Colorado ski trip, Feb 2020

As if we haven’t had enough time off work already – we decided to embrace the Winter and take off for a ski trip to Colorado!

On Wednesday we woke up at stupid o’clock to catch out 6am flight out of Vancouver. Nothing a little bit of Tim Horton’s coffee can’t fix. We met Harry and Nat at the airport, who are joining us on the trip, they are also keen skiers!

The flight to Denver was only 3 hours and we touched down just after 10am Denver time. We quickly went and got the hire car and zipped out of town to the mountains! Denver seems like a strange place, it is very flat and goes for miles. But then there are big mountains in the distance.

Colorado is home to a lot of high alpine mountains, we could already feel a bit out of breath walking around. With our Epic Pass we have access to 4 big ski hills in the area but we are just going to focus on Breckenridge, Vail & Keystone. All massive mountains! Butterflies of excitement is an understatement! Within a couple of hours driving we were out in the middle of the mountains! The whole area used to be a big mining area – at least this is what I could tell of all the old signs and buildings. Seems like something straight out of a movie. Yewwwwhawwwww (Cowboy voice)

We are staying in a little town called Silverthorne. We wandered around downtown in the snow. It was so snowy! Apparently the weekend prior to our arrival it snowed over 1 meter in 24 hours! That’s a lot of snow. What we discovered about Silverthorne is it is the “home of the outlet stores” – this is literally their tag line for this town. And it was no lie, stores galore! Very random

We then went and picked up our rental skis and headed to our Airbnb. The Airbnb is probably the nicest we have stayed in, Nat did the booking for this trip and it is definitely not the $50 per night deal Ellen and I go looking for! But awh man we may need to reconsider our price limits in future, this place was nice!

We then cooked some Mexican for dinner and bunkered down for the night. Actually, scratch that, Ellen went and had a hot tub session in our fancy bnb!

Day 2

Ski at vail day! It was around a 45min drive from our bnb so we headed off bright and early to catch first chair! And what a decision it was – Vail had 5 inches of snow overnight and the place was completely untracked! We bombed down the first few runs experiencing our first taste of real powder – fluffy and dry! It was like being on a cloud. It is quite a bit colder here than whistler gets, a fresh -10 degrees at mid mountain. Also because we were skiing during the week there was zero lines at the chairlifts! So good – beats the 20 minute waits at whistler!

Vail has so many different bowls we could drop into. Including off the back into their famous legendary backbowls! Each run was like choosing your own adventure, weaving in and out of trees or bombing straight down the clearings. The pow was so soft it slowed us down a lot so turning wasn’t always necessary to maintain control. The day went so fast, we skied around 40km for the day. Our quads were well and truely burning by the end of the day. Ellen had a nap at the bottom before we drove home before we headed back to the bnb, had another quick dinner and 1 beer and I was out like a light.

Day 3

Breckenridge day! We woke to clear blue skis and mountain views for days. This is paradise. It is also Nats birthday – what a place to celebrate!

We got to Breckenridge for first chair, Nat & Harry don’t seem to hate the early morning wake ups. If they did, that would be too bad, I would drag them out anyway! Dad always said the best part of the day is the early morning. On the first chair up we could all tell skiing today is going to be a lot different to yesterday. Beautifully groomed runs and not a lot of powder. This is what we are used to in whistler!

We tore down the runs a few times and went to all corners of the mountain for the day. I even did my first double black! Yewww thankfully it is probably the easiest double black in the country, but it still counts 🙂 Breckenridge is so big, I don’t think we did the same run twice. The skiable terrain is on 5 different mountains, named Peak 6, 7, 8, 9 & 10. Very original naming guys…. It was quite a brisk day even with the sun. Thank god for fireball whisky, that stuff warms the soul!

Ellen and I called it quits at around 2:30 and grabbed a beer at the base of the mountain. Not the worst view in the world that’s for sure.

Once Nat & Harry were finished we got changed and walked around town for the evening. It is a cool little town, feels like it is stuck in the old mining days with the wooden buildings facades. The only thing that now gives it away is the buzzing with people on holidays walking around it very colourful ski gear. If someone from the past got a glimpse of the street today they would be in for a real rude shock!

We had some yummy vegan pizza and wine for Nats birthday. Who knew pizza without cheese could be so good!?

Day 4

Everyone finally wore me down and convinced me it is a good idea not to wake up at 6am to go skiing. Instead we had a lazy morning in bed and drinking coffee admiring our view. It was another blue bird day!

We headed off at about 10am to a little town called Frisco. It is again a little mining village and sits at the base of a big mountain called Peak 1. We walked around the streets, it was very quite, I assume everyone was out skiing!

After this we went for a little drive towards Keystone resort, on the way we stopped off to look at a viewpoint. Ellen thought it would be a good idea to do some tobogganing… It wasn’t. She got stuck and then had to hike back up the hill in waste deep snow in her jeans. Quote Ellen “Why is it always meeeeeee!!!!”

Once Ellen got herself out, we headed off to Keystone to do some more skiing for the afternoon. It is a smaller mountain than Vail & Breckenridge. But still nice to check out for the day. We did a few runs, but unfortunately the snow was tracked out a little bit. I think we have been spoiled with the conditions the last 2 days because if we had a day like today in Whistler we would have been over the moon!

It was still fun, after a few hours we headed back down and home for dinner, but not until we took a detour to an ice castle! Ellen was devestated we had to pay to go in. So we just looked at it from the outside. Sorry Ellen!

Day 5

The weather gods are looking out for us! It snowed all night, and is predicted to snow all day.

We took full advantage of this and headed to Vail again for first chair. So much snow was coming down on us, and visibility was still ok. We had an unbelievable day of skiing in the snow all day, each run we did there was minimal tracks because it was snowing so hard.

Ellen & I spent the day getting more and more confident skiing through trees. The powder slows us down a lot which makes it easier to weave in and out, and duck and… hug the tree!? Ellen got too much speed and smashed straight into a tree. There you are Sporty, Ellen the tree hugger. In all seriousness though she was ok! I was worried there for a second she cracked her head on it, but she just came out with a bruise on her chest. I declared no more tree runs for the day after this!

We found our favourite hill of the day, Blue Sky Basin. So much pow pow and no lines, it was also a Sunday! Amazing. We skied another 40km or so for the day.

On the ski down to the bottom I was so tired I was finding it hard to turn and I almost ran straight into a pack of 3 year old kids. It could have been bad, like a truck vs a pack of ducklings. Splat! We headed back to the Silverthorne brewery for dinner to celebrate possibly our best day yet, and our last night in this brilliant part of the world.

Day 6

It was still snowing! It snowed all day yesterday and was still going. We decided we better make the most of our last day and headed into Breckenridge for another morning of skiing. Unfortunately the lines were a little bit longer than we were used to this week so far. It was also a public holiday in America! Ellen & I still did some great little tree runs in untracked areas. The conditions were completely different to Day 3, amazing what 1 full day of snow can change!