With an intimate, laid-back mountain scene, family-friendly Beaver Creek has been quietly amassing a devoted following since 1980. World-class but not too showy, the resort does upscale on a smaller scale. Its unusual layout puts beginners at the top: A cluster of gentle green runs at the 11,440-foot summit of Beaver Creek Mountain -- Red Buffalo, Jack Rabbit Alley, and Flattops among them -- lets newbies experience high-altitude mountain views typically accessible only to experienced skiers.
Beano's Cabin offers an unusual dining experience. Page E5.
Lest you think this mountain is tame, however, there's a lot more ground to cover -- namely, the Talons. With 40 trails covering about a third of the mountain's skiable acreage, this expert territory extends from the Birds of Prey Express Lift to Grouse Mountain Express and over to Larkspur Bowl. This season, the site already has played host to four World Cup races.
This year, Beaver Creek has added a super-pipe to supplement three other freestyle terrain areas and built two new high-speed, four-person chairs, which provide faster and more convenient service from the resort's lower parking lot and the Bachelor Gulch area back to Beaver Creek's main base village. Bachelor Gulch is a recent development on the ski hill; it includes a Ritz-Carlton hotel with its posh residence club and Remington's restaurant, a great place to have a light lunch and watch skiers glide down the slope.
The trails we zoom down are on National Forest System lands, and the mountain is managed in partnership with the Forest Service. From the lifts, we spot meandering fox and rabbit tracks between tree areas purposefully designed to give animals shelter as they make their way across the mountain.
On the other side of the ridge from Bachelor Gulch, we find Beaver Creek's main base village is just as carefully planned. It's a compact, pedestrian-only center with high-end restaurants, galleries, shops, an ice rink, even a performance center. Heated escalators carry visitors from the lower village to the base of Centennial Express, the resort's central high-speed quad. Free shuttles run to and from the village; several ski-ways also link the base area to Beaver Creek's ski-in, ski-out properties.
