Colorado - 2022 - Breckenridge?

A snowHead

Hi fellow snowheads I'm after some help please.
Group of 2 couples wishing to go to Colorado in 2022 for 2 week ski holiday.
My husband and I have skied in Canada before Banff, Lake louise, sunshine village etc and loved it and have always fancied Colorado.

We had a quick look and liked the look of Breckenridge can anyone tell us is this a good place to start? or would you recommend another resort. We ideally would like a resort we can ski straight from for most days save us having to drive to each resort like we did in Canada. That said tho we dont mind a couple of days driving out so would Breckenridge be a good base and allow us to visit other resorts easily and that then leads to how does the lift passes work?

We are all competant skiers green, blue, red and black in europe and we did up to 1 black diamond in canada last time and that was 10 years ago so have improved.

Any recommendations on hotel or apartments we would either 2 x double rooms or a 2 bed apartment

Any month better? Jan, Feb, March?

I know you can look on the internet but i just find some sites give you too much blah and id just like the honest truth from people who have been there, love a good recommendation and would like to know do we spend the money and do it?

Thanks for your time

xxxxxx

A snowHead

If you can leave the trip until after January it will allow for snow to accumulate. Avoid Presidents week and be wary of spring break. You could look at the two weeks after Presidents week.
Breckenridge is on the Epic Pass which includes all the Vail resorts (Beaver Creek and Keystone and Vail). The competing pass to Epic is the Ikon pass which would allow time at Aspen/Snowmass (one week) and then Copper Mountain /Arapahoe Basin (second week). For Copper/Abasin you could stay on mountain at Copper or in Frisco or Silverthorne towns.
I prefer the mountains on the Ikon Pass.
You really can’t go wrong with Colorado skiing as long as you don’t go early season in a low snow year.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

tonsky81,

Go for it! We love that part of the world and have skied there 7 times - most recently four years in a row from 2017.

Best value would be to buy an Epic Local season pass, as individual day tickets cost over $200 (yes, 200..) over there. The pass covers Breckenridge, Keystone, Vail and Beaver Creek and you should definitely try them all. I know you say you don't want to travel much but the other ski areas on the lift pass are fantastic. Vail and Beaver Creek are lovely villages (with multi million dollar properties thay have to be seen to be believed) with world class skiing. The back bowls of Vail are brilliant and Blue Sky Basin, at Vail, is, in our opinion, worth the trip alone. Vail is about a 40 minute drive from Breck and Beaver Creek 50 minutes. Keystone however is only about 25 minutes drive - and that also offers fantastic skiing, with very varied terrain; and the biggest night skiing operation in the world.

All the areas have a wide range of terrain, with some great cruising runs at one end of the spectrum and ferocious steeps at the other, with fantastic gladed runs through the trees. And if you are interested in improving your mogul skiing I think there is no better place in the world. We particularly love Keystone for its bump runs (of all gradients) in the trees and usually have the runs to ourselves when we visit (in mid Feb each year).

And if you have a car I would recommend staying at Georgetown on your arrival night. It's only a 70 minute drive from Denver airport and then, on your first ski day, you can ski Loveland, which is only 20 minutes drive. Loveland is a small, local hill but offers excellent skiing, with a good selection of runs - including steeps if you want them. It sits almost on the Continental Divide and has a great snow record. And the great thing is that lift passes are very cheap there. If you buy online before mid November they offer a "4Pak" - which is 4 day tickets for $170. They are all valid all season, so you could use 1 each as a group of four. We enjoy it there a lot, so usually ski our first and last days of the trip there (staying at Georgetown on our final night as well). As the ski passes are so cheap we've skied Loveland a couple of times for only 2 hours on our last morning, before heading to the airport to fly home Very Happy

.
I'd recommend staying in Breckenridge for your first visit, though we now usually stay in other towns (like Dillon, at hotels like Super8) as they are more reasonably priced for accommodation. However, if there are 4 of you, you may well find a reasonably priced condo in Breck.

One word of warning. Food and drink on the mountain is eyewateringly expensive and makes the 3 Valleys seem cheap. Think $7 coffees and $12 for a slice of pizza Shocked

. We prefer to picnic by day and then dine out at night, where meals can be surprisingly inexpensive. Colorado has the highest number of brew pubs (by state) in the USA and the food and drink in them has always been excellent for us.

I'm sure you won't regret the trip - and YES, it's worth the cost (which doesn't have to be prohibitively expensive).

I've just dug out my report of our 2020 Colorado trip. Only a part of it relates to the Breckenridge area but you may nevertheless find it of interest in respect of providing a flavour of Colorado; and it may generate ideas for a future trip for you.

https://snowheads.com/ski-forum/viewtopic.php?p=4576075&highlight=colorado#4576075

You need to Login to know who's really who.

As said above you are going to want an epic local pass. You need to buy it early to get the cheapest price, and they usually stop selling them some point in November, so don't leave it late.

