The second day is normally a ski day. The lifts open at 9:00 so you need to eat breakfast on the mountain. There are not a lot of choices for sit down breakfasts but there are quite a few places to grab a quick breakfast sandwich or pastries. For sit down breakfasts, we like the Woodstone Grille at The Grand Lodge. The Grand Lodge is located right at the base area also and is another great place for lodging close to the slopes. The Woodstone Grille has a really good breakfast buffet with biscuits and eggs and sausage and bacon. They also will cook you an omelet or fried eggs. The buffet is rounded out with fresh fruit, bread choices for toasting and a large pot of excellent oatmeal with all the fixings. The best breakfast item in my opinion is the waffle. They are the lightest, fluffiest waffles I have ever had; it is almost like eating really sweet air.
Then we hit the slopes. We love this ski resort. The base area has four lifts. Peachtree goes to green lifts and is great for beginners or to get a practice run in. West Wall is actually a little way down from the base area and is accessible from several other condos and lodges farther down the road. Red Lady goes up right from the base about halfway and has access to a lot of green and blue trails. Silver Queen goes all the way to the top, closest to Mount Crested Butte.
There are several places to eat lunch on the mountain so you can take a little break from skiing without going all the way back down to the base. On this trip we ate at the Umbrella Bar at the top of the Painter Boy lift. It’s a heated yurt like tent where they serve soups and sandwiches and hot drinks. They also have an outside patio area with tables. The tomato soup is excellent, especially with the grilled cheese sandwiches. They also have a pretty good chili and a yummy turkey panini. If you need to warm up you can get hot cider or hot chocolate.
If you eat up on the mountain, you can just head down another run right after lunch. So we spent the rest of the afternoon on the slopes. The lifts close at 4:00. It is really nice to visit an outside hot tub or the heated pools after a day of skiing. Then we got ready and head back down into town. We tried a new steak house on this trip. It used to be called Maxwell’s and it is now renamed to Elk Ave Prime. It was excellent. A little pricey but worth it. We had amazing fried brussel sprouts for an appetizer. They had a great balsamic sauce and some bacon bits and were so good. The wedge salad was great and so was the bread. For entrees, I had sea bass with lobster raviloli and Chip had filet. Both were really really good. The sides were family style and we ordered the white cheddar mashed potatoes. Oh my! Everything was amazing.
