First Day at Beaver Creek

We had our first ski day at Beaver Creek this morning, after fueling up with breakfast tortillas and baked beans. It was about 40F at the base but after we took the Centennial lift up to the mid mountain area it got cold and snowy quickly. It snowed 4 in or so during the course of the day, and we are forecast to get another 6-12 in tonight. From the the top of Centennial we took Harrier down to the Red Tail area. There was a lot of soft fresh snow, but the trail was a little hairier than we needed for the first run of the week -- still we got down eventually.

From there we took Larkspur up to the big broad trail off the top of that lift. It was choppier than it would be normally after grooming, but we enjoyed it so much that we repeated it. The fog was getting heavy now, so we took the Birds of Prey lift up to the top of the Mountain. We enjoyed all the easy trails at the top for an hour or so, before our legs started getting rubbery, and it was time to start planning a route home. The top runs here are blessed with good snow and gentle pitches, but the Cinch lift does accumulate a lot of skiiers.
We eventually took the Gold Dust trail all the way back down to the base, which was probably something like 3000 vertical feet, so it was a nice long ride. It was challenging in parts, and reminded me of Canyon at Sun Valley or Silver Queen at Aspen, although not as steep. But with the soft fresh snow here it was easy to turn on anything even if was steep, most unlike icy Vermont.

Once we got home we piled into the hot tub and then lit up a roaring fire while we baked a pan of potato au gratin and grilled some skirt and flank steaks, paired with a 91 Anderson Conn Creek and a 90 Grand Mayne. It was a nice way to close a good day.