Our flight from Seattle landed in Denver early. The bags were out before we got to the baggage claim. The rental car bus came literally as we stepped outside, and 10 minutes later we were cruising in a brand new Jeep Grand Cherokee towards Beaver Creek. As we crossed Vail pass, it started dumping. The Curse was broken, and this was going to be 2 top ski days.
Beave Creek
Charlotte at Beaver Creek
Beaver Creek
Charlotte at Beave Creek
Charlotte at Beave Creek
Charlotte at Beaver
Charlotte at Beave Creekr
Beave Creek
Beaver Creek
Beaver
Tuesday was a snowy, dark, grey powder day. 6-8 inches had blanketed the hill, and although it was vaguely busy for the first two hours with local powder hounds, there was plenty of freshies to go around. Beaver has typical Colorado terrain, mostly cruisy with some steeper pitches and fun trees. The pow wasn’t Colorado-perfect blower, but it skied fine. We had a ball exploring, ripping boot deep groomer pow early, and then poking around bumps and trees on Grouse Mountain and Larkspur for the rest of the day. For day one of her season, our visiting Aussie boarder was ripping the deepest pow of her life in no time.
Tuesday night it got cold. 5F cold. The snow dried out, and Wednesday dawned brighter, the sun occasionally poking out. In many ways this was a better day then Tuesday. There was literally hardly anyone skiing. The groomed was a fast highway to heaven. The abundant remaining pow was effortless to ski. We had a ball playing in the trees off the Larkspur and Strawberry Park chairs, and skiing dangerously fast on Centennial.
Beaver Creek
Beaver Creek – huge lines at 8.55am 🙂
Beaver Creek
Beaver Creek
Beaver Creek
Beaver Creek
Beaver Creek
Beaver Creek
Beaver Creek
Beaver Creek
Beaver Creek
Beaver Creek
Beaver Creek
Beaver Creek
Beaver Creek
Beaver Creek
It’s hard not to have fun at Beaver and the many CO resorts on the I70 corridor. There’s some very fine, cruisey skiing. It does tend to empty your wallet rather quickly though, and even in two days I got tired of the endlessly friendly workers. Cleaning steps in the village of snow. Carrying our skis. Packing our bags on departure. Indulging in friendly, inane conversations. Always with a smile of course. It must fucking hurt to smile that much after a while.
I know the predominantly affluent east coast and southern clientele, on their annual ski weeks, love this type of service. Personally I’m happier with some dirtbag, tatooed, dreadlocked ski bums hanging out in the day lodge or scummy bar, chatting with locals. I suspect if we’d stayed in Avon, that would have been possible.
Next time.
There’s a good chance there will be a next time, when we get that Epic Season pass. One day. As I ain’t paying $150 for a day pass again. My Mission Ridge season pass is only just over twice that amount!
Tuesday 10,600m, Wednesday 7700m vert
Season Totals: 10 days, 75,000m vert, 5 powder days
Pacific Northwest Ski blog (and a few other places!) 
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