Ski Vacation at Copper Mountain - Escape to Denver

Christmas eve, Saturday December 24th was sunny and clear the whole day, a gorgeous day for skiing due to the full day snow on December 23rd. However the forecast was that there would be another winter storm coming to the Rockies next day - our day of leaving the resort and fly back home. Considering the wimpy Nissan Versa we rented, and the potential being stranded at Copper mountain, we decided to leave copper mountain on the evening of Christmas eve, about 20 hours ahead of schedule.

We got up early on Christmas eve and went to the slopes early in the morning and enjoyed the beautiful day and great skiing condition until 3:30pm. We cooked another big meal for the last dinner at Copper Mountain. Both families were fed and ready to leave by 6pm.

It was dark already, the wimpy Nissan Versa's defrost function did not work well, which made it hard to see the icy, snow covered service road. I drove cautiously slow (~ 40mph). Fortunately I-70 was not busy at the time, and the road condition was OK. We got to Golden, Colorado, a small city west to Denver, at the outer skirt of Rockies without drama, safely and at expected time!

Our flight home on Christmas day was at 7:30pm. Despite sleep in, we still had plenty time to kill before taking off, so we went to Colorado State Capital and surrounding area for self guided walking tours. 

It was a very cold day, temperature was at teens with a persistent northern breeze, otherwise it was a beautiful day. We noticed that there was a large gathering in front of the state capital and a long line of people along coalfax road, That turned out to be the annual charitable event - Christmas at the Park. Volunteers gave out blankets, sleeping bags, winter coats and hot meals  to about 500 homeless people according a lady in volunteer bib. 

Passing the state capital ground, we walked west to the Civic Center Park, there was Voorhies memorial to the north, Denver city council building to the west, Denver Art Museum and Denver library to the south. We looked around and took pictures for about 30 - 40 minutes. We then drove to Larimer Square and Confluence Park for another walking tour. 

It was a very cold day and restaurants were hard find for lunch, but comparing possibly stranded in Copper Mountain with 12 inch snow, we all agreed that leaving copper mountain early was a brilliant decision. 

Colorado Capital Hill

church with a green top

Cowboys

Zodiac sculpture at Civic Center park

Art piece in front of Denver Art Museum

Denver Art Museum

looking west toward cloud covered Rockies

Denver International Airport (DIA)

Ski Vacation at Copper Mountain - Dollar Car Rental/Nissan Versa

The Ski trip to Copper Mountain was not all good - we actually had literally nightmare situation with Dollar Car Rental/Nissan Versa on our way to the ski resort.

Paying big bucks for the ski-in/ski-out condo, we tried to minimize the cost for the trip through other ways: booked flight for Wednesday departure and Monday return, rent a mid-size sedan from the cheapest rental company - Dollar rental. This by itself should not be a problem - we did this type of travel arrangement many times before.

Our misfortune on the road started with Dollar Car Rental at Denver International Airport (DIA). When we got there, we waited for 10  minutes and were served by a guy who arrived to work just then, He spoke in a mono tone, had a blank face, and mechanically carried out his duty. First sign of trouble - low morale at this place.

He told us that we could pick any car in the mid-size car row. There were only Nissan Versas available with one suspiciously looking VW. All cars have tape marking on the trunk doors and on doors of left rear passenger doors. We picked one Nissan versa - as I drove away, I noticed that seat belt light was on despite that everyone in the car buckled up already - warning light malfunction. I changed to another car, and drove out of the lot, and quickly I noticed that the car was very slow to accelerate to highway speed (~ 60mph). Second sign of trouble - bad maintenance.

