Beaver Creek Resort — Hotel in Four Corners States

I completed your survey on my recent week spent at Beaver Creek. My feedback is in context to the fact that I have owned a fractional share at St James Place for 25 years and have been coming to BC for over 30+ years (since the late 1980’s)

My family used to own a month at BC but have had to cut that back to one week due to work and family responsibilities. I also have spent less time and money at BC due to some of the following issues. I love BC and the total experience but have seen some changes that impacted my desire to spend more time and money there:

Safety- with the increase in the snowboard community and a decrease in the skill level of skiers at BC- I have been hit twice by out-of-control snowboarders (in the last 4 years) and my family had several near misses this year which scared them tremendously. I do not feel you are putting anywhere near the effort required to make the Mountain safer. I never see any Ski Patrol or Ambassadors going after out of control boarders or skiers. In 30+ years of skiing there I think the level of skill has declined and the potential of skiers hitting other skiers has risen. Why are you not pulling passes from skiers as a way to set an example? I also would bet my mortgage payment that less than 10% of the skiers on the mountain know the Skier Responsibility Code- most importantly rule # 2 which is about the fact that it is the skier's responsibility to avoid skiers below and also the importance of being able to be in control and be able to stop when required. At your Mountain I believe there is a good percentage of skiers not following this code……. what are you doing about it??? Grooming- this is entirely antidotal, but I feel that you do significantly less grooming than you did 5,10,15,20 years ago. On a recent Friday it was a cloudy day, with very flat light and the Mountain was very busy. You barely did any Blue Trail grooming. Many people quit early that day due to this condition. Additionally, Grosse Mtn. is completely wasted. You rarely groom the left side of that area, and it is completely inaccessible to the stronger intermediate skiers who could manage the blue terrain if it was offered to them.

Communication with your community- On Friday March 4th 2022 the Centennial Lift was 30 minutes late to open. I got there at 8:35 that day and waited 25 minutes in line with approximately 100 other people waiting for the lift to open. That was unacceptable and quite frankly all of us should have gotten a credit on our EPIC passes for that 30-minute loss of skiing. If you were going to open late an email should have communicated, it so you don’t waste peoples time (everyone in line could have slept an additional 30 minutes versus waiting for one of you crew to show up- as soon as she arrived the lift opened)

Thank you for listening to my concerns....

Beaver Creek wants to pretend like they're this amazing, supportive family destination. We've been coming here every year for almost a decade, and it gets worse and worse every single year.

BC - especially early season - does not really care about families. In fact, I think the most straightforward way to put it is to say that all BC cares about is money. When you show up as an adult, the assumption is that you have money that they can squeeze out of you. When you show up with kids, they assume that means they'll get even more money. Example: BC has a 'beginner' lift pass that only works in the bunny slope area. It used to be $30 a day, which is pretty reasonable. It's now climbed up to $52/day, for no reason at all. Also, other resorts will allow use of carpet lifts for free, but BC wants a lift pass to use them. Gotta pay money to learn to ski/board! If you want to get your kids lessons, you're looking at some of the most expensive rates in the country. Crazy idea: kids ski lessons should be dirt cheap because if you get children into the hobby, they grow up to be people who will spend money doing it. My kids missed out getting lessons because we didn't want to drop $450/day on it. Will they grow up to be adults who like to ski? Who knows...

Additionally, you need to know that at Beaver Creek, you are not a priority to them unless it's financially beneficial for them. Early season skiers and boarders are an afterthought when Birds of Prey race is looming... what? Your kids want beginner terrain? Too bad, we need to groom that race course!

The workers here are superstars. They all have incredible attitudes and are as helpful as can be, given the employer. BC doesn't seem to treat them very well but whenever we needed help the rank and file were happy to help us out.

As far as the terrain and mountain conditions, this is a fantastic resort. There's something for everyone here, the lift lines are usually very reasonable on any given day, and there's a lot of mountain to explore. Plenty of side hits, features, glades, moguls, etc. It's a great setup. The "Chondola" (chair lift with a gondola every 6th spot) is a fantastic feature for people who don't like sitting exposed to the weather for 5+ minute climbs up the mountain or for kids. The snow here is luxurious most of the time, except very early season when it tends to be sparse (mostly because they refuse to open up anything until after Birds of Prey race). And the ski patrol/safety patrol are generally pretty nice...

We thought Beaver Creek would be a less crowded version of Vail and a real 5 star resort. What a JOKE. 1st...the experience killer -- They have about 200 lockers for 1000s of visitors. They are in a tiny cave that shares space with an archaic manual basket check system for when the lockers are full...which is generally 10 minutes after opening. The entire room is about 12 x 15 with a line of people to basket check and everyone trying to put on boots etc. This is what I would expect in a TINY resort like Ski Cooper. Cooper is much better. Long waits in a claustrophobic, windowless dungeon when there are literally TONS of locations perfect for more lockers. This alone is enough to never return. The shopping area is high end. The food, bars and restaurants not so much. Just because you charge $20 for a cold slice of pizza doesn't make it gourmet. I would rank Beaver Creeks' overall experience as one of the worst I've ever had skiing. I'm not one of those that blames a resort for ski conditions. That's mother nature, but choosing to have virtually no storage options, subpar snack and drink options, not great parking and everything priced like a 5 diamond resort for a 1 star experience is disappointing. Additionally, we had a beginner skier with us and I would NOT recommend BC for them even though many online sources do. There are many runs where a Green turns into a black mid run with zero warnings or signage. Signage overall is pretty poor. A beginner could find themselves accidentally committed to a steep mogled black diamond run with rocks when simply trying to follow green run signs. This happened to us. There are also green runs that cross blue and black runs. Picture a new driver crossing a 6 lane highway ...the highway is the Daytona 500. It's unnecessarily dangerous and NOT a good experience for a beginner. We won't go back. Cross that destination off...