STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, COLORADO — In April, my wife and I made a decision to change the way we would celebrate Christmas this year for the first time: there would be no exchange of gifts, no tree, no traditional trappings that would include last-minute shopping, pushing through crowds or experiencing the angst and pressures that often surround the holiday season.
Instead, we decided to bring our adult daughters — living away at university — on a ski trip to Colorado, replacing Christmas and New Year’s in Toronto with two weeks among the Rockies amid some of America’s best ski destinations.
Growing up in Calgary and learning to ski in places like Banff, I appreciated the beauty of spending time in the mountains. A U.S. ski trip was intended to be a new adventure.
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Little did we know back in the spring that by December the Canadian dollar would be worth only 72 cents against the U.S. dollar. (Fortunately we paid for our flights and accommodations before the currency plummeted.)
We also didn’t know at the time how a warm December would wreak havoc for ski destinations in Ontario and the east: and we couldn’t have predicted that Colorado’s ski resorts would enjoy some of their best December skiing in more than a decade.
“Our entire mountain operations team has been working really hard to open as much terrain as quickly and safely as possible,” said Elizabeth Howe, Senior Director of Mountain Operations for Vail Resorts Management Company.
Neighbouring Beaver Creek resort, operated by the same owner, opened November 25 with 291 hectares of terrain, the most ski area offered on opening day since 2002, according to Johnna Escobedo, Senior Manager of Communications for Vail.
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“All of this snow has been an early holiday gift for our resorts and we’re looking forward to a successful year ahead,” Escobedo told Global News.
That gift of snow for Vail and Beaver Creek was more like a lottery win for Steamboat Springs resort in the Yampa Valley, a two-hour drive north of Vail. During a one-week period including Christmas Day, the community that trademarked the moniker Ski Town USA received about a metre of snow.
By the end of the year, Steamboat boasted it had accumulated 165 inches (4.2 metres) of fallen snow in a ski season barely underway. Resorts can build lifts, add accommodations, train staff to be friendly and helpful, but they can only hope for weather that will deliver a successful season.
“December has been a Champagne Powder snow generating machine, and word about Steamboat’s snow continues to spread as fast as it is piling up,” said Rob Perlman, President and Chief Operating Officer for the Steamboat Ski & Resort Corp. “Steamboat is enjoying some of the best snow in the Colorado Rocky Mountains.”
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The evidence is everywhere: each morning, we awoke to several inches of fresh snow on the windshield of our rented car, one regrettably not equipped with winter tires. This, in a state where a driver can be ticketed and fined up to $650 under a law called Code 15. If officials decide the weather is bad enough on Interstate 70, the major road route, drivers caught without proper tires can be in trouble as deep as the snow.
But in Steamboat, one doesn’t really need a car to reach the ski resort. A free, public bus runs every 20 minutes from 5 a.m. to 2:30 a.m.
In Avon, the city that services Vail and Beaver Creek, skiers can get around easily, too. A free public bus runs a regular route to Beaver Creek — Vail skiers can ride a different bus for $4 each way.
Free cookies greet skiers and snowboarders arriving each morning at Beaver Creek. Most everything else, however will come with some sticker shock.
If you haven’t arranged for multiple-day passes in advance, you’ll be reminded skiing in a premium resort isn’t cheap: Beaver Creek and Vail charge $175 for a day of skiing.
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Steamboat Springs charges $159. Aspen, by comparison, charges $149 for an adult lift ticket.
Travellers can save substantially though by booking multiple day passes. Vail’s EPIC passes, purchased prior to season opening, let you ski unlimited all season at a range of resorts including Vail, Beaver Creek and Breckenridge in Colorado, Heavenly in California, Park City in Utah and Verbier in Switzerland for less than $800.
Put aside cost (or adjust your spending to accommodate your budget) and you’re destined to enjoy a new adventure. Like Loaded Joe’s, the 7 a.m. to 2 a.m. coffee house/restaurant/bar/nightclub in Avon with pool tables and shuffleboard. After an enjoyable breakfast of burritos or oatmeal with raspberries and a side order of bacon, it’s time to climb aboard the bus for the first run of the day on groomed runs or possibly powder.
The Canadian dollar let us down this Christmas, but Colorado did not.
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