Even when snow conditions at top resorts are sub-standard, you can get some great skiing & riding in if you know about this hidden gem. In big snow years, it's awesome.
Larry Olmsted is a bestselling author who covers travel, food & sportsJust another day of private powder skiing in Colorado with Eleven Experience So far this has been a rough winter for skiers and snowboarders.
Many of the largest resorts in the country are having terrible snow years with limited terrain open. Some of the highest-profile new ski resort hotels scheduled to debut this winter have been delayed and are not yet open, while a ski patrol strike closed Telluride altogether over the peak Christmas break. All across the country areas that should be white are looking more green or brown. But amidst all this disappointment, there was one silver lining, a little-known spot in Colorado with plenty of fresh dry powder, where a very small number of skiers and snowboarders were smiling, laughing and having a great time. It’s one of the best kept secrets in ski travel and in many ways a new kind of ski trip that just might be your best winter vacation.is a different kind of hospitality company, an offbeat brand that marches to a different drummer, run by a hands on founder whose passions are skiing, fly fishing and music—especially the Grateful Dead . The name itself gives a clue as to what you can expect, taken from the iconic rock spoof This Is Spinal Tap and the “it goes to eleven” line, louder than everyone else’s scale that stops at ten. Over the past several years Eleven has built an eclectic collection of chalets and small lodges across the globe with a mix of different takes on skiing, fly fishing, hiking, biking, watersports, all in a celebration of the outdoors and natural beauty, connected by white glove hospitality and lots of delicious food.Eleven Experience products are warm and family friendly, like Sopris House in Crested Butte, CO, with two lodges and a private sno-cat skiing operation . Eleven Sopris House is an 1882 Old West saloon that has been converted into a very comfortable four bedroom home and is rented to just a single private group at a time. Immediately next door is the larger Eleven Scarp Ridge Lodge, which has five en suite king bedrooms, a family bunk room with seven beds and an attached small nanny bedroom. Depending on configuration Scarpa can hold up to about 20 close friends or family, and is usually a single private takeover, though there are a few weeks each season where you can rent individual rooms, hotel style. I’ll come back to the lodging, food and amenities in a minute because the main attraction, and the thing that sets Eleven apart from just about every other ski trip you can imagine, is that the two homes share an 1100-acre private powder paradise called Irwin—which just happens to sit in a special microclimate and is among the snowiest spots in North America, averaging 450-500 inches a year. To put that in perspective, the total is roughly twice as much snow as the acclaimed Crested Butte ski resort just a few miles away. Last week, when just the few guests of Sopris House were ripping this powder all by themselves, it was the snowiest spot in Colorado.With terrain for every ability, private sno cats and on mountain lodges, Eleven offers a uniquely family friendly powder product in CO.There are a handful of heli-skiing lodges that combine accommodations and meals with drop-dead skiing, but they tend to be in some pretty remote spots like Alaska or the Canadian Rockies while guests of Eleven Experience are in the heart of charming Crested Butte, walking distance to bars, restaurants and shops. This product is the best of both worlds in terms of hospitality and quality of skiing. They don’t skimp on the creature comforts either. Every bedroom has an oversized steam shower and most have gigantic soaking tubs too. Sopris House has a separate private pub, a barroom with pool table, juke box and adult libations, as well as a hot tub, cold plunge and sauna. Common areas are large and comfy and there is always a fire going in the oversized stone fireplace, a private chef cooking amazing breakfasts, and a helpful stuff. Scarpa has its own indoor saltwater pool, hot tub, gym and outdoor rooftop hot tub.Each day guests are picked up at their respective home at the time they choose in one of two private snow coaches and whisked off to ski. At Irwin there are two cabin-style lodges, one for each property, so even when both are booked by separate groups you never come across guests who are not in your party. The cabins up at Irwin have plenty of storage and heated boot dryers so you just leave all your ski stuff up there and commute in comfy clothes and slippers. They supply fantastic lunches, endless snacks, hard and soft drinks, more roaring fireplaces