A Basin: The Skiers’ Mountain

If Colorado was going to give us one final reason not to want to go home, this was it. It was our last day, the snow was falling, our flight back to London was at 10pm and we had absolutely no intention of wasting a minute. Arapahoe Basin isn’t about luxury hotels, polished villages or long lunches. This is a skiers’ mountain, high, gnarly and gloriously unpretentious. And on a powder day, with just hours left before heading for the airport, I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather have finished our trip.

We woke in Frisco to snow pouring out of the sky and the whole town looking like a Christmas card. Under normal circumstances that would be exciting enough, but when it’s the final morning of a ski road trip there’s an added sense of urgency.

This was it.

By 10 o’clock that night we’d be sitting on a plane heading back to London, but between breakfast and the airport there was still time for one last mountain.

And not just any mountain.

A Basin.

Forget the resort, let’s go skiing

If we’d thought pulling our ski boots on beside the car at Copper was roughing it, A Basin quickly recalibrated our expectations.

Because at A Basin, that’s simply what you do.

There is a base area, but this isn’t some enormous purpose built village filled with apartments, boutiques and restaurants. You pull into the car park, open the boot and start getting ready alongside everybody else.

Skis come off roof racks. Boots get pulled on. Jackets are thrown over layers. Someone somewhere is probably already drinking coffee and discussing which part of the mountain they’re heading for first.

Then there is The Beach.

A Basin’s Beach is the front row of parking immediately beside the bottom of the frontside lifts, and the resort rather wonderfully describes it as its “prime ski in ski out real estate.” These are the spots where people gather, grill food, meet friends and effectively turn the front row of the car park into their own little slopeside base camp.

It tells you an awful lot about A Basin.

At another resort, prime slopeside real estate means a five star hotel.

Here, it’s a parking space.

I love that.

The skiers’ mountain

There’s a danger in describing somewhere as a “locals’ mountain” because it can make it sound slightly intimidating, as though visitors are somehow intruding on somebody else’s secret.

A Basin didn’t feel like that at all.

It felt welcoming, friendly and completely unpretentious. It just also felt as though almost everyone around us was there primarily because they really, really liked skiing.

Even A Basin describes itself as a “pure skier’s and rider’s mountain”, and its own media guide sums up the philosophy even more succinctly: “No BS, Just Skiing.”

That’s pretty much it.

The base is small. The mountain is enormous above you. And once you’ve clicked into your skis, you begin to understand why this place has such a loyal following.

Arapahoe Basin has 1,428 acres, around 578 hectares, of terrain, rising to a summit elevation of 13,050 feet, or 3,978 metres, with a vertical drop of 2,530 feet, around 771 metres.

But there’s one statistic that tells you far more about A Basin than any of those.

Seventy three per cent of the mountain is advanced or expert terrain.

This isn’t a mountain pretending to be gnarly.

It actually is.

And then you look up

A Basin is divided into seven distinct mountain areas and there is skiing for intermediates, particularly on the Front Side, where you can get above the treeline and onto wide open groomers surprisingly quickly.

But everywhere you look there seems to be something altogether more serious lurking nearby.

There’s Pallavicini, A Basin’s legendary frontside advanced and expert area, where the terrain is predominantly double black.

There are The Beavers, more than 300 acres of bowls, glades, chutes and powder stashes.

Behind the mountain is Montezuma Bowl, with another 400 acres of wide open skiing, trees and rocky cliffs.

And then things start getting properly serious.

The Steep Gullies are exactly what the name suggests: expert only, steep, narrow, rocky chutes that A Basin describes as some of the most challenging in bounds terrain anywhere in Colorado. Ski them and there’s even a 20 to 30 minute hike required to get yourself back to the base.

Then towering above everything is the East Wall, reaching 13,050 feet and accessed partly by hiking and bootpacking. A Basin describes it as some of its most extreme terrain.

This is not a mountain where you look at every line and think, I’ll have a go at that.

Sometimes you look up and think, absolutely not.

And I rather like a mountain that can do that.

