(Road) Tripping in Colorado

I dig the way you pull into Denver on the train. The US has almost killed off all its rail networks, but In Colorado you still catch a train from the airport to Downtown. You can now even catch a ride straight from Downtown to Winter Park too.

Union Station has been regenerated and rejuvenated, with the upstairs Crawford Hotel a jewel of a starting point, the free Tesla taxi taking us to Denver's only gastro brothel making up for eye-watering room charge.

Ophelia’s Electric Soapbox is a live music bar and restaurant hub, in an old brothel, that’s a must for anyone overnighting in the mile-high city.

Colorado is a state of contradiction, where weed shops sit on the same parade as gun boutiques, and where some of the worlds most exclusive resorts ride roughshod over some of the best.

A road trip of the independents was our course of action, and leaving Interstate 70 to its weekend logjam, Martin and I hit I-285 for a peaceful desert drive to the hipster town of Salida.

Salida is a super cool base for anyone wanting to ride Monarch Mountain, which fortunately isn’t that many. Monarch is a small town hill with a ridiculous punch. The terrain here is bountiful, with Mirkwood Basin being the pick.

A twenty-minute hike, from the top of the Breezeway lift, offers up access to the huge Mirkwood bowl, an un-pisted area which you’ll soon fall in love with. It’s Colorado steep and very deep at its best.

Leaving the isolation of Monarch behind we head back to the I-70 resorts, but again ignoring the corporate glitz we hit Arapahoe Basin, aka A-Basin.

A-Basin has a lot of mountain, and is often the first to open in Colorado each season, and oft the last to close too. It's high, with the base lodge being at 3286m -well above the top of many a European resort. It opened in 1946, with only one tow lift, but now has 1,400 acres of monitored terrain on offer.

We’d come to ride ‘The Beavers’, a newly opened 468 acres zone, most of which is seriously steep. The thinning of the forest, and cutting of some of the lower branches, makes for loops of some of the best tree riding anywhere on the planet.

There’s also a Steep Gullies zone, which to put off intermediates has a compulsory, lung-busting, 25 minute hike back to the lift system. Those happy to hike out won’t be disappointed, as the steep ride down is a joy.

The Beavers aside, A-Basin has something for everyone. I’d happily take my family here to ride the powder filled pistes, before hiking through the North Gate alone, to ride some very serious chutes, many of which are accessed, with board on your back, by climbing down a tatty old rope.

Forget Vail; hit the Independents if you want to see the real soul of Colorado!