Into the Storm: The Road to Winter Park

There are times on a ski road trip when the weather completely rewrites the plan. We left Steamboat still talking about its tree skiing and hot springs, pointed the car back towards the Rockies and watched the weather gradually close in around us. By the time we reached Winter Park, snow was hammering down. Sensible people might have checked in, unpacked and waited for the morning, but we had an Ikon Pass in our pockets, a couple of hours of daylight left and a mountain disappearing beneath fresh snow. There was only ever going to be one outcome.

One of the joys of a Colorado road trip is that leaving one resort doesn’t feel like the end of anything. Normally there’s a slightly melancholy moment on a ski holiday when the skis go back in the bag and you know the skiing is over. We didn’t have that. We were leaving Steamboat, which we’d absolutely loved, but there was another mountain waiting at the other end of the drive and, as we made our way towards Winter Park, another rather important ingredient was being added to the equation.

Snow.

At first it was just a few flakes, but the closer we got, the more serious it became. The roads turned white, the mountains began disappearing into cloud and those little flakes became the sort of proper Colorado snowfall that has you peering through the windscreen while simultaneously wondering what it must be doing to the mountain.

By the time we pulled into Winter Park it was hammering down, and arriving at Zephyr Mountain Lodge, right at the base of the resort, was one of those wonderfully exciting moments when all the sensible things you’re supposed to do on arrival suddenly become completely irrelevant.

We needed to check in. We needed to take our bags upstairs. We probably needed to work out where everything was.

Instead, we hurriedly started changing into our ski gear in reception, dumped our bags and headed for the mountain. I remember briefly wondering whether our luggage would still be sitting there when we got back and then realising I didn’t particularly care. It was snowing, the lifts were still running and the skiing was literally right outside the door.

Our bags could look after themselves.

Sometimes you just have to go

This is where having the Ikon Pass came into its own again. If we’d had to walk into a ticket office and buy an afternoon lift pass with only a couple of hours left, there’s every chance common sense would have prevailed. You start doing the mental arithmetic, wondering whether it’s worth buying a ticket now and convincing yourself that perhaps waiting until tomorrow would be more sensible.

With the pass already in our pockets, none of that entered the equation. Within minutes of arriving we were clicking into our skis and heading uphill, watching the snow continue to fall around us.

There’s something rather decadent about arriving at a ski resort halfway through an afternoon and being able to think, we might as well have a ski. And there’s something even better about doing it when every minute you’re standing around is another minute of fresh snow falling onto the mountain.

Almost immediately Winter Park felt different from Steamboat.

Steamboat had seduced us with its trees, western town, hot springs and personality. Winter Park felt somehow more elemental, higher and, on that afternoon at least, considerably wilder. Snow was falling hard enough to soften everything around us, visibility came and went and tracks were disappearing almost as quickly as people were making them.

We’d arrived wondering whether the weather might ruin our afternoon. Instead it had created one of those wonderfully memorable arrivals when you feel ridiculously fortunate simply to be there.

A mountain with some serious scale

Winter Park is only around 70 miles from Denver, making it the closest major ski resort to the city, but standing on the mountain it feels a world away.

And it’s big. Winter Park currently has 3,081 acres, around 1,246 hectares, of skiable terrain, 171 trails and 23 lifts. The resort base is already at 2,743 metres and the highest skiing reaches 3,676 metres, giving you 933 metres of vertical. It also receives more than 344 inches, around 875cm, of snow in an average year.

The statistic that perhaps tells you most about Winter Park, though, is the terrain split. Only eight per cent is classified as beginner terrain, while 19 per cent is advanced, 52 per cent most difficult and another three per cent expert only.

Don’t take that to mean intermediates won’t enjoy it, because they absolutely will. In fact, one of the things we particularly liked was how easy it was to have very different ski experiences on the same mountain.

You can spend the morning cruising long, beautifully skiable groomers while stronger skiers keep spotting interesting places to disappear into the trees, bumps and more technical terrain, often before everyone naturally comes together again further down. For a group of mates or a family where everyone doesn’t necessarily want to ski exactly the same thing all day, that’s gold. Nobody feels as though they’re constantly compromising.

And then there’s Mary Jane.

No pain, no Jane

You can’t really talk about Winter Park without talking about Mary Jane.

Mary Jane became part of Winter Park in 1975 and over the following half century developed an almost cult like following for its bumps, trees and steep, largely ungroomed skiing. There’s even a slogan for it: No Pain, No Jane™.

You quickly understand why skiers become attached to it because Mary Jane isn’t particularly interested in making skiing easy for you. That’s precisely the attraction.

This is where the mountain starts asking a little more. Runs become steeper, bumps appear and those lovely flowing turns you were making earlier suddenly require considerably more concentration. Almost 60 per cent of Mary Jane’s terrain is classified as most difficult and its steep ungroomed trails and moguls are absolutely central to its identity.

Your thighs will probably provide any further statistical analysis required.

But that’s what makes Winter Park interesting. You can dial the mountain up or down according to your mood, your ability, your legs and, importantly on our visit, what the weather happens to be doing. You can spend hours cruising beautifully groomed terrain or go looking for trees, bumps and something altogether more testing.

And when fresh snow is falling around you, the whole mountain becomes an enormous playground.

High into the Rockies

One of the things you really notice at Winter Park is the altitude. The resort base is at 2,743 metres, already higher than the summit of plenty of European ski areas, while Parsenn Bowl and The Cirque take you right up to 3,676 metres.

Head up on the Panoramic Express and the mountain changes again. The trees begin to disappear, the landscape becomes wider and more exposed and suddenly you’re in proper high alpine terrain, with huge views across the Continental Divide when the weather allows.

