Colorado Skiing

Our big ski trip this year was to Colorado's Summit County area. We had purchased annual ski passes last summer, at a great rate, and we were able to take about 3 weeks off to make the most of them. Our average daily cost for skiing was just over $29 each, as compared to about $90 a day (for each of us) if we bought ski passes at the resort!

Here's Anna packing up a ski bag. We each carry 2 sets of skis, telemark (free heel) and AT (fixed heel). It's so fun to alternate between the gear. Bob had cut down my foam roller to be able to fit it in the ski bag. I didn't use it as much as I thought I would, but it was nice to have.

We flew into Eagle/Vail airport... it is a luxury to be able to bypass flying into Denver (we use frequent flyer miles). We arrived at 10:30am and we planned to ski that same day, something we've never done before. We changed clothes in the car, and met our friends Taz and Mike at Beaver Creek to ski. Our passes gave us unlimited skiing at Arapahoe Basin, Keystone and Breckenridge and 10 days between Vail and Beaver Creek. Here's Taz, MIke and Anna and a view of a ski trail at Beaver Creek.


We only skied one day at Breckenridge, and it was a relatively warm day. The weather was generally warmer than last year, although we did have some snowy, cold days. Here's Anna hanging out on the deck at Breckenridge.

We skied many days at Arapahoe Basin, Keystone and Vail. We didn't carry the camera with us much though, because it's sort of a pain to pull it out with mittens on and take pictures, and we felt like our ski pictures were starting to look the same. However, here are some photos from A- Basin...

The view looking down the Montezuma lift.
(You can click to enlarge any photo)

The East Wall. The ski patrols skied the diagonal lines, before they shot of artillery to create the avalanche. This area opens for skiing once the ski patrol has blown up all the avalanches.

A view looking west, from the top of Montezuma Bowl. The far away ski area (in the middle) is Breckenridge, and the ski runs on the right side are Keystone. Great view!

After a day of telemark skiing, we treated ourselves to $5 microbrews. When you drink a beer at over 11,000 feet, you get more for your money!!

When we used to ski a lot in the Canadian Rockies, we'd bring full backcountry gear, including shovels, avalanche beacons and probes. We stopped bringing all this to CO, because the downhill areas are so good and the backcountry is a little dicey. However, we did bring our climbing skins, and spent one beautiful Sunday afternoon skiing on the north side of Vail Pass. The terrain here is pretty safe. It was really nice to have a ski day away from crowds and lifts!

Here's Bob

Here's Anna

Here's the view looking east, and down on Interstate 70