ADKmike
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jul 22, 2020
As many of you may have heard from my other post looking for CO advice, my wife and I headed out for presidents week (yeh, I know, crowds, but she's a teacher so I'm stuck! (but I was wrong about crowds). This would be her first western ski experience, certainly not a first for me. However, I've skied many of the other ski-able western states including Arizona! But, oddly, never Colorado, so it was a new experience for me as well.
Driving out to Aspen on I-70
Glenwood Canyon
Having spent alot of time in Utah, and while it's one of my favorite western destinations, I was looking forward to the change of scenery in CO, as I figured it would be much different without the backdrop of a major city down canyon, as you see frequently in Utah's LCC/BCC. Colorado definately had that more remote feel, although it was pretty odd to have a major highway (I-70) bisect several ski resorts, almost running right through the parking lot! (Loveland, Vail, Copper)
Being that it was a holiday week, and after collecting alot of info here and on TGR forums, I came up with a crowds avoidance plan that consisted of flying Sunday into Denver, heading out to Assssspen, banking on families not wanting to make the 4 hour-ish drive and instead sticking to the Front Range to use their EPIC passes. We would then work our way back East toward Denver after a three day stay in Aspen, stopping at a few different points for one night stays and ultimately skiing A-basin (my #1 ski must-do in CO) toward the end of the week, followed by a free stay at my wife's roomate's from college house in Denver before flying home Saturday.
Driving into Snowmass village
Snowmass base area
Some more snow would have been nice, but cool photo still
The weather for the trip was a little bit of everything. I usually would compulsively check multiple weather sources/blogs/reports as fast as they could be refreshed, but this time I tried a different approach of not giving a shit, as to let the anti-jinx soak in. The fact that I was skiing Whiteface and touring in the ADK within 15 hours of my flight to CO also helped keep me not focused on weather reports that never seem to check out anymore. (Another interesting story here that involved a bad radiator cap not venting properly, almost causing me to never make it home from the ADK to even get to CO...roadside diagnosis and a $9 pitstop to Autozone in Glens Falls fixed that tho.)
Saturday 12:00PM EST - Top of Wright Peak, ADK
Sunday 12:00PM MST - I-70W, CO !
Unfortunately, the not giving a shit method didn't totally align with big dumps...when we arrived in Denver it was 60 degrees. As any skier would, I started getting kinda worried about what may be going on up in the mountains. There is a happy ending for the second half of the week, so read on. The first part of the trip (Sun-Wed) featured above average temps and below average snowfall for the past few weeks in Aspen. Of course I would have loved to see whiteness everywhere, especially since my wife had never been west and I wanted her to get the full experience, but we had a couple good groomers and sun (35 degrees or so) ski days none the less. I was actually pretty surprised how well the snow quality held up, given the warm temps. We skied one day at Snowmass (where we were staying in a ski in-out (Out of the norm for me, my usual accommodations tap out around the Super 8 level)) and one day at Aspen Highlands.
The plan pretty much worked out. Aspen was completely empty not just for a holiday, but empty like mid-week skiing style. Ski right onto lift. Zero line.
Despite having a family friendly intermediate appeal, Snowmass turned out to be alot of fun. Huuuuge place (like 3400 acres +) and to my surprise, highest vertical drop in the USA (4400 ft!). There were alot of really nice intermediate pitched wide open trails, as well as some good steeps and nice long runs. A poma services the upper portion of the mtn called the Cirque. This is where the above treeline stuff was, mostly. On a powder day, I could see this being a ton of fun on the wide open trails with pods of trees spaced around.
Snowmass Groomers and Sun
Wife:
Wife:
Cirque:
Backside, out of bounds:
Snowmass scenery:
For this trip I agreed to skiing every other day, with off days in between to "do other stuff" or travel. She really wanted to go to a hot spring. With the weather continuing to be spring like, we weren't missing any pow days, so we did some research and actually got info on Avalanche Ranch, which was much more private, and limited occupancy, as opposed to some of the larger ones available in the area. We drove about 50 mins out of Snowmass, down canyon and then up through Carbondale. Pretty scenic and cool area.
