jordan

This was a one of those weekends that put me on cloud 9 as a dad My son, Ben placed second at the Loveland ski club Big Mountain Comp saturday We then boogied down to Aspen and caught the big air final at the X Games saturday night (and got on live TV!) Then we skied Highlands yesterday, and everyone (including my 9 year old daughter) made it to the top of highlands bowl in about 30 minutes.

Sweet pics! Gotta get up those T-Bars, Barb. That's where the best skiing is!

Me and my Junior All Mountain team kids at Loveland on Saturday. Got on the snowcat and caught the rope drop on Velvet Hammer. It was pretty sweet!

yep!

sand skiing is surprisingly fun!

When you put it that way...copper will be hard to beat. with lodging on site you are limited to copper, breck, vail, keystone and beaver creek. All of those locations will be crowded that week. Christmas is not as crowded, but christmas eve can be. GSS is right that Dec 26-31 is far worse. Of the list noted above, Breck has the best terrain, Keystone is probably most interesting for kids and copper is middle of the road in both departments. If you want to ski really good terrain, I would try to sneak away to the A-Basin for a day if Pali is open by then.

Copper kinda sucks TBH, and it will be incredibly crowded that time of year.

It'll be nice to maximize pre-work laps on powder days when I only have an hour or two to ski. However, in general, its just too fast for that location. I enjoyed the 6-minute ride to the top between laps on the steeps. The kids are kind of pissed that there is a bar (loveland's first lift with a bar).

Saturday opening at Loveland! Great to be back on skis!

Loveland Transferrable 4 pack $169 https://skiloveland.com/4-pak/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIqr2N74aR3gIVycDACh3iOg8zEAAYASAAEgKDpvD_BwE A-Basin non-transferrable 4 pack $189, transferrable 4 pack $229 https://www.arapahoebasin.com/tickets-and-passes/season-passes/ That's about all you'll find as far as lift ticket deals <$100 per day.

twin boys (12) and twin girls (9). They are not my biological kids, but are my kids in every other way. They all are good skiers, but one of the boys has really taken to it. He is the one on the ski team. Here he is ripping Headwall at crested butte:

I used to instruct at frost when I was in high school (snowmonsters program). It was cool as a kid because you make a lot of friends that like to ski and then you could go to boulder at night after work and hang out. The expectation was that if you were at the ski area, you would check in to see if they needed you to work. It was usually pretty easy to get at least half the day off to ski, but it was still a bit of a drag. Every once in a while, it would be really rewarding when the stars aligned for some kid who you just introduced to their new favorite sport (i.e., the best sport on earth), but more often than not, it was essentially glorified baby-sitting kids who couldn't care less about skiing. No way I would do that as an adult. However, I did take a side-gig this winter as a fill-in coach for my kids' ski team, (the all mountain free-ski team at Loveland). I skied with the team a few times last season and those kids eat, sleep and breath skiing. Free season passes for the whole family and a little bit of cash to ski with a group of little rippers that tear up the entire mountain. I'll do that any day.

Naa, Vail has a vested interest in buying up feeder resorts near population centers and using them to leverage customers to their larger resorts. They are already doing this with wilmot and afton alps in WI and MN. By the way, peak is in fact a publically traded company, they trade under the ticker symbol SKIS.

I'd bet Vail buys Peak resorts within a year.

yep, t'was me. It was a little embarrassing, but live and learn, right? Sweet terrain by the way. Jordan

yes

I picked up the boys from summer camp in NW Wyoming and went on a little adventure that ended with camping up on Beartooth Pass ans skiing one of the only ski areas in the country still operating. We had a blast!

all skis are rock skis. Seriously, unless you are a racer, or you have a hole in the base all the way to the core, who cares?

Hut to hut MTB trips are rad. I did the telluride to moab hut system last summer with some friends. Here is by buddy's write-up http://hippobite.blogspot.com/2017/09/telluride-to-moab-august-2017.html

Stay warm peeps. At least this might extend the lives of PA's hemlocks by a few years http://www.ct.gov/caes/lib/caes/documents/publications/fact_sheets/plant_pathology_and_ecology/hemlock_woolly_adelgid_winter_mortality__7.12.16.pdf.

chair 1 @ loveland > Pali

I agree that chair 8 is not great bang for your buck...but chair 1, 4, and 9 certainly are (especially chair 1) I take it that you have never tried to ski copper on the weekend? Also, sometimes skiing isn't all about the vert.

It's not Loveland's fault that you choose to ride their beginner lift. The first rule of Loveland has historically been "never ride chair 2 from the bottom", since you could take chair 1 and ski to chair 2 mid-load before chair 2 would reach the mid-load point. Now that the lift is split in two, there is never any reason to ride chair 2 at all. Also, I find it more pleasant to ride slower lifts that take a couple extra minutes than standing in lift lines for 15+ extra minutes (like you would at the summit country resorts on most weekends)

I go back and forth on this, but I think that VR is ultimately doing good things for skiing affordability and for sustainable growth in the ski industry in general. I just pray that they don't start buying up slow lift, no lodging oasises like Loveland, Monarch, and Wolf Creek, or less crowded corporate resorts like CB, Telluride, Jackson and Big Sky.

There is a 20-25 footer in the trees between elevator and floyds. I have seen it hit once during the epic 02/03 winter. Jordan