Then add powder

Our final day wasn’t about ticking off famous runs or trying to conquer every intimidating bit of terrain on the map.

It was snowing.

And it didn’t really stop.

The mountain was disappearing beneath fresh snow while we were skiing it, and suddenly this already wild, high altitude place felt even more exciting. Every lift ride seemed to add another layer. Tracks softened. Edges disappeared. Trees collected snow and the mountain became quieter and whiter around us.

This was exactly what we’d been hoping Colorado might give us when we’d first started talking about the trip.

Powder.

Not a carefully timed powder morning followed by lunch and an early finish, either. This was a full on ski day when common sense probably suggested we should be conserving a little energy for the journey home.

Instead we kept skiing.

There is something wonderfully liberating about your final day on a ski trip because there’s nothing to save your legs for. No tomorrow morning. No reason to stop early because you’ve got another big day coming.

You’ve just got today.

And ours happened to be a powder day at A Basin.

Lunch can wait

A Basin does actually have some interesting mountain dining. Black Mountain Lodge serves BBQ at mid mountain, while up at 12,456 feet il Rifugio is a European style bistro that A Basin says is the highest elevation restaurant in North America. There’s even the Steilhang Hut serving German sausages, pretzels and beer.

But that wasn’t really our A Basin experience.

For us, this was a grab something, eat it and get back out there sort of day.

The Legends Café at the base describes itself as the place for a quick breakfast or lunch specifically so you can get back onto the slopes faster, which feels entirely appropriate for A Basin.

Because when fresh snow is still falling and you’re flying home that evening, spending two hours discussing the wine list over lunch seems faintly ridiculous.

Give me a burger.

Where’s the lift?

The party at the bottom

Eventually, inevitably, we had to come down.

The little base area we’d left that morning had changed character completely. Music was playing, people were gathering and there was that wonderfully loose end of ski day atmosphere that A Basin seems particularly good at creating.

The 6th Alley Bar & Grill is at the heart of it, with a two storey deck and a reputation as one of A Basin’s great après gathering spots, where locals, visitors and resort staff all end up together. Live music is part of the scene too.

On our day there were beers being handed out, music playing and a crowd that appeared to have considerably more energy left than I did.

It felt young, fun and slightly chaotic.

At my young and sprightly age, I may even have felt momentarily too old for it.

But that’s part of A Basin’s charm. Nobody seemed particularly worried about whether après was happening in the correct bar or whether they’d booked a table somewhere. People were standing around in ski gear, talking about the day, drinking beer and listening to music with this huge mountain rising immediately behind them.

The car park was part of the resort.

The Beach was part of the resort.

The people were part of it.

A Basin isn’t polished, and I don’t think anybody here wants it to be.

“

Which, I suppose, is exactly how the best ski trips should end.

One last run

Eventually there comes a horrible moment on the final day of every ski trip when you have to accept that the next lift really can’t be the next lift.

We had a flight to catch.

Skis had to go back into bags. Ski boots had to come off. Wet gear needed somehow to become luggage acceptable for an overnight flight and there was still the drive back towards Denver ahead of us.

But standing in that car park, snow still falling around us, I couldn’t help thinking how perfectly A Basin had finished the trip.

We’d started in Denver and driven across Colorado chasing mountains. We’d fallen for Steamboat, arrived at Winter Park in a snowstorm, unexpectedly loved Copper and discovered in Frisco somewhere I’d happily use as a base for the whole thing next time.

Then Colorado gave us this.

One last powder day at perhaps the purest skiers’ mountain of the trip.

No grand hotel waiting for us afterwards. No spa. No long dinner.

Just deep snow, tired legs, music at the bottom of the mountain and a pair of soaking ski boots that somehow had to be packed for a flight to London a few hours later.

It was exhausting.

It was slightly ridiculous.

And it was absolutely brilliant.

As we finally pulled away from A Basin and pointed the car towards Denver, I didn’t feel remotely ready to go home.

Which, I suppose, is exactly how the best ski trips should end.

Colorado hadn’t given us closure. It had simply left us desperate to come back for more.