Travel: Beaver Creek, Colorado

Published on Tuesday 24 January 2012 00:00

With vast, nearly deserted runs, excellent ski schools and an adrenaline rush for those who want it, Beaver Creek in Colorado has more family-friendly attractions than you can shake a stick at writes Richard Bath

I F YOU know anything at all about Beaver Creek, it is probably the fact that it is so flash that they heat the pavements so the snow melts. The other thing you might think you know about BC, as the locals call it, is that the skiing is easy and boring. This is untrue, as we soon found out when we visited America’s most famously quaffed and manicured ski resort.

It’s an easy mistake to make because BC is home to endless groomers, as the motorway-width beginner and intermediate slopes that make up almost two thirds of the resort’s 150 runs are called. These are often gentle slopes, largely unoccupied except by the odd Wall Street banker on his winter break. This is, after all, a place that’s so well-heeled that one run – my favourite, as it happens – is named President’s Run in honour of Gerald Ford, who virtually lived here in his latter years.

The lack of skiers at Beaver Creek will stun anyone who has ever needed sharp elbows and a heightened sense of self-preservation to survive the worst excesses of rampaging herds of French holidaymakers. So sparsely populated are some of the immaculately groomed runs that the ‘corduroy’ pattern left by the resort’s 52 piste-bashers is still intact long into the morning.

But for those of us whose buttons are not pushed by the gentle groomers, BC has much to offer in its 1,800 acres and 4,000ft elevation. First, there’s the Birds of Prey, the fabled World Cup downhill course that forms part of the Talons. This is what’s categorised in the US as a double black diamond, but for anyone who’s skied in Europe it’s a simple black run, and a hugely fun one at that. Pat, my telemarketing ski pal who lives in neighbouring Vail, may have been quicker down the hill than me, but there was plenty of enjoyment to be had in trying to catch him.

Even better fun are the back bowls, the trees in general and the aspens in particular. These are perfect for beginner tree-skiers because they grow in evenly spaced glades and have no branches, allowing you to skip in between them without any serious danger of injury. We visited shortly after a decent dump of snow – the average snowfall in a season here is more than 22ft – and even days later there were stashes of fluffy powder hidden among the trees, a happy side-effect of having a clientele that is not composed, as so many resorts in Colorado are, of semi-feral powder monkeys.

Also worth checking out is the Nordic Ski Centre. This is Marmite: you either like it or you don’t. I love it, and spent a very happy morning gliding through the Colorado countryside alongside an incredibly chipper former British naval officer who has made his life in this part of the world.

Most of all, however, Beaver Creek is unbeatable if you want to get your children to an almost undreamed-of level of proficiency within a week. This, in fact, was why my 13-year-old son Ollie and I had come to Beaver Creek. He had fallen behind his brother and sister and, worried that he might hold us all back, had gone off to do his own thing. For a shot of confidence, I brought him to the fabled ski school at BC and waited to see the difference.

I had expected (and half-wanted) to be there during his lessons, but instead he was whisked away for a group lesson that left at 9am every morning and deposited him back at 4pm. Fortunately we were staying at the swish new Osprey Lodge, by the base station, so he could simply make his own way back to one of the most comfortable hotels it has been my good fortune to stay in.

It was an arrangement that worked perfectly: Pat and I could go and tear the place up, pretending we were 21-year-olds, even heading off one day to the nearby resort of Keystone for some off-piste Cat skiing in outrageously deep powder, while Ollie was knocked into shape and invariably back in the room before me.

At various stages throughout the week I would catch a glimpse of Ollie in the trees or on one of the four terrain parks or halfpipe, and could see just how good his teacher must have been because the boy who had skied with hunched shoulders, hanging off the back, was now giving it laldy.

By the end of the week, much to my horror, he could go down difficult off-piste slopes quicker than me, a transformation that was confirmed when he got home and got into the school ski team. Even better was his teacher’s parting gift – a DVD of Ollie and his four classmates that had been filmed by his instructor throughout week from his headcam, which is now a treasured possession.

Nor is Beaver Creek just about what happens out on the slopes. It’s not somewhere you go for outrageous nightlife, but the buzzy centre of the ‘village’ has some decent restaurants that are a fraction of the cost of their haute cuisine European counterparts, not to mention several pizza and easy-eating options. Pre-dinner is dominated by the open-air ice rink right in the centre, where all the youngsters go to let off steam just before sitting down to eat.

As for the accommodation, or what the Americans call ‘lodging’, there is an enormous amount of options at the resort. Top of the range is the ski-in, ski-out Ritz-Carlton at Bachelor Gulch, one of the two outlying ‘villages’ within the resort. This hotel is fairy-tale kitsch, the sort of luxury venue where nothing is too much trouble (the owner of one of Britain’s biggest ski companies spent his honeymoon here, which probably provides some sense of how special it is). You would need a pretty strong constitution to sign the credit card bill after a week at the Ritz-Carlton, but there is much cheaper, family-oriented lodging at Arrowhead, which is also connected to the slopes by one of the resort’s 17 lifts.

Ultimately, Beaver Creek isn’t for adrenaline junkies or party animals, but if you want a relaxed week’s skiing Stateside with your family, with the chance of a little speed on the side, few places can beat it.

• Richard Bath travelled with Ski Independence (0131-243 8097, www.ski-i.com), whose packages to Beaver Creek start from £1,376 per person for a seven-night stay

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