By Various Authors from Mountain Gazette #149 - November 2008
The annual ‘Resort Roundup’(published last year as “The Ski Bum’s Guide,” MG #137) is easily the most commercial piece of pandering that we publish in the Mountain Gazette. Designed in concert with our regular equipment column, Gear-O-Rama, it’s meant to stoke the fires of Rocky Mountain retail and fatten our magazine with ad pages galore. And, as a rite-of-winter rundown on the ‘coolest,’ ‘hottest,’ and ‘gnarliest’ new stuff on the slopes – which, geologically speaking, ain’t changed much themselves in the past couple millenniums – the Roundup includes no small element of that lazy list-making journalism that we have decried for so many years.
But ski areas also go a long way toward defining who we are. The MG was originally founded as The Skiers’ Gazette in 1966, with an editorial, advertising and distribution model aimed at reaching the new wave of snow settlers populating the ski areas that were sprouting like dandelions in seemingly every Colorado town where a mine was about to close. And a majority of our readers still live and work in ski towns, and spend more on skis, boots and season passes than they do on anything else except for pizza and beer. So it makes sense to honor the economic engine that drives a lot of our lives. But we like to celebrate how much pleasure skiing gives us, too. Plowing through powder, chairlift-sitting in the sun, or bombing laps on the groomers, it’s the best way of wasting time the winter will ever know.
This year we talk about the Colorado hills (with a few bonuses thrown in) that seem to still hold true to the values that inspired this magazine 40+ years ago: ski hills with mud parking lots, a sack lunch-friendly cafeteria, double chairs, friendly lifties, on-the-spot bars where you can cheer or boo the Donkeys, little to no mondo-condo-mania/development and absolutely incredible slopes and snow.
A chair ride at A-Basin takes you back into a time when the sport was fresh and new—except the skis are much fatter now. All the better to enjoy the Alps-like terrain and snow that graces this saddle off the Continental Divide, which has one of the longest seasons in North America (typically from late October-June). Get-Your-Game-On-Skiers look longingly for the ropes to drop on the East Wall and classic rock-lined double black-diamond runs like First Notch, which when open, are worth the big hike. The mountain has a variety of aspects, which translates into a high probability of finding good snow. The newly opened 400-acre Montezuma Bowl offers long cruisers as well as chutes and trees, and the grand Pallavacini Face rivals any bump run around. Since bumps are only as good as the skiers who create them, “Pali” features a plethora of nice lines created by the talented every-day skiers who contribute to the Basin’s unique, confident vibe. The “Beach,” known as early-riser parking and a whole lot of before, during and après-skiing, has the festive vibe of the Indy 500 infield, where burning burgers, brats and duct-taped grills are de rigueur. Since the 1940s, Max and Edna Dercum’s “Legend” remains condo and attitude free. Arapahoebasin.com
It may seem a stretch to include Breck on a list of “REAL Ski Areas.” After all this is the area with the most skier visits per year of any in North America—1.5 million—and the resort of choice for knock-kneed Barney’s from New York, Dallas, Chicago and God knows what other suburban hell. It is part of the corporate resort machine, which values real estate over the purity of powder turns, right? Plus, there are way too many long, flat runs on the lower hill. Perhaps in spite of all these factors, Breckenridge has developed one of the most core communities of yearlong skiers in Colorado. This is the place where those who never felt right in the godawful suburbs—who came out for a year as a liftie and ended up pounding nails, buying a pass and never going back – actually live, in a county where over two-thirds of the homes are second homes. In a sense, they represent the latest evolution of the American West, fueling the move away from the boom and bust of mining to the present service economy. Plus, it’s the former home hill of the Mountain Gazette itself, and tough to beat for powder-day face shots at 12K feet in the big bowls of Peak 8. Breckenridge.snow.com
Best Run: Anything off Peak 8 on a powder day
Best Beer: Burgers and pitchers at the Moose Jaw in Frisco, longtime supporters of the MG.
If there were such a thing as an organic ski area, Ski Cooper would be it. As one of the last few holdouts with no snow making, Ski Cooper is a paradise for natural snow purists. All the powder on the slopes — 250 inches per year — comes from Mother Nature and not from the nozzle of snow guns. That may seem quaint to some of the high-rolling ornamentals from Texas and California, not to mention execs at the nearby mega-resort, but for a core group of Colorado skiers and snowboarders, it’s exactly what they’re looking for. A range of exposures and low traffic helps preserve powder stashes for a few days after storms, with free-heelers and boarders searching out the glades on the far side of the mountain around Mother Lode and Corkscrew. Besides the all-natural snow, Cooper locals flock to the hill near Leadville for the family vibe and the $2 lift tickets, one of the lowest prices in Colorado. Last year, supermarket discount tickets were available for non-locals. With an average of 1,800 visitors on weekends and 300 to 500 during the week, chances are you can easily find your own untracked line any day of the week. www.skicooper.com
Best Run: First tracks down Nightmare under the chair.