Parsenn Bowl includes intermediate as well as advanced terrain, which is another thing I like about Winter Park. You don’t necessarily have to be an expert skier to experience that sense of being right up on top of the Rockies.

On our trip, of course, the weather had other ideas about those enormous views. There were moments when we could barely see anything, but there’s something wonderfully intoxicating about skiing in a storm when you know the mountain is getting better around you.

Every time you ride the lift, another layer is falling. Every time you come back down, the tracks from the previous run have softened and begun to disappear. Instead of sitting in a bar looking through the window and wondering what tomorrow might bring, you’re actually out there skiing tomorrow’s snow as it arrives.

Life at the base

Staying at Zephyr Mountain Lodge worked brilliantly for this trip because you’re right there in the Village at Winter Park. We’d proved that within minutes of arriving by getting changed in reception and skiing almost before we’d properly checked in.

The village itself isn’t somewhere I’d suggest coming purely for its nightlife or culinary scene. It’s perfectly formed, incredibly tidy, very pleasant and has that immaculate American ski resort feel where everything seems to work exactly as it should. There are shops, cafés, bars and restaurants clustered around the gondola, and staying there means you can park the car and largely forget about it.

It’s compact rather than sprawling, though. You’re not going to stay for a fortnight and discover a different corner of the village every evening, but there’s easily enough there to make a week’s stay work without constantly needing to head into town.

We particularly liked Coffee & Tea Market in the mornings. It became our easy start to the day: good coffee, breakfast, a really relaxed atmosphere and all sorts of artefacts and things covering the walls that you find yourself studying while you’re waiting. It felt individual rather than corporate, and quickly became one of those little holiday routines where by the second morning you don’t really discuss where you’re going for breakfast because you already know.

There are plenty of other options around the village. Vertical Bistro & Tap gives you a proper sit down dinner and drinks, Stoney’s Winter Park is more casual American bar and grill territory, Pizza Pedal’r handles the pizza craving and Lime Cantina adds Mexican into the mix. There are après options including Derailer Bar, while places such as Goody’s Creperie, Waffle Cabin, Mary’s Mountain Cookies and Pow Pow Donuts take care of those moments when apparently skiing all day hasn’t provided quite enough calories.

Moffat Market in West Portal Station also operates almost like a little food hall, with everything from breakfast burritos and tacos to dumplings, soup, pizza and burgers.

It’s all very easy and very casual, which suited us perfectly.

One evening we ate at Vertical Bistro & Tap, and that gave us another little dose of the America we’d come looking for. There’s something I love about finishing a day on a Colorado mountain and sitting down somewhere relaxed for a big meal and a drink, still talking about where you’d skied that day and what you might try tomorrow.

But Winter Park has another side to it too.

Then there’s downtown

This is an important distinction because the Village at Winter Park and downtown Winter Park are not really the same experience.

The resort base is the slick, compact, purpose built version: gondola, accommodation, ski shops, restaurants and bars all conveniently clustered together.

Head into downtown and things become much more like a proper Colorado mountain town.

US 40 runs straight through it and restaurants, bars, pizza joints, barbecue places, breweries and cafés are dotted along the road rather than arranged neatly around a pedestrianised resort square. It’s less polished and considerably more varied, and if you’re staying for a week I’d absolutely mix evenings at the resort base with nights down in town.

There’s Deno’s Mountain Bistro, a long established local institution for steaks, seafood and pasta; Hernando’s Pizza Pub for that classic American mountain town pizza night; Randi’s Grill & Pub for hearty pub food; and Idlewild Spirits, which adds a more contemporary craft distillery feel.

Then you start finding things you might not necessarily expect in a Colorado ski town, with Spanish influenced food, Cajun style cooking and Mexican, Asian and Nepalese options adding considerably more variety.

That’s really the distinction I’d make with Winter Park. At the mountain base you’ve got enough good, casual restaurants and bars to keep you perfectly happy and everything is wonderfully easy. Downtown gives you the choice and the slightly more individual Colorado flavour.

Together, the two work rather well.

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It simply felt like a huge Colorado mountain full of people who wanted to ski.

The sort of mountain that makes you want to ski

Some resorts are as much about everything surrounding the skiing as the mountain itself.

Winter Park, for me, was about the skiing.

It has that slightly addictive quality where you keep looking at the trail map and wondering what’s over there. There are effectively two distinct mountains, Winter Park and Mary Jane, but within them are areas including Parsenn Bowl, Vasquez Ridge, Eagle Wind and The Cirque, and each changes the character of the day.

Vasquez Ridge gets you away from some of the main traffic. Parsenn takes you high and open. Eagle Wind takes you back into serious tree skiing. The Cirque offers some of the mountain’s most demanding terrain, and then Mary Jane is waiting to remind your legs that perhaps you’re not quite finished yet.

The clever bit is that you don’t need everyone in your group to want the same experience. There were countless times when one of us could disappear into something more interesting while the other took a different line and we’d naturally come together again further down.

With fresh snow falling, it becomes one enormous playground.

And there was something else we noticed about Winter Park. It feels like somewhere people come because they really like skiing.

The resort opened in January 1940 and describes itself as Colorado’s longest continually operated ski resort, while Mary Jane developed its own fiercely loyal following after opening in 1975. You sense some of that history and ski culture on the mountain.

There’s less emphasis on being seen and more emphasis on finding another run. People talk about where the snow is good, which trees are skiing well and whether you should head over to Mary Jane. You get the impression that quite a lot of the people around you know this mountain intimately.

I rather liked that because despite the scale of Winter Park, it never felt intimidating or showy. It simply felt like a huge Colorado mountain full of people who wanted to ski.

Which, given why we were there, suited us perfectly.