and highly trained, highly qualified full time guides who do just this. Unlike the vast majority of cat and heli operations I have experienced, they always send two guides with every group, front and tail, and many families or groups opt for a third, enabling them to split even their small groups up by ability.Just about any time you get to ski powder like this by cat or helicopter it is very special and great skiing, but there are several factors that set Eleven and Irwin apart and make it even more special. Firstly, they do full snow control and avalanche mitigation, including bootpacking and explosives, which very few if any similar operations do to this extent, making the safety level more like resort skiing than backcountry, even with all the unbroken powder. This, along with the second guide, lowers the stress level and in turn allows guests to ski without backpacks, a rare bonus, though everyone still wears a transceiver. They also have terrain for just about every ability including beginner . It’s not a place you’d go to learn but a place where your 6-year old who skis resort greens can still have fun. In recent years the world of heli-skiing has evolved to allow advanced intermediates to experience what used to be an expert-only pursuit, but this is a whole different level of inclusion, where just about any skiing family or group of friends can enjoy. That makes it a fantastic choice for first time backcountry travelers who have always wanted to ski powder, while steeper terrain awaits advanced skiers and riders. Even non-skiers in the group often come up by cat and chill in the lodge enjoying the amazing setting. Tons of snow. Check. Great ski town. Check. First rate food, lodging and service. Check. Privacy and an experience perfectly customized to you and your friends. Check. Excellent guides, equipment, amenities and infrastructure. Check. It’s pretty much the whole package and pretty much unique in skiing. But that’s just Crested Butte.At Deplar Farm in Iceland you can heli-ski, take in the Northern Lights and stay in a 600 year old farmhouse.Eleven also has two staffed inclusive chalets in France, near several major ski resorts such as Val d’Isere-Tignes, one of the largest on earth and much bigger than anything in North America. I’ve written a lot here atthe European staffed chalet model is great for a ski vacation, superior even to a luxury hotel , and this is exactly what Eleven offers—but adding its own guides and myriad options for backcountry and heli-skiing along with the resorts. At their Deplar Farm in Iceland they have on-site heli-skiing along with fat tire biking and even winter surfing, under the Northern Lights, in a painstakingly restored 15century farmhouse. Most of the Eleven properties are also open in summer, so Colorado offers mountain and gravel biking, hiking and mountaineering, while Iceland has Midnight Sun, heli-hiking, sea kayaking and all sorts of indoor and outdoor wellness pursuits. Several Eleven properties have world-class angling. They have a heliskiing lodge in Revelstoke, Canada—the “Heli-skiing capital of the world—with 300,000 acres of powder. In a similar model to Crested Butte, the lodging is in the heart of town. They have fly fishing lodges in Chilean Patagonia, the Bahamas and New Zealand , and a new property under construction in Alaksa. Fishing anyone? Eleven has fly fishing lodges in the Bahamas, New Zealand and this one, Martin Pescador Lodge in Patagonia, Chile.Like I said, it’s an offbeat brand with a very eclectic mix of properties, several with stunning cat or heli-skiing, most of which also offer options for resort skiing, Nordic skiing and many other winter and summer adventures. Fishing is another big strength and passion, and each has a very special intimate lodge and deeply rooted sense of place. While the Eleven is the funny backstory part of the company name, the key word is Experience, because that is really what they are offering, a very particular kind of outdoor adventure experience that is guided, supported, and highly personalized and customized with a sameness in terms of aesthetic and attitude but across extremely varied landscapes and ecosystems.But the Crested Butte property in particular, with its mix of easy access, location and private terrain, is a new kind of ski trip that just might be your best answer for a perfect winter vacation. Prices vary considerably by location and season, but to give you an idea, winter rates begin at about $1300 per person nightly for a Sopris takeover, including cat skiing or your choice of several other fully guided winter adventures, with all gear, chef cooked breakfasts, lunches and snacks.
Skiing Snowboarding Travel Powder Heli-Skiing Eleven Experience Revelstoke Fishing Food
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