I returned to Beaver Creek this season, visiting friends who rented a townhouse at Arrowhead for six months. Here are some tips that I garnered.
First, although the altitude is not as high as some Colorado resorts (e.g,. Breckenridge), it is still a killer for most folks who live at sea level. Livestrong.com tells fit runners “It takes your body about three to six weeks to fully acclimate to high altitude” and “Dehydration and acute altitude sickness symptoms are more likely to occur within the first one to two weeks of altitude exposure.” The New York Times reports that “among visitors to Colorado’s Summit County — location of the ski resorts Breckenridge, Copper Mountain, Arapahoe Basin, Loveland and Keystone — 22 percent of those staying at 7,000 to 9,000 feet experienced [acute mountain sickness]”.
I would strongly recommend the following procedure for adjustment:
- Day 1: arrive Denver and sleep in Denver
- Day 2: drive rental car up to the Vail Valley and sleep as low as possible, e.g., at the Westin in downtown Avon (gondola to the lift), or at Arrowhead (a separate mountain that has been integrated into Beaver Creek). These options are at 7,400′ above sea level rather than 8,100′ in Beaver Creek or at the Bachelor Gulch Ritz.
- Day 3: snowshoe from Bachelor Gulch ($40, leaves at 10:30 am) or poke around the various towns.
- Day 4: ski, but try to stay on the lower part of the mountains
If you’re a beginner by Western standards (maybe doing the blue “intermediate” trails in Eastern resorts), look at the Sawbuck trail from Bachelor Gulch (top = 9,560′) and also perhaps Little Brave from Arrowhead (top = 9,100′). By Day 5 or 6 you might be sufficiently adjusted to the altitude that you can do the beginner trails (substantially easier) at the top of the mountain, coming down from 11,400′ to the top of the Centennial gondola (which you’ll ride down) at 10,200′.
Beaver Creek is a bad choice for ski school in my opinion. It takes about one hour to get organized and actually start skiing in the group lessons. Private lessons are ruinously expensive (about $1,000 per day). Take your lessons at a place like Mt. Wachusett in Massachusetts ($90 for a one-hour private lesson; $160 for a two-hour lesson).
[Note that if you are looking for a good beginner resort with lower elevations, Sun Valley, Idaho is a great choice. The base is 5,920′ and the top of the beginner mountain (Dollar) is 6,638′. Whistler in Canada is even better; you’ll sleep at about 2,000′ above sea level! Just hope that it doesn’t rain and turn the mountains into an ice sculpture… See Why do flatlanders go to Colorado to ski when they could go to Whistler instead? Another idea would be to fly to Salt Lake City and sleep there at 4,200′ while commuting to the various resorts that are less than an hour’s drive away. Finally, there is Banff, where the base is about 5400′ above sea level.]
As last year, I met a lot of interesting people here. My award for “best-planned life” goes to an orthopedic surgeon who lives and works locally. Every time the lift starts up it is generating inventory! I met him as he was coming down Arrowhead at 6 pm. How is that possible when the last lift is at 3:30 pm? He and two friends had walked up with skins on their skis. After a one-hour climb from 7,400′ to 9,100′ they skied down the Cresta trail (marked “blue” for intermediate), with the doctor’s faithful Malamute running behind. This fit doctor is in his early 50s and characterizes the Vail Valley as “a full-time adult playground”. If he gets bored with the local mountains he can move to any ski resort in the United States. If he decides that it is time for some sun, he can work at the beach in Hawaii or Florida. (Opposite end of the spectrum: computer nerd. See, for example, this article by a woman who worked at Uber. She spent a year of her life at a company that she hated. When she is the doctor’s age she probably won’t be able to get a job. She will never earn as much as the doctor and she’ll live in places with much higher costs, e.g., for real estate and taxes.)
