Day 1: To start our trip, Jess and I indulged at the Alaska Airport Lounge before catching our flight to Denver. From there we were lucky that the rental car company gave us a Hyundai Palisade from the bigger row when there were no vehicles available in our "row." It is a plush ride! Then it is a 1:30 hour drive west to the area of Dillon/Silverthore/Frisco on the Dillon Reservoir. This area sits at 9100' and I-70 goes through a mountain tunnel to get to it. It is a beautiful area and situated in the middle of some great ski resorts that are part of the Epic Pass (and also other ski areas, too). Noting that the temperature was 5 degrees Fahrenheit for the opening, we opted to sleep in and go up a little later in the day. Colorado, like much of the Rockies and the West hasn't had much snow this year. The resorts are open but with limited lifts and terrain. This was not totally unexpected, because this is early in the ski season, but most areas about about 15-20% of their terrain open right now as opposed to about 70% last winter. Sigh. But this means that we can just have fun, check out each ski area, tour what is open, and still have time left to explore the towns and not stress about missing optimal skiing.
Day 2: We figured out how to catch a shuttle from a skier lot outside of town to the BreckConnect Gondola that goes from another parking area in town up to Peak 7 and Peak 8 base areas. We skied Peak 8 over to Peak 9, back to Peak 8, spent a good amount of time on Peak 7, and then did a few more runs on Peak 8 before calling it a day. It was all groomers. They had some snow-making machines going, it was crowded at Peak 9, maybe from the resorts at its base, but no lift lines on Peak 7. There was a lot of patches of ice under the snow and so it felt like one always had to be vigilant. Also there are many novices on the mountain and there wasn't a lot of terrain for more advanced skiers to go spread out on, so that was sort of a hot mess. We didn't meet many locals on the chairs, mostly it was families on ski trips from all over the US (east coast, south, Midwest, Florida, etc.). It was a beautiful, sunny day and the views were great. I'm sure it would be a very fun mountain with more alpine terrain open. We stopped at Robbie's Tavern (Peak 8 base) for a late lunch / apres ski at 3:00. It was great. However, when we were ready to leave, the downloading line for the gondola was insanely long. To make matters worse, after standing in line about 15 minutes, it was announced that the gondola was broken and shutting down. After evaluating all our options, we ended up walking 1.5 miles in ski boots, with our skis, down to the bottom of the gondola in town. By that time, the bus to our ski parking area had stopped running and we had to figure out another bus to get there that didn't quite go where we needed it to go. It was not ideal, but we made it and so we are fortunate to not be stuck in a gondola or still waiting at the base area for a ride that was never going to come. Side note - the log structure parking marker fell onto the rental car sometime that day, so that was a fitting end to the day. Skiing is always an adventure, but this was an opening day for the record books! Lol!
Day 3 - Today we skied Keystone. To be honest, it was the ski area I was least excited about, probably because I didn't really know about it before this trip and its reputation is for being a good family resort with a lot of beginner and intermediate terrain. But another part of its reputation is for advances in snowmaking - and this year, that is the most important different between Keystone and any of the other resorts in the area. We had snow! We could do long runs from top to bottom! There were still vast parts of the mountain inaccessible and we'd love to return and ski the alpine. But we were treated to excellent groomed runs today - most averaging around 2000' vertical per run. It was also very straightforward for parking, getting up to the top and exploring the runs. Plus, we had hardly no lift lines and an easy to manage lunch in the Timber Ridge Lodge near the Outback area. Keystone also elevated the experience by having a life-size snow fort to explore. It was really cool! My request was to have an afternoon ski break at the top of the Summit House on the deck and we did that! It was such an incredible view - we could see across the valley to Breckenridge and also were able to look down at the Dillon Reservoir from there. We had a great ski day of 24,000 feet vertical. Keystone has a lot of resort lodging options and a big village at the base area that reminded Jess and I of a mini-Whistler. I'm so happy we are checking out every resort because I would have overlooked Keystone for sure.
Day 4 - We skied Keystone again on New Year's Eve and it was awesome. They opened up another area called the Outback which had a couple sunny and long, well-groomed runs that didn't feel like they got skied off even later in the day. We also had a few outstanding runs on the front side. It was a day of long groomers - 21 lifts and 33,000' vertical even though we ended early so we could get dressed up (mountain-style, LOL) and go out in Breckenridge for New Year's Eve. Breck is very much an old-west style mountain town that has been dressed up with beautiful Christmas decorations and lights. It is fun to see stores like North Face and Starbucks in old west style buildings. Jessica found the Gold Pan Saloon for dinner. We ended up sitting at a table that also hosted the bar's ring toss game, so we were in the middle of everything and made some new friends including Mike and Shelly who were the nicest and most inspiring couple - they even picked up our check. We headed to bed well before midnight in order to get an early start the next day.
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