Next day we were skiing Aspen Highlands...
Driving out to Aspen on I-70
Glenwood Canyon
Having spent alot of time in Utah, and while it's one of my favorite western destinations, I was looking forward to the change of scenery in CO, as I figured it would be much different without the backdrop of a major city down canyon, as you see frequently in Utah's LCC/BCC. Colorado definately had that more remote feel, although it was pretty odd to have a major highway (I-70) bisect several ski resorts, almost running right through the parking lot! (Loveland, Vail, Copper)
Being that it was a holiday week, and after collecting alot of info here and on TGR forums, I came up with a crowds avoidance plan that consisted of flying Sunday into Denver, heading out to Assssspen, banking on families not wanting to make the 4 hour-ish drive and instead sticking to the Front Range to use their EPIC passes. We would then work our way back East toward Denver after a three day stay in Aspen, stopping at a few different points for one night stays and ultimately skiing A-basin (my #1 ski must-do in CO) toward the end of the week, followed by a free stay at my wife's roomate's from college house in Denver before flying home Saturday.
Driving into Snowmass village
Snowmass base area
Some more snow would have been nice, but cool photo still
The weather for the trip was a little bit of everything. I usually would compulsively check multiple weather sources/blogs/reports as fast as they could be refreshed, but this time I tried a different approach of not giving a shit, as to let the anti-jinx soak in. The fact that I was skiing Whiteface and touring in the ADK within 15 hours of my flight to CO also helped keep me not focused on weather reports that never seem to check out anymore. (Another interesting story here that involved a bad radiator cap not venting properly, almost causing me to never make it home from the ADK to even get to CO...roadside diagnosis and a $9 pitstop to Autozone in Glens Falls fixed that tho.)
Saturday 12:00PM EST - Top of Wright Peak, ADK
Sunday 12:00PM MST - I-70W, CO !
Unfortunately, the not giving a shit method didn't totally align with big dumps...when we arrived in Denver it was 60 degrees. As any skier would, I started getting kinda worried about what may be going on up in the mountains. There is a happy ending for the second half of the week, so read on. The first part of the trip (Sun-Wed) featured above average temps and below average snowfall for the past few weeks in Aspen. Of course I would have loved to see whiteness everywhere, especially since my wife had never been west and I wanted her to get the full experience, but we had a couple good groomers and sun (35 degrees or so) ski days none the less. I was actually pretty surprised how well the snow quality held up, given the warm temps. We skied one day at Snowmass (where we were staying in a ski in-out (Out of the norm for me, my usual accommodations tap out around the Super 8 level)) and one day at Aspen Highlands.
The plan pretty much worked out. Aspen was completely empty not just for a holiday, but empty like mid-week skiing style. Ski right onto lift. Zero line.
Despite having a family friendly intermediate appeal, Snowmass turned out to be alot of fun. Huuuuge place (like 3400 acres +) and to my surprise, highest vertical drop in the USA (4400 ft!). There were alot of really nice intermediate pitched wide open trails, as well as some good steeps and nice long runs. A poma services the upper portion of the mtn called the Cirque. This is where the above treeline stuff was, mostly. On a powder day, I could see this being a ton of fun on the wide open trails with pods of trees spaced around.
Snowmass Groomers and Sun
Wife:
Wife:
Cirque:
Backside, out of bounds:
Snowmass scenery:
For this trip I agreed to skiing every other day, with off days in between to "do other stuff" or travel. She really wanted to go to a hot spring. With the weather continuing to be spring like, we weren't missing any pow days, so we did some research and actually got info on Avalanche Ranch, which was much more private, and limited occupancy, as opposed to some of the larger ones available in the area. We drove about 50 mins out of Snowmass, down canyon and then up through Carbondale. Pretty scenic and cool area.
Next day we were skiing Aspen Highlands...