In the hot tub at the Westin in Avon I met a Long Island dentist and his teenagers. The boy wants to be an engineer so I suggested Olin College of Engineering. The 13-year-old wants to be a divorce litigator. I suggested that she compare state-by-state family law carefully when she graduates and pick a winner-take-all state if she wants to make $800 per hour (Colorado is a bad choice for a litigator, though still oftentimes a reasonable choice for a plaintiff; on the lift we met a Swedish immigrant whose American wife sued him. He got a rude education in the difference between Swedish law and U.S. law! Now he is sorry that he is stuck in the U.S. as a part-time parent while paying more in child support than would the richest father in Sweden.)
A young woman who works at Dick’s Sporting Goods came up from Denver for the day and said that the one great thing about a retail job was that you have some weekdays off to ski the less-crowded slopes. She had previously lived in Salt Lake City and loved the proximity to the ski resorts, but couldn’t make friends. “It’s very cliquey.”
We had dinner with a never-married woman in her late 50s who runs a business here. She never had children and is “looking for a soul-mate.” She recently broke up with a guy because he was “narcissistic”. Asked for an example she cited that she texted him to break up and he responded with “Let’s talk about this when I’m back from this trip.” Why was it narcissistic to respond to a text with a text? “Instead of calling me he wanted to get together on his schedule.” Hearing about Real World Divorce, she objected to the idea of studying the cash incentives of U.S. family law on the grounds that life should be all about feelings and romance. This despite the fact that most of the guys in her age range that she talked about had been sued by divorce plaintiffs and, in some cases, had been the subject of domestic violence allegations and restraining orders as part of the divorce lawsuit. As a business person, could she not see that it would at least make sense to try to live in a jurisdiction where the prevailing family law did not give a spouse (soulmate?) an incentive to file a lawsuit? The answer turned out to be “no.” It was better to go through life in blissful ignorance of everything divorce-, custody-, or child-support-related.
An Argentine college student working in a Vail shop on what was, to her, summer break, said that she liked almost everything about the U.S. except “the Post Office; I’ve never seen anything so inefficient” and “the portion sizes; one piece of pizza is too much for me here while in Argentina I would eat three. What’s wrong with you guys?”
[I surveyed a handful of the foreigners working seasonal jobs here regarding “what would happen if you got pregnant with a Ritz-Carlton guest, went home to give birth, and continued to live in your home country.” Their estimates of the total cash obtainable under the Colorado child support guidelines ranged from $0 to $90,000 ($5,000 per year for 18 years) with $0 being the most popular number. None had any clue that there were U.S. taxpayer-funded workers whose job it would be to get them money. (In fact, foreigners residing in a foreign country are just as entitled to receive child support cash as American citizens residing in the U.S. and the total revenue obtainable would be at least $547,560, a sizable sum in Argentina, for example. Profits would be much larger if the pregnancy occurred with a high-income partner at a ski resort in California or Utah.)]
I was happy to see my friends but I do prefer Sun Valley. The Vail Valley has a lot of the services of a city, e.g., cultural performances, restaurants, Costco, etc. It is a lot livelier than Sun Valley but also people seem to come for shorter stays. The pace is therefore somewhat frenetic by comparison. The slopes aren’t crowded by Eastern standards, but the towns have a Harvard Square-like feel.
[How was the skiing, you ask? As I noted on Facebook, Beaver Creek Ski Patrol watched me coming down a green trail and then set me up with Ron, a semi-retired physician:
]
Related:
- Choose a career by working for a season in a ski resort?
- Ski resorts are fat targets for employment litigation?
- How do people mix alcohol and skiing?
Doctors take the good with the bad. If I was a doctor, I would have been too distracted by trying to make better equipment to see patients. They can live wherever they want & retire, but they have to be totally oblivious to much of human progress in the last 20 years. The insurance industry is partly to blame, by forcing healthcare to stagnate.
Nice post, thank you.
I learned to ski over 30 years ago in NH at Mt. Gunstock and Mt. Attitash, but never skied out west. Last summer, I did, however, spend five adventurous days downhill mountain biking at Winter Park Resort, CO at as high a 11,000 feet; ATV riding in the surrounding National Forests at 7000+ feet; and and class 4/5 whitewater rafting on Clear Ceek!
