Ski (2) – Colorado Breckenridge

Utah has many advanced mountains. However, Colorado has many varieties of ski places, from beginners to expert level, from family friendly to luxurious resorts. But no matter where you go, you will totally have a great feeling, like my son requested “I want to ski in mountains!” (not in hills in east coast and not in slopes in midwest :))

Flying to Denver is convenient and cheaper, so you can see many people pulling their ski around the airport, feeling young and being a party of community!

In Colorado, you can go totally upscale like Vail and Breckenridge (also owned by Vail resort). There are so many different lifts and mountains, a truly enjoyable experience for experienced ski lovers. For some of the green trails I was on, it was busy and had long lines. Both Vail and Breckenridge have a great ski town, best food, high class art gallery and shopping. There are good cabins and apartments walking distance from the slopes. They were about 1 hour 40 to 50 minutes drive from the Denver airport. It is relatively convienient compared to other places.

I don’t know starting when, the lift passes in Vail and Breckenridge become super expensive. Two years ago, I planned to take my beginner friend to Vail, and then I heard that single day pass costs close to 400 dollars per person. The classes can run up to thousand of dollars 2-3 hours. Maybe they already have enough pass holders going there, so keeping the price higher can cut down people? My friend is from NYC, and she is used to expensive stuff but she was chickened out. Later on, I feel thankful for her decision, otherwise I would stupidly spend thousands 🙂 Copper nearby is slightly cheaper and also very big. I remembered that when my friends and us rented a cabin at Breckenridge 2014 Christmas. The day pass costs $153, see below the receipt I digged out from emails, nostalgic 🙂

Look at our awesome cabin below. It is walkable to the lifts. In the mornings, we were just carrying our equipment walking there :). At that time, my friends booked everything, and only later I appreciated such a great experience.

I was really not impressed about the group lessons there. There were too many students for 1-2 instructors. I ended up running into a tree and triggered my old injury :D. I texted my husband while laying down in clinic, and he was at some far away very high mountain peak. When he changed many lifts and came to see me hours later, I almost recovered :).