Beaver Creek

Beaver Creek is supposed to be a luxury ski resort which caters to a wealthier clientele. I headed over there for the first time today and I had high expectations. Beaver Creek is about 10 minutes down the road from Vail (50 minutes from breck). I began to see how things were different there as soon as a got to the parking lot. There are Beaver Creek staff in the parking lot who practically run over to you and take your skis away so you don't have to carry them to the bus. I rode the bus up to the lift and headed up onto the mountain. Another thing Beaver Creek is renowned for is the grooming of the slopes. Many of the runs on the mountain are immaculately groomed with perfect corduroy. I have never seen such perfect grooming in my life. A lot of the runs are groomed in the morning so they don't get icy. I spent the first few hours exploring the mountain to get a feel for the place. One annoying thing in the morning was that there was one big cloud that was covering the resort. It was the only cloud in the sky and it basically only covered the resort. North on the other side of the freeway it was sunny, and it was sunny at the extreme southern edges of the resort as well, but the bulk of the resort was dark and cold. It took a few hours for the cloud to move out of the way. BC is a pretty big resort (comparable to Breckenridge in size) but it has very different terrain from the other nearby resorts I have skied at. The altitude is lower than breck so there is no terrain above treeline. Most of the steeper runs have moguls on them. If you like to ski bumps, Beaver Creek is definitely the place for you. One run I skied down was the easiest double black diamond I have ever skied on (not counting double blacks in socal). It was called golden eagle and it looked like it had been groomed a few days earlier. It was a bit icy, but not terribly steep and it did not have moguls. Overall the snow conditions were not that great. The groomed runs seemed to get icy in the afternoon. I'll have to come back when I get better at skiing moguls. Other luxury aspects of Beaver Creek include: a magic carpet (kind of like the flat escalators at airports) that takes you from one chairlift to another at the main base area, multiple restaurants (I think five or six) on the mountains which are reservations only and best of all the guest services people give out cookies to all of the guests when they come off the mountain at the end of the day (I left too early to get a cookie, but I've heard this from other people). I liked the resort a lot, but I'm not so sure it is worth the drive, especially when you have to drive past Vail to get there.