After a dinner stop, we drove onto the mountain section of I-70, as I drove up a small slope, I noticed that the maximum speed I got was 40mph  despite pedal to the metal - something was wrong. I drove off  I-70 and stopped along highway 40 at the front of a store Mountain threads. It was around 8pm. We called Dollar Rental roadside assistance. The agent decided that Nissan Versa had a transmission failure, collected all information, my driver license #, our location, rental car contract #, etc,  offered to send a replacement car as soon as possible - but estimated delivery time was about 2.5 hours since he had to  communicate with AAA first and would get back to us about the details of the delivery. Forty five minutes passed, he did not  call us back to provide promised information. Lily called the helpline and this time it was a lady, she started to collect all basic information again, when challenged, she told us that the first agent told her that his call with us was disconnected and he did not get the information (LIAR!!).  The second agent, she set things up with AAA and gave us AAA's contact number. Due to Dollar Rental roadside assistance program's obvious incompetency, we told her specifically that Dollar Rental at Denver Airport needs to have the replacement car ready before the AAA tow truck arrives.

Another hours passed, Lily called AAA, and was told the truck was not dispatched yet because they were told they could wait for 90 minutes. Upon hearing our situation, AAA  agent dispatched the truck which would arrive at the Dollar rental at Denver airport in about an hour. We called Dollar roadside assistance again to make sure that Dollar Car rental has the replacement car ready - we were assured that the car was ready already.

In about another hour, we called AAA again, we were told the truck arrived at the DIA Dollar already but no one can sign off for the replacement car. Lily was furious and called Dollar roadside assistance again - was told that they could not locate the branch manager and thus could not have the replacement car signed off!! - and told to be patient and the replacement car would be delivered - but when, for how long?

At around 11:45pm we were told that the replacement car was loaded onto the tow truck and would take another 40 minutes or so for the truck to arrive at our location.

The AAA tow truck arrived around 12:40am, the AAA driver was very proficient and empathetic. He delivered the replacement car, another Nissan/Versa to us. We finally got back onto the road again at 1am !! We got to the ski resort at 2am!!

5 hours in the cold Colorado night waiting for the Dollar rental roadside assistance, with pending winter storm coming, poor customer service and incompetent staff at Dollar Car rental, wimpy Nissan/Versa including the replacement made this literally a nightmare.



Note:

1)The consolations to us were that the pending storm did not materialize,  everyone of the family was calm and patient with the situation, no bickering. We actually took time to look at the starry sky.

2) Dollar car rental at DIA earned a 1 star on yelp - so our experience with the office was not a one-off situation.

3) Nissan Versa is a wimpy car. Don't drive it in mountains and in fact not in the city either. Many people had bad experience with the car including Lily's colleagues.

Ski Vacation at Copper Mountain - Indoors

This Copper Mountain ski trip was truly a ski vacation: we traveled with a few other families, stayed at a ski-in/ski-out condo, shared our unit with one family. The American Eagle lift was right outside our windows and we could get early to the lift without getting up too early. We cooked delicious dinner at the condo every night - shrimp, beef,  BBQ chicken, pork rib, salmon, .....  mostly by the two mothers Jean and Lily. Justin cooked steak for one night! Two families 8 people enjoyed dinners and shared skiing experience at the table every night.

Denver International Airport - transfer station

View from the condo

Condo's living area

After dinner the kids went to another condominium to meet the other part of the big group - playing cards, having outdoor hot tub, and of course playing games on cell phones. Lily and I ventured into the village one night to enjoy the Christmas lights at the center village. Our photos from the night-walk attracted more people to join us next night.

Copper Mountain Center Village

Christmas Lights at the pond

taking a break from skiing

At the end of the third day all the children came to the condo for a rest and they all stayed for dinner. Lily made a slow-cooked beef stew, we quickly added a BBQ chicken wing to the menu to feed the added mouths!

The ski-in/ski-out condo was expensive to rent but it seemed worth it.