My award for “best-planned life” goes to an orthopedic surgeon who lives and works locally….If he gets bored with the local mountains he can move to any ski resort in the United States. If he decides that it is time for some sun, he can work at the beach in Hawaii or Florida.
But wouldn’t he need to pass (rigorous?) tests for a new state medical license to practice medicine if he moved to a new state?
After graduating from UMass in 1990 and one year working at a downtown Boston bank, a good female friend and five of her girlfriends drove out to Vail in a couple of U-Hauls to live the ski-bum life. Within one year, the five girlfriends had all moved back home to MA, but my friend made a great life for herself out in Vail. Started out as a waitress, met her husband, started and sold two restaurants; and for the past ten years has been the owner/operator of a very lucrative dog grooming business, and living slope side.
Seems pretty dreary — from Denver to Vail wall to wall condos. Alta in Utah is different but at a high altitude.10.5 k feet.
Tahoe base sleeping level is 6200 feet. Much lower than Vail or Beaver. And the top at most of the local Tahoe ski resorts is only 10K so pretty low by Colorado standards. And the temperatures are nice as well. About half the days it gets up to 35 degrees or so by afternoon. Of course if it is snowing that day it might only get to 15 degrees with lots of wind.
I bet you have undiagnosed altitude issues. It is pretty common. I have them and live in Tahoe part time. It takes me about a week to feel good after coming up from sea level. I have learned to manage the issues by not skiing much when I first get here and definitely not hard for the first week. But I am old now. When I was 40 it was no big deal. Most young people adjust in 2 days. PM me if you want to talk about this stuff more.
There are lots of doctors and health workers here. They have a steady stream of work from ski wrecks. The Ortho guys get to to be the best in the USA from all the cases. They are highly sought after for their skills. Many pro athletes come to get fixed. Plus it is close to wine country and SF so good culture and lots of liberal attitudes so life is easy.
But there are also lots of “cube escapees” who find a way to make the small ski town work. They come for a winter and stay for a life time. They end up healthy and old and very happy. They ski all winter and build homes or cook or paint or roof stuff all summer. They stitch 2-4 jobs together to make career. Many have 4 year degrees from great schools they never use.
The outdoor based life style is also why most STEM people don’t come here much and don’t stay if they visit. STEM people are just not outdoor focused. They just don’t like the exercise or the risks. Libraries and art galleries and computers are more their passion. We read blogs.
Enjoy and Good Luck.
Smartest Woman: https://www.americanactionforum.org/insight/the-traveling-doctor-medical-licensure-across-state-lines/ covers the cross-state licensing issue. It is a bit of a bureaucratic nightmare, but re-testing regarding medical knowledge does not seem to be part of it. The lawyer who moves may have to take a Bar exam, but there isn’t any comparable obstruction for doctors who are already fully certified by State A and want to move to State B.
Bill: I didn’t have “undiagnosed altitude issues.” I had “actual altitude issues” such as headache and fatigue. So did virtually everyone else who had recently arrived there from sea level. I didn’t find anyone who felt completely adjusted in less than one week. Does it help to be young? I met a family with a 6-year-old who was vomiting from altitude sickness. I’m going to edit the original post with
http://www.livestrong.com/article/446093-how-long-does-it-take-to-acclimate-to-elevation-when-running-a-race/
which says to expect up to a week of altitude sickness. That’s for people fit enough to run a serious race.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/travel/skiing-rocky-mountains-altitude-sickness.html?_r=0
says that “among visitors to Colorado’s Summit County — location of the ski resorts Breckenridge, Copper Mountain, Arapahoe Basin, Loveland and Keystone — 22 percent of those staying at 7,000 to 9,000 feet experienced [acute mountain sickness]”. If 22 percent are acutely ill, why would you expect it to be unusual for someone to be mildly ill?
