The view from near the top of Cinch lift, Beaver Creek
Every season for the last several, I've had a goal of skiing two new resorts/areas/mountains... and I've done it most of the last few seasons. Since I'm up to 41 resorts, I wasn't sure I'd get new ones this season, but a couple of my friends wanted to do a Colorado trip. And we settled on going to Beaver Creek, which I've never been to... so one new place this season.
(And I should get another at the NE Gathering...)We stayed in Avon, and wound up skiing Wednesday and Friday at BC, and Thursday at Vail (which was a bluebird powder day!)...The complex we stayed in (Beaver Creek West condos) had convenient shuttle service to the Avon town gondola, or to Vail, which made it easy. We had a great time, as usual... a variety of weather, terrain, and snow conditions, and about 75K vertical feet made for a great trip!
Arrival Day (Tuesday)
I'd never been to Beaver Creek or Avon before, so we took a walk around town and went up to the resort village to check it out.
This mural was from the last time I was at Vail, where we saw some of the festivities and where they held the medal ceremonies for the events held at BC.
Entry into the village... the BC village is all pretty upscale, as you might expect if you know how Vail positions the resort
After a travel day we went to bed early, ready for a grey/snowy day predicted for the next day.
Ski Day 1 (Wednesday)
We skied Beaver Creek on day 1, and explored around the mountain, since none of us had been there before. It was a grey day, and started snowing around lunch time, sometimes very hard and a bit of a whiteout on the upper lifts in the afternoon. We spent most of our time on Strawberry Park, Arrow Bahn, and Bachelor Gulch lifts, which are the lower ones and kept us out of some of the weather. The snow started to pile up a bit in the afternoon, softening the very hard groomers a bit. And we found some easy bumps and soft stuff off Elkhorn lift for one run (it's a very long slow lift, so we didn't return). All in all we skied 23K and it was a good first day.
Lift line just at lift opening at 9:00... and one of the longer lines we hit actually
Eric on a snowy early run
Sanjay in Bachelor Gulch area
Near the Arrow Bahn base area with some clearing conditions
Me, Sanjay, Eric
Sanjay with a nice view
The snow really started to pick up around noon... as we made our way with poor timing more to the upper mountain.
McCoy Peak Lodge in the snow
Heading into the whiteout on Centennial lift
After feeling our way down from Centennial area, we headed back to some of the lower lifts, and even skied the little used Elkhorn lift. It's old and slow and services mainly residential areas, but the snow was nice, and we skied some nice moderate bumps.
Elkhorn lift
Ski Day 2 (Thursday)
We woke up Thursday having made reservations on the condo complex shuttle to head over to Vail. They were reporting 7" overnight and the sun was mostly out - nearly a bluebird powder day! And it was deeper in places, making for really nice conditions in the morning.
Sanjay and I had travelled to Vail in 2015 on my first trip out west, but Eric hadn't ever been. So we wanted to see it again and give him a tour. @MattSmith came out with us too, and being local knows the place well. We wound up really doing a good 1 day tour, with runs off Eagle Bahn, Avanti, Northwoods, Sourdough, and Wildwood. (For Vail regulars, that's 19, 2, 11, 14, and 3). We also hit Game Creek Bowl, Sundown Bowl, Sunup Bowl, China Bowl, and Blue Sky Basin. Lines were generally short, not more than a minute or two, so a great day for Vail.
Early runs on some lightly tracked fun off Avanti lift
Eric testing a few inches of pow on the groomer
After a few runs, we headed into Game Creek bowl via Faro/Ouzo. The snow was deeper and really nice.
Eric again in pow
And watching Matt and Sanjay
Sun and shady groomer in Game Creek
After Game Creek, Matt convinced us to ski Ricky's Ridge in Sundown Bowl... the snow was shin deep in places, and things were bumped up but not crazily. It was a bit of challenge for us east coast intermediates, but everyone skied it well I think.
Matt here pointing out to us where we're headed
The view of Sundown Bowl down Ricky's Ridge ... the vastness of the back bowls is always impressive. Note the little dots in the lower center, that are other skiers.
After that we hopped over to Sunup bowl... this is The Slot, which can get crowded as one of the few blue runs, and groomed runs, in the bowls
Looking back up The Slot
We skied down Sourdough area to get over to Two Elks, then we ate at lunch at Two Elks and rested for a while (Ricky's Ridge was tiring
). Then we headed into China Bowl.China Bowl in the sun, with Blue Sky Basin in the background
After China Bowl, we headed over to Blue Sky Basin, and skied Big Rock Park and Grand Review a couple of times. At which point we were about done and started to head back to Lionshead.
View from Blue Sky looking back at Siberia Bowl, Pete's Express lift bottom is the grey building
Grand Review run
Looking back up Grand Review
@MattSmith and me on the lift
Ski Day 3 (Friday)
Friday we were skiing Beaver Creek again, and mostly wanted to get to the areas we didn't get to before. That included Centennial, Rose Bowl, Red Buffalo, Cinch, Larkspur, and McCoy Park. We did a lot of nice groomer runs, some bumps, and some choppy stuff all morning off of Cinch, Rose Bowl, and Red Buffalo. We stopped for lunch at Spruce Saddle, then headed over to ski Larkspur and McCoy Park. McCoy is new this year, and is low angle but wide open and was fun to meander through a couple of times among the tree and brush and little jumps and bumps. Later Jess (who is local and some of you might have met in Taos) came out for a few runs to end the day. It was a great close to the skiing, and I was definitely worn out by the end of the day after another 24K feet.
All three days, I skied my new-to-me Stockli SR95s. They were the wrong ski for some of the hardpack, and took some getting used to. But were great in the more variable stuff and deeper snow. They did have me wishing I had my narrower skis on the hard groomer runs.
SkiTalk sticker shot on the Stockli's in the morning
Rising sun
View from the top
Sanjay and Eric and a view
A view from Cinch
Later in the day we did a little après at the Ritz, to take in the "scene"... they play music, there's a lot of drinks, and a lot of interesting people watching.
Jess, Sanjay, and me
After a drink, we decided to go for a couple more runs to end the day and get back to where we needed to be to leave. And I promptly dropped a glove off the lift! Jess volunteered to go get it back, as she thought she knew how to get to where it was... while Sanjay and I skied back down to where we were leaving (and Sanjay took another run while I waited).
And she got it! Saved the day!
Jess showing up with my dropped glove
Lift TIckets
We bought Vail Epic Day passes for 3 days back in November for a total price of $265, or $88.33/day for the 3 days. Not a bad deal - but you have to buy early. Window prices were like $229/day.
Lodging
We stayed at Beaver Creek West condos in Avon, mainly because staying up at Beaver Creek resort itself was expensive. They had a very convenient shuttle to the town gondola, which took you up to the lower BC lifts. The shuttle to Vail was also nice to have, and the complex had a couple of hottubs, but we didn't make use of them. Overall it seemed like a good place to stay. And staying in Avon gives you more close by restaurant opportunities for dinner.
Food
On-mountain food was what you'd expect... decent but expensive. For dinners we tried a few places... Agave was decent Mexican, but I think the margaritas were folks favorite. Southside Benderz was a cool bar with good specials for après/happy hour - we actually went there twice. I can recommend the burgers and the milkshakes. We also had dinner from Thai Kitchen in Minturn, which was really good.
On the way back to Denver, we stopped in Frisco for a late breakfast, and hit Butterhorn. I would highly recommend this place for breakfast or brunch, and for the fruit filled croissants, which were terrific.
The Butterhorn in Frisco was a fantastic breakfast/brunch spot
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