Who doesn’t love a good road trip? We’ve taken quite a few skiing focused road trips throughout the years and love sharing our itineraries, experiences and takeaways from each adventure. We’ve shared specifics from our Montana trip a few years ago (Road Trip Montana), but now it’s time to highlight another favorite trip – southern Colorado.

There are a variety of options to get to Crested Butte, but for us the easiest and most obvious choice was to drive from Alta in our own truck. As we’ve done before, we brought Rumble (the dog) along for the ride.

Crested Butte

The town of Crested Butte is roughly an eight hour drive from our home in Alta, Utah. Thankfully it is beautiful and relatively easy driving, a great way to kick off our trip! I’d done a little homework ahead of time to make sure we landed somewhere good for lunch (call me a diva, but gas station or fast food won’t cut it for this gal) and we stopped at Tamarisk Restaurant for a delicious lunch and break from the long drive.

We checked in at the Inn at Crested Butte (note, this spot was dog friendly and maybe not top of the list to revisit), had a delicious dinner at the highly loved Secret Stash pizza downtown and crashed after a long day of travel.

Crested Butte gets an average of 230 inches a season and has approachable slopes for most skiers. Their extreme terrain is primarily all accessed via one t-bar (North Face Lift) and needs a good deal of snow to ski. Luckily for us this area was open during our visit and was where we spent most of our time skiing. While the trails aren’t very long on this part of the mountain there was some great bump and tree skiing which we enjoyed. For our second and and final night in Crested Butte we tried out the beloved Soupcon restaurant located down a side street in a historic cabin with 28 seats.

Downtown Crested Butte
Crested Butte tree skiing

Telluride

After two very pleasant days of ripping around Crested Butte we hit the road again and drove the three hours to Telluride. Telluride is your classic ski town and a must visit – old mining town in a box canyon with majestic mountain views from the small main street. We opted to stay a few blocks from downtown at The Hotel Telluride (another perfectly fine dog friendly option) which still allowed us the ability to walk to town and the free gondola to get on the mountain. