Beaver Creek VS Breckenridge

Just got back from the trip - we had a blast. Here's a quick trip report.

The first day, we of course skied Vail.

We did a whirlwind tour of going through the mountain - we skied China Bowl, Blue Sky Basin, and Northwood area. The snow was soft everywhere.

We did a few different lines through Dragon's Teeth in China Bowl. Fun stuff, but the fun part was rather short, as the bowl mellows very quickly.

Lover's Leap was good - good steep section at the top with good soft snow. I entered right next to the sign (above the big boulder), and my kids went further down the ridge to pick more gentle entrance. Prima was a solid mogul run. It was good but it's not very steep - I don't quite understand why they mark it as double black diamonds. I think the run is pretty much comparable to Little Dipper in Heavenly. We wanted to hit Pronto as well, but I missed that split.

One mistake I made on the first day was going through Sleepytime Road. I didn't realize it was that long - if I knew, I'd have avoided it and either took Sourdough or Sun Up lift. Unless you enjoy long narrow blue cat track, you should avoid Sleepytime Road (especially the portion after Sun Up Lift). It was mindlessly boring for us (compared to that, Skyline Trail in Heavenly has nice scenery to enjoy throughout and is much much shorter).

The second day, I decided to try Beaver Creek, to see if they have more sustained steep pitch, as we were slightly disappointed about Vail's steeps - they (Lover's Leap and Prima) were a lot of fun, but not challenging enough. It turns out BC was very icy/hard packed (my kids now call BC "the ice mountain"), except for moguls under Grouse Mountain / Birds of Prey / Larkspur. Golden Eagle was, as expected, icy and steep - I can't say I had fun there. But other runs with moguls - Peregrine / Raven Ridge / Osprey / Loco, etc - were all great, as nice sustained steeps with good soft snow and nicely shaped moguls. And, compared to Vail, there wasn't a lot of "blue cruisers" you have to go through before or after those steeps, so I covered a lot more verticals at BC than at Vail. It also helped that there was no crowd at all at BC on the day, so practically no wait at the lifts, especially those three. It's also nice that those three chairs are right next to each other. I didn't try Royal Elk Glade, as the snow condition wasn't that great (I consider icy + steep + tight trees a deadly combo), but I can see it would be great in the right snow condition - looking from the lift, it seemed very comparable to Mott in Heavenly, slightly longer but less wide.

The third day, it snowed >3 inches overnight, and continued snowing through the morning - i.e. a powder day. Not a super deep powder day, but still a solid powder day. So we headed to Vail.

We did Sun Up and Sun Down bowls. My wife struggled quite a bit in the powder (we already knew she's not comfortable in powder), but the rest of us had a blast. We did multiple runs off Highnoon Express and Tea Cup Express, covering most of the sides of bowls. Some of the first runs were fresh tracks. Unfortunately, China Bowl / Blue Sky Basin was closed that day. We also did Prima-Pronto. Pronto was slightly more challenging with deeper moguls, but it felt too short - as it doesn't take many turns to finish. After the trip, someone told me about PPL (Prima-Pronto-Log Chute) line being considered a good bump run combination in Vail - next time, we'll definitely try that.

The fourth (and the last) day, we hit Vail again, as we knew fresh snow was still to be found, and there were plenty of runs we still wanted to hit but haven't had time. We headed straight to Blue Sky Basin, and was rewarded with a few runs with fresh tracks - the very first run there was right below Skyline Express. That was a fantastic powder run - fresh tracks almost the entire way. Then we did Lover's Leap again, this time I hit the other side of the big exposed boulder (not the one in the picture below, but further left not visible in the picture) in Lover's Leap - on the first day I hit the higher/left side from looking up - and my daughter tried much higher line than the first day. Here's the picture of her victory dance:

Then we hit Pete's Express and follow the lift line, and was rewarded with some fresh tracks in the trees (though by this time easily accessible areas were already tracked).

Before (late) lunch, we hit the cornice in China Bowl (around Jade Glade / Genghis Khan), then after lunch, after a few more China Bowl runs, we finally hit Inner Mongolia Bowl - I was going to try Siberia Bowl, but it didn't seem to have anything unique (compared to other bowls), so we took Mongolia lift and went to Inner Mongolia Bowl. It turns out Inner Mongolia is even less interesting, as the bowl was so gentle - the only advantage of Mongolia Bowl seems to be less tracked snow, but given that you have to take the flat and lengthy Silk Road back, it doesn't seem worth. At that point, we were basically out of time - by the time we arrived at Lionshead, it was nearly 4:20.

Overall, it was an excellent trip - lots of fun skiing on (mostly) excellent snow.

Vail is fantastic on powder days. It's a great resort for relaxing and enjoying the snow. It's certainly not a resort with a lot of challenges for advanced skier. BC has many good leg burners.

PS. Lionshead side doesn't really have anything interesting for advanced, and is farther away from the Back Bowls. So if you're advanced, you should stay or park in Vail Village and hit Gondola One or Riva Bahn as your first lift up in the morning.

PS2. Apparently Tahoe resorts (esp. Squaw and Kirkwood) have quite a different standard for a "black diamond" run than Vail, and to a lesser degree, BC. I think at least 50% of "black diamond" runs in Vail would be considered blues at most Tahoe resorts. Reading this thread back, now I realize some people who responded don't know much about some of the runs in Tahoe I mentioned.