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About Crested Butte, Colorado
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Friendly town. Serious slopes.
Crested Butte offers extreme skiing and country dining in a relaxed, friendly atmosphere.
By Pamela LeBlanc
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, November 27, 2005
CRESTED BUTTE — Perched on a chair lift zipping up Mount Crested Butte, I peer through a pair of all-weather goggles at some of the steepest, nastiest terrain I've ever seen at a ski resort.
The face looks so sheer, so precipitous, it seems like you'd need cleats (or at least some heavy-duty Velcro) to keep from rolling head over heels down Banana Funnel, the run that's just come into view. No doubt about how that trail got its name, and I'm not about to demonstrate.
Crested Butte is known for its extreme terrain. But since "double black diamond" runs, the siren call of extreme skiers, are not in my repertoire just yet, there's a lot of this mountain I can't explore — 42 percent of the terrain here, in fact, is designated for extreme skiers. (The Ski Safety Act uses words such as "cliffs" and "50-degree average pitch" to describe extreme terrain. I prefer the phrase "screaming vortex of death.")
But apparently, the real experts have stayed home today, because we don't see anyone slipping down Banana Funnel or its neighboring run, Upper Peel.
That still leaves tons of territory for us mere mortals to explore. And it's easy to figure out where to head. Ski runs are labeled green for easiest, blue for intermediate and black for advanced.
A chunk of what's left has been groomed into beginner-friendly "corduroy" or is just too flat and easy. Still, we find enough intermediate and advanced slopes to make our thighs burn by afternoon. With 7 inches of new snow to slurp up our skis on top of a base more than 5 feet deep, we careen down wide swathes and plunge into a few tree-spackled thickets.
At one point, my husband, Chris, screams "No friends on a powder day!" and tears off. I catch him, and we swoop down the slope, scooting off the main trail and dipping between trees. We wind up on the brink of a short but precarious (though nowhere near Banana Funnel steep) precipice. We pause to consider, then he dives in, making three quick turns to get down. I'm not so skilled; I slice down, miss the turn and do the old "runaway truck ramp" maneuver, grinding to a halt in untracked powder up to my knees.
We are happy to unlatch our boots at the afternoon's end and lounge by the firepit at a slopeside bar called Butte 66. Sipping tall glasses of beer beneath a sign that says "Cats are just tiny women in cheap fur coats," we mull our third day of skiing at this laid-back resort.
Good things? Casual attitude. No crowds or lift lines. Great snow. Only wiping out once in three days of skiing. Watching Chris fall twice in the powder. The on-mountain Ice Bar, where you can belly up to an outdoor bar made of ice blocks and order a cocktail. And Camp 4 Coffee, a cozy little warming hut where you can nurse a cup of hot chocolate and pet the ski patrol's resident avalanche dog, who wears a red uniform.
In all, Crested Butte has 1,073 acres of skiable terrain, with 15 lifts to whisk skiers to all points. The resort is smaller than most of the other big-name ski areas — Breckenridge is about twice as big; Vail five times larger. But Crested Butte also lacks the day traffic Colorado's front range resorts attract, so you spend less time waiting at lift lines and more time actually gunning down the mountainside.
Not so good things? Too much grooming on the intermediate slopes. And hardly any junior-sized moguls. All the ones we encountered were of the Volkswagen-sized variety. We love to ski bumps, but it's tough when they're as unforgiving as the ones at Crested Butte. The mountain has tons of expert terrain and tons of beginner stuff, but less for blue-black skiers like us.
Best part: the town and the people.
If you're looking for high-brow and swank, go to Aspen or Vail. If family-style fried chicken dinners, snow jumping competitions on downtown streets and people with fluffy puppies zipped into their ski parkas make you tick, you'll love the place.
The people here are real. The town itself is the quintessential ski town, easily my favorite of the 15 or so ski resorts I've visited. (That includes Jackson Hole, Sun Valley, Lake Louise, Big Sky, Beaver Creek, Vail, Breckenridge, Keystone, Winter Park, Park City, Loveland, Steamboat and more.)
We clamber onto a free shuttle bus that whisks us from our lodge at the base of the ski mountain to the town of Crested Butte, about 3 miles away. We eat our best meal at a place called Slogar's, a family-style restaurant where the specialty is skillet-fried chicken, served up with dishes of mashed potatoes, coleslaw, creamed corn and baking powder biscuits, all for less than $15 a person.
The snow pounds down as we meander among the lavender, blue, red, green, yellow and purple-painted clapboard buildings along Elk Avenue. In Crested Butte's heyday in the late 1800s, this old mining camp boasted 18 taverns. Many of those buildings still stand, reinvented as coffee shops, restaurants or stores.
This place uses every excuse to party, too. During our stay, the schedule included cross country sprint races through downtown, frozen miniature golf, and disco ice skating featuring people in groovy costumes.
One night we watched as snowmobiles whipped down the main thoroughfare, towing skiers and snowboarders up and off a huge wedge of snow, where they twirled and twisted their way to the ground in a Big Air competition. Another night, while riding the shuttle bus back to our lodge, a guy from Brazil announced to fellow passengers that "When I get off this bus, I'm going to be sober." Everyone howled and asked if he planned to ride all night.
Crested Butte doesn't take itself too seriously. It doesn't dress up too much, or boast too hard. It's all about a good time in a relaxed atmosphere.
Just don't tell that to the Banana Funnelers . . . |
If you go . . .
We stayed at the Grand Lodge, a short walk to the base area. Amenities included an indoor/outdoor heated pool and hot tub and fitness center, in-house restaurant and deli. Our room had a microwave oven, mini-dishwasher and single burner for cooking. Early season rates start at $130. Reservations: (888) 823-4446 or www.grandlodgecrestedbutte.com. Lift tickets are $69 a day for adults, with discounts for multiday passes.
Information: Crested Butte Mountain Schools (800) 444-9236; lift tickets (888) 754-8392; equipment rental/repair, (888) 280-5728; or guest services (888) 954-6487.
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