Winter arrives early at 9,600 feet, and it does not ask. Summit Snow Service works the dark hours, when the streetlights along Boreas Pass Road are still ringed in falling flake and the only sound is a blade meeting packed white. Plowing, hand-shoveling the walks and the steps, sanding the slick pitch where a driveway tips down toward the Blue River — all of it finished so a Breckenridge morning begins with a clear run to the highway instead of a shovel. Roofs and decks get their load taken down before it hardens into ice. There is a particular satisfaction in a driveway squared off at its edges at five in the morning, steam coming off the truck, the mountain going pink above Peak 9.