Best Beer: Rosie’s Brewpub is tough to beat for fresh suds, but you can also drink where Fayhee drinks at the Manhattan Bar.
You’ll find a lot of ex-pat, skiing-since-they-could-walk Vermonters singing the praises of Eldora, because if you grew up skiing tight trees, this little, blustery area just five minutes from downtown Boulder will make you feel right at home. Eldora often gets lost amid all the big talk of I-70 resorts, and even in Boulder you’ll hear locals disparaging it for being too cold, too windy, too ramshackle, too bony. Those folks usually can’t turn as well as they talk—Eldora takes some poking around but once you “get it,” it delivers, especially in the spring when big upslope storms blanket the place in fluff. The backcounty, including some perfect, powder-laden chutes, is ridiculously underrated and local-knowledge tree runs like Bryant Glades and the tough-to-find Burl are the type of places where you can’t hide crappy skills. The vibe is far more Ned than Pearl Street—families from the Dakotas, rippers like the chimney sweep with an artificial hip who teles the backcountry every day, young parents from Boulder up to pound out runs before they pick up “Sage” at daycare, old dudes making perfect turns on 220s and a ski patrol that actually offers advice and lets you tag around for a run or two. Eldora.com
Best Run: West Ridge.
Best Beer: Otis Pale Ale at the Wild Mountain Smokehouse & Brewery
Wolf Creek is 237 miles from Albuquerque, 276 miles from Denver, 478 miles from Salt Lake City, 538 miles from Phoenix, 823 miles from Dallas, 861 miles from Los Angeles, 1,348 miles from Chicago, 2,061 miles from New York City, and 10,000 miles away from pretentiousness. You won’t see anybody here. You won’t be seen. If you somehow find it and can finally let go of your ego long enough, you’ll figure out there’s only one reason to ski here: snow up to your eyeballs—once a week…or two or three times a week…or (more often than you might imagine) for weeks at a time. See, nobody cares who you are because you are going to be skiing under the snow. It gets very real about February, when finally you’ve been under long enough that even you don’t care who you are. Wolfcreekski.com
Best Run: The face of Alberta Peak down to the Bankshot trees.
Best Beer: Fat Tires and True Blondes in the Pathfinder Bar.
It’s an enduring mystery why Loveland, the first ski area the rocket-box-loaded hordes from Denver hit, gets so little love. Perhaps it’s the Arctic winds off the Continental Divide that makes long lift rides here so treacherous. Perhaps it’s that Loveland is simply more about skiing and riding hard than it is about strutting around in urban-cool slopestyle garb and then blogging about your “run” from the lodge. The lack of on-mountain accommodations certainly keep out the tourists—leaving the land of love for Denver locals who will pound the hill in even the nastiest blowing conditions all day long before they down a few pitchers watching the Broncos in the depths of the Rathskeller. And there’s one more thing no one ever seems to talk about enough—the area above the Eisenhower Tunnel simply has some of the best terrain in Colorado: 1,365 acres with a hike-able high-point that tops out at 13,010 feet and 400 annual inches. Sustained steeps rule the ridgeline, there are numerous hiking options, deep trees that hold blown in stashes, and bumps that haven’t been flattened by morons. But all the evidence you really need is in the parking lot, where all the plates proudly say: Colorado. Skiloveland.com —DS
Best Run: Porcupine Ridge or bootpacking above Chair 9
Best Beer: Anything cold at the Rathskeller on Taco Tuesdays.
One freezing February at Monarch Ski Area, I rode a chair with a mullet-haired man with no hat, a black handlebar mustache, jeans tucked into his ski boots and an exquisitely hand-tooled leather jacket that featured a four-layer stitching of an American Eagle. He said he was from Denver and I asked him why he didn’t ski any of the slopes along the I-70 Corridor. “Road rage,” was the extent of his reply. At Monarch, the weekend drive up traffic is from Pueblo and burgeoning Colorado Springs (bigger now than Denver was when it birthed Copper and Vail). But on weekdays it’s mostly locals from Salida and Midwesterners from Kansas and Nebraska skiing under the “Monarch cloud,” a weather system of seemingly perpetual snowfall in all but the leanest La Nina years. Except for one on-hill chair, Monarch’s three doubles and one quad roll out of the base area, climbing to two separate peaks and an obvious array of short steeps and deep glades. Off-piste poking around is quickly rewarded here, as are short ski hikes and a 12-minute bootpack to Mirkwood Basin, accessing 130+ acres of earned turns with a view to Monarch’s expansive cat-ski terrain. Rub elbows with Crestone rastas, Oklahoma cowboys, off-season Arkansas River guides and the local salsa chef in the Sidewinder Saloon.Skimonarch.com
Best Run: Orcs, skiing down the knoll into the gut of Mirkwood Bowl.
