Trip Take: Copper Mountain
Our family wrapped up the 2023 ski season with a trip to Copper Mountain. I’d never skied at Copper, and it had been years since Mark had. Because we so often see signs for it on our way to points farther west on I-70, visiting Copper seemed like an attractive, simple Spring Break choice.
Trip Take: Stratton
I’ve always found the regional ski wars a little silly. Easterners extol their local peaks and the gritty skills their mountains teach, while western devotees singing the praises of powder and 12,000-foot summits. Which is “better”? Who has ultimate bragging rights? My take: who cares? The reality is that skiing in the East is just DIFFERENT than skiing out west. There’s no question that western snow is easier to ski and more reliable, but northeastern skiing has its virtues.
Trip Take: Winter Park
We consider signing our kids up for lessons every time we take a trip. Z still needs the confidence to stay parallel on the steeps, and H needs to ski with kids more capable than his sister so he can be challenged and seek out real adventure. When we made the shift to Winter Park for the holiday weekend, we discovered that all-day group lessons were available for kids of all abilities, and conveniently, all lessons depart from the same base area. The terrain at Winter Park is varied and interesting, and lessons were $70 less expensive than group offerings at Sun Valley had been. We were sold.
Trip Take: Sun Valley
The Base Kamp crew just finished up winter break with five days at Sun Valley (ID). Sun Valley, still independently owned, switched its pass affiliation from Epic to Ikon last season. Since we, too, made the decision to switch to Ikon this year, trying Sun Valley made perfect sense. We knew its reputation as the great ski getaway of Hollywood’s golden age, and we’d heard lots about its legendary grooming, charming, unpretentious town, and gorgeous scenery. When we were able to find affordable, direct flights from Chicago, the deal was sealed.
Ski Trip Packing Tips
One advantage of our commitment to early season skiing was that we had fully tested our outerwear and equipment and were comfortable with it. We knew what every family member needed to pack for a long weekend of skiing. The biggest challenge was making our necessities to fit into a manageable number of bags! Taking a vacation with young kids is never easy, and traveling with ski equipment definitely increases the difficulty level. Here are some tips.
All-In!
Planning for the 2020-21 ski season wasn’t easy. The mountains were forced to deal with constantly shifting local and state restrictions and fluctuating infection rates, so information (especially related to ski lesson costs and details) was vague and late coming. We had to accept early on that of our plans could be interrupted by Covid at any time. How did we make it work? Read on!