Surprising Keystone
Colorado’s family-focused ski resort turns out to be great fun for grown-ups, too
During my first two winters living in Boulder, Colo., I’d make the two-plus-hour drive to snowboard the legendary Back Bowls of Vail at least once a week. While crawling along in Interstate 70’s infamous traffic I’d pass Keystone about halfway through my journey, never giving the resort a second thought. As an Epic Pass holder — a season pass to all ski areas operated by conglomerate Vail Resorts — I could ride there for free. But in my mind, Keystone was Colorado’s family resort, beloved for its Kidtopia activities, including a snow fort, weekly parade and Ripperoo, its ski-loving dog mascot. As a single woman in her 30s, a base village full of kids sounded worse than an iced-up double black diamond bump run.
The mountain, I thought, must be crowded with pint-size skiers, wearing mohawk-lined helmets, flying recklessly down bunny hill runs.
Then last year, my friend Dan was bragging about a powderfilled guys’ weekend of snowcat skiing … at Keystone. Keystone, he told me, is Summit County’s best-kept ski secret. Dan, a father of a 5-year-old and 3-yearold, assumed his backcountry powder days were over when he and his wife first had kids. But once the kids started ski school, he discovered Keystone has a grown-up side.
Dubious, I decided to cut my weekend ski commute and enlisted a few child-free friends to explore Keystone.
As expected, the resort base is a traffic jam of parents pulling ski gear and bundled up kids in complimentary red wagons. Unexpectedly, the trail map reveals 135 trails; nearly 50 percent of them marked “most difficult.”
We hop on the River Run Gondola, which drops us at the foot of the world’s largest snow fort. Even though this ice palace is meant for kids, we all agree it looks like a blast no matter what your age. Schoolmarm, a three-and-a-half-mile-long, cruisy green run serves as our warm up and takes us past kidfriendly features with names like Tornado Alley and Rockin’ Rollers. Dan had clued me in to a secluded stash of moredifficult blacks tucked away on the west side of Dercum. We tackle Go Devil, a steep, mogul- pocked run that overlooks Keystone’s A51 Terrain Park, which is regularly ranked one of the top in the country.
My friend Erica laughs when I ask if we should hit the halfpipe — instead, we find thrills on Windows, a black/double black area lined with tree runs on the back of Dercum. Vail’s Back Bowls may get all the hype, but Keystone’s five bowls hold their own. Spanning the resort’s three mountains, they also, as Dan had said, offer some of Colorado’s best cat skiing.
At most resorts, you have two options: spend a full day (and a lot of money) playing in the backcountry via snowcat or hike to fresh lines. At Keystone, for just $10 — the cost of fries and a beer — you can save your efforts for the descent and take a single snowcat ride. The Outback Shuttle whisks us from the top of the Outback chairlift atop the resort’s highest peak to a lunarlike landscape that feels worlds away from River Run Village. Carving through powder down a run called the Wolf Den, Erica actually compares the terrain to what she’s skied in Verbier, Switzerland — untouched, wild and free of people.
Legs tired and adrenaline pumping, we cheers a surprisingly challenging day on the patio at 9280’ Tap House. As the sun starts to fade, Erica and I retire to the hot tubs at Keystone Lodge & Spa, but the guys get a second wind and take the gondola back up Dercum to experience Keystone’s popular night skiing. When we regroup for dinner, my friend John declares the day his longest ski day ever.
What Keystone lacks in terms of a rowdy après-ski scene it more than makes up for in dining options. All cleaned up, we wrap ourselves in blankets for one final gondola ride up the mountain, this time for dinner at Alpenglow Stube, a mountaintop restaurant that wouldn’t be out of place in chic European ski towns like Zermatt or Cortina.
We’ve certainly earned our dinner, so no one feels guilty when we all agree to the threecourse menu. Dishes of jumbo prawn and saffron risotto and rosemary garlic Colorado rack of lamb get passed around the table so we can all share tastes. Brooks, our sommelier, offers to give us a tour of the extensive wine cellar while we wait for dessert. Inside the wine cave, he tells us that a snow storm once closed the gondola, forcing all of the guests and staff to stay the night at the restaurant.
Over port and chocolate molten cake, we all pray for a blizzard. After today, I realize being stuck at Keystone is a grown-up’s dream, not a kidfilled nightmare.