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Vail
 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead

Resort: Vail
Country: USA
State: Colorado

Date: 29th Jan 2016 to 6th Feb 2016
Our Party: 3 skiers, early intermediate to early advanced and 1 boarder, very advanced
Website : www.vail.com
Basics : about an hours drive from Breckenridge and about 2 hours to Denver. The drive out on a saturday could take a while though due to all the weekenders. The town is about 2450m above sea level with skiable terrain up to about 1000m above that.
Lift system : open seats with one drag lift, some are a bit slow.
The terrain : separated into front side and back bowls. As we only really used the front side to come home, I can't really tell you much about it, (too busy playing 'round the back.)
So, the back bowls (inc Blue Sky Basin). Vail is really all about the back bowls when the snow falls. And it did. We had 11" one day, 14" the next and 'only' 5" another day, with odd top ups for the rest of the week! The bowls are pretty much all single diamond blacks, although some are rather steep for single blacks. Boarders should watch out for the run outs along the bottom of some bowls (& the silk road if the snow is slow) and need to keep speed up to make it out. Masses of tree skiing if that's your thing, from widely spaced areas to 'pigging dense' (the trees to skiers left of Heavy Metal qualify for 'pigging dense' and were great fun). Favourite runs for me would be Inner Mongolia and Heavy Metal.

The snow : Masses, never seen so much in one week. We were so lucky! (Especially as the East coast had 30-40" in one day!)
Off-piste : Just go to the back bowls and Blue Sky Basin, there should be enough for eveyone, but hurry because on a powder day the world and his wife seem to get there to play, and lift queues lengthened accordingly.

The resort : Vail is posh. With bronze statues on every corner, heated roads and pavements (sorry, sidewalks) and prices to match. It's so posh that there didn't seem to be a supermarket, only a small general store. ( I think one gets ones butler to do the shopping elsewhere when one is out on the slopes!)
Food : As above, one can eat cheaply if you look. Garfinkels does a mean burger, there's a good, cheap pizza place and the mexican in the bus terminal is super cheap and pretty good too. The Nepalese curry to be had in The Evergreen Lodge is great. Talking of which, the Altitude Bar there is always busy with 3 free pool tables, a table football and a damn silly moose shoot game!
Accommodation : Stayed in the Evergreen Lodge Hotel. Perfectly ok, in the middle of Vail and Lionshead with a bus stop by the library/ice rink. Took the B&B option but breakfast can be added for $12.95 plus tax. Talking of which, it's a buffet style breakfast which is as big or small as you want, we made a sandwich each to take up the mountain for lunch and no one seemed to mind.
Costs: If it wasn't for the Evergreen we wouldn't be able to ski in Vail I suspect. Oakley, Patagonia and Burton have there own shops here, not just a shelf in someone else's store! There's a designer fur shop, and an up market jewelers too, need I say more?
Conclusion: Amazing place to ski, something for everyone I think except for maybe steep black groomers (like La Face at Val D'Isere). Loved it, I'd go back tomorrow if the boss would give me more time off. In fact I'd live there if I won the lottery...twice!

There are other smaller resorts like Beaver Creek & Arapahoe Basin which can be accessed on the same lift pass, but we were too busy playing in the back bowls to go anywhere else!

There are plenty of on mountain eateries that one can stop in to eat ones own lunch although no where near as many as Breck which has warming huts all over the place. It's a real change to ski in the USA. It makes the French attitude look somewhat churlish and money grabbing. I love France but USA/Canada skiing is so much more civilised. The toilets are clean and don't smell, and there are free paper handkerchiefs everywhere, and free drinking water too!

Just beware of a powder day...there's no friends on a powder day! Having said that, the vast majority of the seats on the lifts were all filled by the singles line and there was no pushing in.

Might be worth going to the outlet malls in Dillon (I think) before you go if you want to buy anything
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