Three late-season skiing options in Colorado

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Spring sunset skiing sessions kick off in only a few weeks at Keystone Resort. Starting March 28, 2010, you can get some great late-season skiing out in Colorado. Most resorts in the Rockies don’t force skiers and snowboarders to call it quits until April 11 or 18, so there’s still plenty of time to hop a plane and get a few runs in. at Keystone, you can pick up the “Game On” package for $99, which includes free NASTAR ski racing (for the family) and Nordic skiing.

Need some late-season skiing ideas? Here are three in Colorado:

1. Keystone Resort
Book by March 31, 2010 and you’ll pick up a free night with the “Spring Break on Us” package (must stay three nights). While you’re there, take the kids to the new Kidtopia Festival, with the Mountaintop Ultimate Snow Fort featuring 12-foot walls, a snow throne and a draw bridge, parades, disco tubing and more.

2. Vail
Take 33 percent off your stay at The Arrabelle at Vail Square and your lift ticket. While you’re in town, check out the April 17 Wyclef Jean concert, as well as the World Pond Skimming Championships.

3. Arapahoe Basin
You can ski here through early June and even enjoy a ski “beach” scene, with barbecues, snow beach volleyball and hot tubs. If you need to feed your skiing addiction, A-Basin is the place to do it.

Document your vacation with RockResorts “Three for Free” promotion

by Katie Hammel on

With the slumping economy and decline in hotel occupancy rates, lots of hotels and resorts are offering deals that allow you stay for free after you pay for a certain number of nights. But not many resorts are throwing in a free “adventure cam” to use during your stay.

RockResorts, which operates properties in Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and St. Lucia, is offering a “Three for Free” promotion that goes above and beyond the standard package deal. The minimum stay at each resort varies (ranging from 3-6 nights) and dates of validity vary through April depending on which of the 12 resorts you choose, but at each one you’ll receive: one free night’s stay, a $50 gift card or resort credit, and a free Adventure Eye Video Systems action/ helmet camcorder to make a movie off all the fun you have during your stay.

As an added bonus, those who actually use the camera to record themselves out and about on the property can enter their movie into a contest to win free Epic Passes for the 2010-2011 season. The passes allow unlimited skiing at Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge and Keystone in Colorado.

To take advantage of the promotion, rooms must be booked by January 31.

[via La Times]

Summer snow-tubing at Keystone Resort

by Tom Johansmeyer on

With the hot summer sun beating down on me, I actually start to miss winter. But, when that brisk chill turns into relentless cold, I start to think in the other direction. The Keystone Resort has found a way to give you the best of both. This summer, it will be the only resort to offer snow-tubing. Yes, you can roll around in – and glide on – the cold white stuff in July and August.

Keystone’s Adventure Point will offer two lanes of snow every Wednesday through Sunday this summer, from 10 AM to 2:30 PM, as long as the snow lasts. Each guest can spend $25 to get a one-hour tubing session with unlimited runs (including gondola rides up the mountain).

“With the success of the tubing hill in the winter, we wanted to try and offer our guests a unique and fun experience by tubing on the snow during the summer,” said Matt Hoover, tubing hill manager at Keystone Resort. “It’s definitely summer time here at Keystone, but at our high altitude we can offer the best of both worlds to give guests an unforgettable on-mountain experience this summer.”

Not far away, you can still hit the usual summer activities in Keystone, including the bike park (the River Run Gondola will take you back to the top), with an unlimited mountain biking season pass costing only $299. and, be sure to grab a meal at the mountaintop Alpenglow Stube and Der Fuondue Chessel. Everything tastes better at 11,444 feet.