Afton Alps Ski & Snowboard — Attraction in Denmark Township

Cons: Terrain park was small and over-packed.

Pros: The lift operators were the best operators we have seen. They were friendly, engaging, and safety was apparent.

Layout of the hill is a bit funky and makes it hard to get or remember where you want to go, but that also made for some fun and challenges on getting to the next place.

The actual facilities are a bit out dated and dirty for the bathrooms and eating areas. I would not put this area up to a "Vail Resort". I am assuming that Vail will work on the facilities as there were a bunch of different places to choose from, just not one fantastic place (unless we missed it).

Some staff said there was better places to go skiing in the area, which was a bit awkward coming from employees.

The rail jam, this is why we came to Afton. It was the worst experience we have had during a rail jam. Definitely not what was expected out of a Vail corporation. The judges were acting unprofessional and it was not ran safely.

When we first checked in one of the judges yelled out to the group of kids asking, "whose parent's signature do I need to forge this week for the release waiver." The assumed head guy running the rail jam,(Steve, I think) was unorganized, unprofessional, rude, and a jerk to say the quickest and least. He even shouted under his breath a rude comment after my child won a prize, allowing for all of his buddies and fellow competitors to hear it. His comment was made to a 6 year old to insult him and his Dad. It definitely did insult us, but in the end we knew that he was just being a jerk.

The rail jam was not blocked off, so anyone not in the contest could be snowboarding down the hill. The judges did not know who was in the contest or what age group they were competing with. Along with this the judges then had there young friends (competitors go find out the other kids ages during the competition).

During the competition it was definitely unsafe with all the competitors riding down at the same time along with normal ticket holders going in the jam area. It does not make sense for competitors who are doing big tricks to watch out for bystanders. The biggest issue with safety was one of the big pipes (rails) actually did slide out of it's place and went down the hill while someone was riding it. This could have been easily solved with the people running the competition (park crew) doing a grooming in between the age groups.

It did make the staff at the office aware of how bad the rail jam was ran. The people in the office were very nice and seemed to know who was the jerk running the competition (I think Steve) as I did not have to get many words out before they suggested his name.

The GM of Afton did give us a nice phone call with regards to the issue. Letting us know most importantly that Afton is not really a snowboarding hill and more of a race hill, as they do not have the right people in place for snowboarding yet. This was nice of him and he did offer to buy our family a dinner. Thank you for trying to make it up to us. We did not accept the dinner as most importantly being a season pass holder we are just looking for better standards and living up to a name that we can come back to with a family and a resort ran properly in all areas.

We would have loved to put 5 stars down if it were just for the skiing, lift operations staff (Tall Henry was great), food service in the cafeteria, and pro shop were fantastic. But the real deal was the judges/guys running the rail jam were a bunch of overgrown children that give snowboarding a bad name and definitely do not put class in the sport.

In the end if you want to go here for a family event, it could be a great place...but I would stay away from the rail jams until they get things fixed. Hopefully Vail/Afton hears from more people and they get things running properly...

The lifts are great and the RFID lift passes are awesome. Just buy online, and go straight to the lifts when you get there, assuming you already have a card. Runs are nice and well groomed. Instructors and classes are awesome. If you rent equipment, they are very efficient at getting you what you need. Lift tickets purchased here get you a discount on the Vail Colorado resorts.

Even though I am giving 5 stars, there are a couple of things I don't like. It's stinks down by the Alps chalet around the trees. So bad that I can TASTE it in the air. It's a septic system, they need to put a carbon filter on it, it's disgusting. The bathrooms are usually pretty dirty, and the 2 toilets in the men's room in the Meadows chalet were clogged for over an hour last time I was there. It's a long walk or lift ride to another bathroom. The food is not awesome, and it's pretty overpriced. 2.50 for a Snickers and over $4 for a Gatorade is a little insane. The best food and most reasonably priced I've found is in the restaurant on the upper floor of the Alps chalet. But it's mostly burgers and fried bar food, not exactly healthy. We do bring our own food and drinks, but it's nice to sit down and just pay for a good hot meal. Even my young kids who will eat anything have been pretty unexcited about the food, then they get hangry, and we have to leave.

On busy days where the main parking lot is full, you need to park up top near the highlands chalet. That's fine for people who know what they're doing, but if you have kids or people that are just learning, you need to take the shuttle down. It's one tiny bus, they won't let anyone stand, so it only holds like 10-12 people. Rental car busses at airports that go on the interstate let people stand, but they won't for some reason. Apparently the bus is more dangerous than standing on sticks and sliding down a hill. Wait to get on the shuttle can be well over an hour.

They need a locker facility or area. There are lockers that you can pay for, but not many and they are full on busy days. Like everyone else, I usually just toss my stuff in a corner at one of the chalets and hope that no one moves or steals it.

I've been going here for over 30 years, so none of this is new. It really is a great place to ski and snowboard, and the staff is great, but I just wish they'd finally address these issues.

Edit: with the whole covid thing, I think their bathroom situation is not good. Bathrooms are disgusting. They've needed better and cleaner bathrooms for years, and now is the time to do it. I dropped my rating to 3 stars.

Edit 2: I wish they would pave the parking lots. Walking through a bunch of mud in warmer weather, and trying to get your boots on without getting your feet wet is a pain. That parking lot is a total mess. Plan on spending another 10 bucks on a car wash every time you go. And again, their bathrooms suck. Even without covid, they are bad. They are better than others in the area, but they are still bad. The actually have, or had, an employee only bathroom that was really nice and clean so their own employees didn't have to use the horrible...

I brought my two teenage kids to Afton Alps for a day of skiing in early January 2022. Once we arrived at the "ski hill", it took a good 30 minutes just to find a parking spot that was about as far down from the main chalet as you can get. Then after paying $65 for each lift ticket, we discovered that all of the chalets were not even open due to COVID. The chalet building next to where we bought the lift tickets only had a hallway open where the bathrooms were, but the actual chalet with benches and chairs was completely gated off, so we had to get all of our ski gear on sitting on a floor of hallway near the bathrooms.

Any business within a 30 mile radius from Afton, such as restaurants, malls, shopping centers etc. were open at the time without any sort of COVID restrictions. Yet we couldn't access a chalet at Afton, even with masks on (which I would have been OK with) to sit down and get our ski pants and boots on with any sort of comfort. At this point I was very frustrated, especially after spending nearly $200 on lift tickets for the 3 of us, and not having any sort of amenities available for this cost.

Between the terrible access to the main lower parking lot when you first enter the property, along with not being able to put our gear on in comfort, this was an absolute rip off and disappointment. It's not like this some sort of decent ski resort in the mountains. It is a §hit MN ski hill.

On top of this the lines for the ski lifts were long and moved very slow because many of the ski lifts weren't even open, probably due to staffing. I have skied at Afton many times over the years, and this was by far the worst experience. It was way over-priced for the fact that you couldn't enjoy the comfort of a chalet, getting to a parking spot was a nightmare, and the chair lift lines were awful.

This is the last time I will ever go to Afton Alps. There was no need to have everything shut down over COVID at this point, and what was supposed to be a fun day skiing with my kids ended up being more frustrating than anything.

Don't waste your time and go to Welch Village or Wild Mtn., which are far better ski areas relatively close to...