, slowed by apocalyptic snowstorms. No lift lines. No missing work on Monday because the clouds set in and you’re stuck in Silverthorne, unable to drive your Camry on summer tires.

The lake is just one of Summit County’s aquatic delights. The Blue River—known colloquially as, simply, “The Blue”—provides some of the best fly fishing in the country. While there are many sections of The Blue, the tailwater below Lake Dillon is an angler Mecca. As mysis shrimp tumble out of the reservoir, trout form a line up to gobble them up, making for fat trout and a nationally famous fishing spot. For rougher rivers, keep heading down The Blue, past Green Mountain Reservoir, to a three-mile canyon, where the fish keep biting and the trail gets a bit more hike-y.

Speaking of hikes, guess what? Those same ranges that host the gems of Colorado’s ski world—Gore Range, Tenmile Range and, of course, the Continental Divide—feature mazes of trail systems leading to some of the highest elevations in the continental United States. The Gore Range trail, part of the federally protected Eagles Nest Wilderness, starts at the Copper Mountain exit of I-70 and manages to stay easy even over several passes on its way toward Green Mountain Reservoir. The Mirror Lake trail is our other top pick (can you tell that yours truly has a thing for mountainous lakes?) for its wildflower vistas and high chance of coming across high-terrain fauna.

Eventually, you’ll get hungry with all of this energetic reimaging of a traditionally winter-focused resort destination (just pretend for the sake of the article that you’ve done all of the aforementioned activities in one day, building up a grumbling appetite so you’re ready for some restaurant suggestions).

For a cozy breakfast, stroll into Frisco’s Butterhorn Bakery and Café, whose delectable pastries are matched by their savory staples: biscuits and gravy, burritos, and the eponymous Eggs Butterhorn, poached eggs with avocado and bacon on a croissant. Another Frisco favorite, Prost, offers up soft pretzels, sausage, strudel and, of course, central European beers with names like Houblon Chouffe and Hacker Pschorr Heffe Wiess.

My most grandiose recommendation, however, will bring you back to the amber waves of American grain—the Frisco Colorado Barbecue Challenge. This year’s challenge kicks off on Friday, June 13 and features some of the best grillers in the country vying for your taste buds. Since starting over twenty years ago, the festival has grown to cover six blocks of downtown, reaches over 30,000 people and has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for local non-profits. The food isn’t bad either.