In addition to cooking, convenience, we could get to the lift quickly without stress, we could take break at lunch time in the condo, and most importantly we could ski right to the door of the building entrance at the end of the day! All happened at leisure pace - a luxury!!

having fun indoor 

dinner buffet

the dinner party - looking at the window you see the adult party

Christmas Even at Copper Mountain

Ski Vacation at Copper Mountain - Skiing

Copper Mountain is our fourth destination in Colorado for our winter ski vacations. We have been to Wolf Creek multiple times, and went to Winter Park and Keystone once each before.

There were multiple reasons for us to ski Copper Mountain, the main one is that it has a huge preseason lift ticket sales - $169 for 4 days without blackout dates. Many of Nicholas' friends go skiing there before Christmas. So we went there on December 20th with some of them. This also allowed Justin to ski with us. 

Copper Mountain is a typical Colorado ski resort, wide trails, good vertical drop, snow capped mountains all around. A unique feature of the ski resort is that it has a well separated green, blue and black trails. The main lift Super bee serves mostly black trails, American Eagle serves blue trails primarily with a few black trails, and American Flyer serves mostly Green trails with some blue trails.

Since Justin skis on Black trails most of the time and skis very fast, he bought a ski helmet. As in the past, Justin mostly skied by himself, Nicholas skied with his friends. During one of Justin Black Trail runs, he fell hard, the helmet must have protected him from serious injury but he experienced some pain in the neck.

Lily and I skied by ourselves. Each day we started with American Eagle lift right outside our condo with a few runs on blue trails, and then moved to Super Bee for a long blue trail combos of Andy's encore and Skid road from top to bottom, and then we would ski on Oh No (a more difficult blue) and Rosi (a short black trail). When our legs were tired in the afternoon, before closing, we would go to American flyers for a few carefree and fast runs on long green trail combos (High point+carefree or CopperTone+carefree).

But there were a few interesting happenings.

On the third day there, due to heavy snow the previous night, there were a few new trails opened with deep unpacked powder snow. Nicholas and friends went to newly opened Fairplay trail and he recommended it to us. Lily, Justin and I went there together. Just about 20 yards into the trail, I lost one ski and fell into 2ft+ deep snow. I could not locate the lost ski in the deep snow even with help from Lily and Justin, I had to call Ski Patrol for help and he found the ski uphill from where I fell!!

Lily's skiing skill has improved tremendously over the years and she is at least at my level and maybe better. One time she was skiing ahead of me, and at the start of a deep slope, she looked back to check on me and fell. I took a few pictures of her when she was on the snow. She was a good sport, smiled at the camera, got up and skied away.

Rumor had it that Japan national team was training at Copper Mountain's half pipe. We could not do half pipe, but we did go to the top of the half pipe to observe and enjoyed watching snowboarders' practice.

The weather was pretty cooperating - it was sunny in the morning and cloudy in the afternoon and snowed at night - except the third day - which snowed almost the whole day. Of course that made the ski condition for our 4th and final day there excellent.

Foliage in front of my house

After the cold front that came at the end of October during the colony half marathon and green dragon 5 milers, the temperature swung back and forth several times from below average to 10+F above average. The large swings in temperature made the foliage this year not as good as before.

However last 10 days during our routine morning runs, we noticed some bright foliage here and there. Last Sunday afternoon, it was Sunny with a few white clouds in the sky. I walked out of the front door around noon time to capture the foliage on my street. 

One tree on my front yard lost almost all its leaves, the view of it let one feels like to be in winter, but the tree on side of the house just started to turn red; looking across the street, one  tree was in its full blown splendid autumn color spectrum – from light green to yellow to bright brown to red to dark brown.

Looking down the street to the east, two small trees by the curb were turning from red to bright brown, further down the road, two colorful trees, one bright yellow, the other dark red, stood in stark contrast to each other.

The most impressive of all on this street was this one big tree with full canopy of bright yellow leaves at a neighbor’s yard. I walked over to take a closer look.  As I got closer, the owners of the house happened to come out right then, apparently attracted by the bright yellow color of the tree, taking pictures of their own trees.   

What a beautiful "Autumn" day!!