Ski Trip to Vail, CO

As members of the Reno Ski and Recreation Club, DW and I participated in a club trip to Vail, Colorado for a week of skiing and recreation (duh), from the 3rd to the 7th of March 2014.

Actually, I shouldn’t say “duh”, because I’m not sure if I’ve published on this blog yet that I relented to learn to ski this season, so I can ski with DW and the rest of the recreational skiers.

Anyway, we arrived by air at Denver early afternoon on Sunday the 2nd, and along with about a dozen others took the club-arranged transportation to our hotel, the Vail Cascade Resort. It’s a not-overly-fancy-but-nice-enough property, with beautiful old (or old-looking) furniture in the lobby and main desk, and a nice little sunken bar behind a huge double-sided (gas) fireplace. But the real attraction, and the reason the trip coordinator chose the place, is the Ski Concierge right next to Chair Lift #20 (Cascade). It was so nice not having to shlep equipment either down the hall or out along the building to get to a lift, or a bus to the lifts.

Oddly enough, I have no photos of the hotel, but you can follow the link above where there are plenty. In fact, we didn’t even take pictures on Monday, as we had to go from the bottom of the west end of the ski area all the way to the top near the east end, to be at Two Elk Lodge™ for lunch. (You can see a trail map at Vail’s site linked above, if you desire.) Since I’m just a beginner, we had to take some catwalks (which I figured out refer to the snow cat grooming machines), but we got there a half-hour ahead of the others. In fact, a couple of them remarked how surprised they were to see me there!

On Tuesday, we decided to ski around the Game Creek Bowl area, which is on the west peak. Vail (and Beaver Creek) are somewhat unusual in that they have relatively easy runs near the top of the mountain; most resorts don’t use the ridges, and instead bring runs down the steep face, making them more difficult. Game Creek Bowl has a number of runs marked blue (medium difficulty), but a couple of fairly long green (easier) runs around the outside of the bowl. One of them, the only way out of the bowl, is called Eagle’s Nest Ridge. It’s very easy, being nearly flat in one long stretch leading down to the Eagle’s Nest Lodge. I stopped and had DW take a couple of pictures, one off each side of the ridge.

(As always, click to view larger.)

That evening, we went with a couple of friends from the club to explore Lionshead Village, a smaller village on the west between our hotel and the main Vail Village. We found a liquor store, a crowded little BBQ restaurant that serves what’s on the menu until they run out, and Albert Einstein, just chillin’:

Monica adores Al.

On Wednesday, most of the trip-goers went over to Beaver Creek (about ½ hour away) for the day. As one of our bus-mates said, Beaver Creek–a Vail resort–has to be just a bit better, because it isn’t Vail. Also, it’s the farthest resort away from Denver. Well, it was great! DW and I headed up to the easier runs near the top of the main lift. The views were spectacular.

DW about to get her camera out

I actually got a little over-confident right away, and fell part way down. There is a technique for getting up that I could never quite do in Tahoe, but I made it work this time! DW got photos of the process. Here are the beginning and the end.




We skied the easy runs for the better part of the day. We took a break around 2:30 after having skied down to the ski school area, where the children ride a gondola to after mastering the basics at the bottom. Here’s a panoramic photo from the deck:

Late that afternoon, we met our fellow clubbers at the Beaver Creek Chophouse and C Bar, outside. It was such a nice day, we all stayed outside.

This pic got tweeted.

Some of the group stayed to eat there, but some of us were ready to hit the shower. Six of us went for pizza, to the Blue Moose Pizza in Lionshead, right next to the skating rink. Since the previous day had been Mardi Gras, the Moose had been celebrating, and was covered with beads.

When we got there, and yet when we left, there was a broom hockey game going on on the rink.

The next two days, DW and I skied the Mid-Vail™ area. There is one green run and a whole series of blue runs there. DW and I had been to Kirkwood on Presidents’ Day, and we skied a blue run a few times there, so we decided to do these. They were a lot of fun! Except for the one called “Whistle Pig”–it had a bunch of little moguls! We got most of the way through them (slowly), and I saw a cut-off back to a smoother run we had done before, so we took that. Here's what one of them looked like:

Actually, that may have been the access run along the ridge. Anyway, on Thursday night we attended a group dinner in Vail Village, and on the way out we stopped to take photos of this sculpture and lighted tree.




 On Friday we went back to the same runs to ski, but snow had been falling since about midnight and was still falling, and the smooth runs of the day before were starting to get bumpy. I was actually having fun learning to handle the snow, but it did make us tired quickly. We skied about 2½ or 3 hours, and had had enough. We made it back to the main village and rode the bus back to the hotel, where we had some hot cocoa and a nap.

We really enjoyed the trip and being able to ski every day for a week. We did some checking into individual trips, and the group really got a great deal, so we were pleased. The organizer did a fabulous job, and if he ever puts together another trip, we’ll be the first ones to sign up!