Back in the day when you would actually get arrested for hopping out of bounds at pretty much every major ski resort in North America, community-owned Bridger Bowl built its reputation on terrain without lifts—the famed Ridge, which requires a short, steep hike and avi gear. It makes Bridger, in essence, a patrolled high-angle backcountry that takes all day to get skied out. And the beautiful, beckoning lines here are endless—classics like Hidden and the Apron never disappoint, but lesser hit options like Madman’s and the O’s hold fresh lines even when the hike up the Ridge is a human highway. In fact, since The Ridge is often closed during storms, the best powder days here can often be on bluebird days after a dump. And the snow, caught by the knife edge of the Bridger Range itself that scrapes storms as they pass unheeded over the big expanse of the Gallatin Valley below, is pure softness. This season a new lift will access 311 acres of former backcountry terrain to the south, but that won’t change the vibe. Just 20 minutes away, downtown Bozeman is still a home to a number of saddle bronc riders, conspiracy theorists and nuclear physicists – any one of whom could come ripping past you on an improbable line on The Ridge. Bridgerbowl.com
—DS
Discovery Ski Area
You won’t find anyone who gives a shit about what they are wearing or even what skis are under their feet at Discovery. You won’t find time-share condos, film festivals and sushi spots either. The nearest “big town” is Anaconda, Montana, home of the world’s largest copper smelter and eateries that serve all three types of wine—“red, white and blush.” What you will find are hats with beanies, Carhartts, RD Coyote Heli-Dogs, empty lift lines, fluffy snow and some absolutely ripping terrain. The experts-only backside at Discovery is a gnarly, tree-filled bowl of nothing but double-black, perfect fall-line steeps. The signs that warn you must know how to self-arrest are a bit over the top, but necessary since you most likely will ride the lift with ranch boys skiing on gear they found at a garage sale and a no-fall ethic no matter how out of control. Or you may meet some guru of powder and perfectly edged turns who cut his teeth back in the 80s and can still rip with an almost ethereal grace and confidence. If you love skiing for all the right reasons, this is a place that calls for a pilgrimage. skidiscovery.com; 406-563-2184
Full disclosure: I lived in Santa Fe three months before I knew it even had a ski hill. “What’s up with that snow?” I asked a local, pointing at the obvious powder-covered slope facing town and figuring to head up for a tour. He said, “That’s where the lifts are.” Duh. Where most people (i.e., me) imagine only desert adobes and endless tangerine-colored skies, Santa Fe itself sits at 7,000 vertical feet (the highest capital city in the U.S.), and is nestled against the high rolling peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The chairlifts at Ski Santa Fe start at 10,350 feet, marking one of the highest base elevations in North America. They top out at 12,075 feet, over a rugged ridge of serious alpine options. The Tequila Trees are tight, Big Rocks a veritable reef of rock-strewn chutes, and a hard-charging posse of locals with nicknames like Gandalf, Pook and Peyote Man work the long bumps of Road Runner beneath the summit Triple. On Spring Break, Baptist Church buses from Texas clog the narrow road. But come up on a Wednesday in February when it’s puking and you’ll be lucky to share a chair. If it’s sunny, zoom Gayway right to a cold Spaten on the deck at Totemoff’s Bar. Skisantafe.com
—PK
Pajarito Mountain
Pajarito Mountain (in Spanish, “baby bird”) is a little like its hometown of Los Alamos — weirdly cool. A club hill for scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory, rock buffs up from Bandelier and super smart kids from the local high school, there is a studied seriousness to skiing here. Little grooming, no liftlines and a single ridgeline of straight shot ski runs only intensify the mood. As does the three-day lift schedule — Friday, Saturday, Sunday and three weeks over Christmas — so that the powder often sits untouched for up to four days. Visitors are always welcome for the price of a lift ticket ($49 an adult according to the website), although with no advertising, the Baby Bird hardly spreads the word. On the hill the views off the back into the Valle Grande and all the way to Redondo Peak are unmatchable on the many clear days, and as the saying goes, “the snow’s incredible when it’s good.” Riding runs from East Mushroom to Wildcat to Nuther Mother, it becomes quickly apparent how someone like World Ski Champ Dean Cummings could grow up on this hill, and get the skills to ski the world. Skipajarito.com
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