[Note that one need not go to Beaver Creek at 8,100′ to get altitude sickness. Lady Gaga succumbed in Denver (about 5,280′ above sea level). See http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/gossip/la-et-mg-lady-gaga-hospitalized-altitude-sickness-denver-20140807-story.html ]
Phil. Some young kids and teenagers are actually at very high risk of bad side effects from altitude sickness. Worse than adults and no one tells parents. The gotcha is only some kids are effected. Others are fine. But the first time they go to altitude they find out. IF that kid was vomiting he needed to get medical help and LEAVE immediately to lower altitude.
http://www.summitmedicalgroup.com/library/pediatric_health/hhg_altitude_sick/
If you read the articles you also know that 8K feet seems to be the hard break point. So Tahoe at 6.2K and Salt Lake at 4.5K are much easier.
This also shows why the new Boeing Dreamliner is so nice to ride in. “The internal cabin pressure of the 787 is increased to the equivalent of 6,000 feet (1,800 m) altitude instead of the 8,000 feet (2,400 m) on older conventional aircraft. According to Boeing, in a joint study with Oklahoma State University, this will significantly improve passenger comfort.”
I also wanted to let you know that altitude effects get much nicer after a week and a LOT BETTER after 1-2 months. The body adjusts a lot and you can really feel it especially if you are old. You can feel the thin clean air and how easy it is to breath after about 2 months. The body just adapts and no doctors talk much about this as it has only been studied for mountain climbers. Plus some of my friends who have lived in Tahoe for decades have anti-altitude issues when they go to sea level. Their bodies are hard adapted to higher altitudes. So the air seems “thick” when they go to sea level.
Altitude sickness predisposition is largely genetic (according to many high altitude climbers/doctors). Some people just never tolerate serious altitude that well while others are fine.
I flew into DIA at night and went skiing at Arapahoe Basin the next morning. Felt shortness of breath while skiing and some mild headache but that was about it. On day 3 I was perfectly OK. There is just no way to tell until you try it.
To be fair to your computer nerd: She paid a lot less for her education, and was able to start a lucrative career after 4-6 years of school, not 8+. Also, it’s not true that she’s trapped in high-cost cities. I know many software professionals who have decamped for cheaper locales and continue to work remotely.
If avoiding altitude sickness while skiing is a concern, I suggest Sun Peaks in BC Canada. You can sleep in Kamloops @ just 1000ft, it gets *tons* of dry snow (237″), has mostly intermediate runs, and has a 5-mile run easy enough for beginners. Downside is lack of night life.
2nd choice would be Big White in Kelowna for better night life.
That said, when weather is good (50% ?) you can’t beat Whistler for skiing + night life.
Billg: Thanks for the Sun Peaks suggestion. I hadn’t heard of it before. Is that 5-mile run a cat track or a nice wide ski trail? The Village base of 4,100′ at Sun Peaks seems quite manageable!
The best part about going to Sun Peaks is that one can take the moral high ground and say that it is part of an “escape to Canada from the Trumpenfuhrer” plan!
John: The medical doctor paid a lot for his education? Not necessarily. https://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/the-short-list-grad-school/articles/2016-08-02/10-most-affordable-public-medical-schools-for-in-state-students shows that it is possible to go to a state-run school in Texas for about $17,000 per year. Thus four years of medical school while living at home with the hotel and restaurant staff (a.k.a. “parents”) would cost less than one year at some undergraduate institutions.
I recall Sun Peak’s 5-mile run being about as wide as 2-lane city street, varying from a gentle to moderate slope. The advantage of ski resorts in the BC interior is they get lots of dry snow yet have mild temperatures. Whistler = rain, Banff/Lake Louise = cold + inconsistent snow. Sun Peaks + Big White are great for beginner/intermediate skiers, most other resorts in the interior are for advanced.
FYI: nearby Sun Peaks is Sundance Guest Ranch, which from April to October offers a spectacular horse riding experience. It’s very enjoyable even for non-horse people (like me), but horse people (especially wormen) go absolutely crazy for the place. Its always full of international guests who have been returning for the last 20+ years.
@philg: The medical doctor paid a lot for his education?
A family member graduated from DO school in the early ’90s. Her first job w/ an established family practice paid off her entire $40K DO school loans as part of her compensation package.