Vail

Somehow I feel strange sharing selfies on the public internet. I mean, my face is fine or whatever, but it feels, I don’t know, a little self-indulgent? But taking photos of feels perfectly acceptable for some reason.

Maybe, on some level, only ; perhaps , too?

Itinerary

Baba and I traveled to Vail with a couple of friends on Monday, March 10th. We stayed at an AirBnb in East Vail for four nights, departing on Friday.

The town of Vail is strangely oblong, as it is nestled in a canyon right along Interstate 70. Our condo was in East Vail, which had fairly easy bus access to Vail Ski Resort. I always feel daunted by the logistics of unfamiliar ski areas, but Vail is blessedly easy, and it would be very feasible to rely on buses and skip renting a car entirely.

Vail

Vail’s main value proposition is that it contains huge tracts of land, with large and luxurious bowls on the backside of the mountain. Unfortunately, this has been a sad year for snowfall in the Rockies, so the snow at Vail was a bit crunchy and scrapey in most places.

Vail Ski Resort contains multitudes, though, and we found plenty of decent groomed trails and mogul fields. We spent a lot of time traveling between different areas of the mountain - size is the price of itself, I guess? And although the mid-week crowds were manageable, I would definitely avoid skiing at Vail on a weekend or holiday.

Also, coffee was $7???

At least they don't charge you for peeing

Beaver Creek

Beaver Creek Ski Resort is about 15 minutes down the road west of Vail, so we spent a couple of our days skiing there.

Beaver Creek is much less crowded than Vail and has lots of tantalizing terrain. There are no bountiful bowls, but some tremendous mogul runs, which sparks a lot of joy for me.

On Friday, we were #blessed by a few inches of snow, which enabled us to take some aggressively intrepid adventures off-piste, flouncing about in the trees along Royal Elk Glade and also in other places that were, uh, moderately ill-advised.

Most of my body hurts today, especially my neck. (This is because I fell on my head multiple times - please don’t tell my mom.) I currently need to use my hand to support my neck like a newborn 🫠 I’m sure it’s probably fine?

It really is a magical experience to float through the forest, like Bambi in that scene where he goes through puberty and does ketamine? Or something? I remember he was jumping around in some clouds, and there a cute girl deer, and… ? Anyway, that is what skiing is like, probably.

Final Thoughts

Beaver Creek > Vail, don’t @ me lol