There are a lot of good resorts in Colorado and Breckenridge is up there with the best. Really it comes down to personal preference if Breck is the best for you, but it's by no means a bad starting point. My only "criticism" would be the altitude - base is about 3000m and top is around 4000m. Not enough to ruin your holiday but first couple of days may be a little tough. For that reason I would consider a two base trip: Vail to begin (lower elevation to help acclimatise and easy day trips to Beaver creek). Then Breck after from where you can easily day trip to keystone too. N America doesn't have the 7 day sat to sat model like Europe so shouldn't be an issue finding accomodation for whatever days in each place you would like.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

Breckenridge is a very popular tourist choice and for good reason. Heaps of appartments everywhere and big wide groomers plus some challenging stuff up high. But it is very high so that can be a factor for sleep initially and the skiing goes up to nearly 13000ft at which point you don't feel like doing much hiking. Town in a normal year has heaps of restaurants and bars.

Keystone is dead easy to ski from Breck, just a drive round Swan mtn rd. In fact you can do a morning in Breck then pop over to Keystone in the pm and do some night skiing as well. You definitely would want an Epic pass and to ski Vail and the Beav as well but best pick a non stormday if you're driving Vail pass in a 2wd and avoid Vail at the weekend too ( though frankly Breck is also a shitshow at weekends). Wildcard is Crested Butte also on the Epic pass but that would be more of an early start and overnight trip.

As an alternative to Epic you could buy an Ikon pass and split your time between Winter Park, Steamboat and Copper ( plus Aspen if you pay the supplement) but all 4 would be a stretch in 2 weeks ( and you'd be changing base) unless you really fancy a roadtrip holiday.

You'll need to Register first of course.

Can’t add anything to above but only to say that we stay at Main Street Station condominiums in Breckenridge - we get a one bedroom unit and it’s like a proper flat. We were there for a month last year- very comfortable. I prefer to cook and the facilities are very good for that. We also ski Keystone. I love it. I prefer it to Breck in some ways, but there is a lot to go at in Breck so we alternate between the two.

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

lynnecha,

Sounds good! Very Happy

Which website do you use to book the condo? Puzzled

After all it is free

@tonsky81, We did Aspen a while back and loved it, we didn't want to drive and used the transfer service which was fortunate as we had a massive snow dump on the way. With Aspen there is a choice of where you can ski we also liked that there is a proper town, can't comment on other Colorado areas as we haven't done them, we were worried that eating out in the evening was going to be expensive, we only had one meal that was slightly eye watering , on mountain it didn't seem to worse that skiing in France.

Altitude was an issue for Mrs Radar for the first few days, like you we have done Banff and Whistler and never hired a car, the buss service to Snowmass and Buttermilk are excellent and run late.

We used Ski Independence to help plan our trip, they were excellent

*Ski* the Net with snowHeads

Comments on the towns/villages:
- Keystone, Vail, Beaver Creek, and Copper Mountain are resort villages with mostly condos, tourist shops, and restaurants
- Breckenridge is a proper town with old buildings, and some atmosphere
- if you have a car and want to save $, the towns of Dillon and Frisco are options for more inexpensive lodging and dining. But
parking can be a real pain at Breck and Vail on the weekends, and you will have to pay.

Lift tickets:
- if you planned to ski just at the Epic Pass resorts, the full season Epic Local pass is probably the best option. If you wanted to
do a few days at Loveland, A-Basin, and/or Copper, Epic also sells a 3-9 day pass that might be a bit cheaper. As noted, lift tix for Loveland
are cheap (often available on Liftopia) and there are specials for Copper Mountain as well.

Loveland, A-Basin, and Copper are easily reached from Dillon. as is Keystone. You could stay in Dillon for part of the trip and ski those resorts,
then in Breck or Vail and ski Breck/Vail/Beaver Creek.

Vail is geographically very long (from East Vail to the areas west of BC is over 10 miles), and there are tons of lodging options, but you
have to weigh price against access. Just about everything in Beaver Creek is pricey. Airbnb/vrbo would probably be decent options to
look for lodging in Dillon/Frisco/Silverthorne.

Be aware that at Colorado altitudes, when the winter weather gets bad, it can be very difficult driving.

snowHeads are a friendly bunch.

@Bergmeister, we book through Ski Independence. They are great. They were unbelievable when we were there at the time the US travel ban was imposed last March and COVID really kicked off. They went above and beyond to get us home. We wouldn’t book any other way.

snow reports

BTW, Frisco and Keystone easy to get to from Breckenridge on the free buses from the bus station.

I'd add that Silverthorne is equally suited to an 'off the mountain' base. I'd avoid the bigger tourist spots like the plague at the weekend and Brekenridge for all its good slopes has a lot of visitors that you may find . . . ummmm. . . VERY American, and not in the good way. Copper has quite a European feel with a real spread of difficulty and a much softer vibe with some very good eating. For the weekends I'd suggest Leadville. Ugly but lovely with a mostly ancient infrastructure, some serious off trail runs and an apres ski attitude that can rival Mayfhofen. It's also good value.

I know this winter is a write off so I'll not do a driving route post for Denver . . . Trust me, right now you really would not want to head to hills from Denver Airport, whatever part of I70 hasn't been knocked down or closed down has fallen down and when 5 lanes funnel into 1 . . . just use you imagination Evil or Very Mad

You know it makes sense.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

Thankyou so much all of you this information is great and very helpful. I knoew i could count on snowheads to point us in the right direction Very Happy

Help!!

Colorado - 2022 - Breckenridge?

snowHeads Forum Index >>> Resort Reviews and Trip Reports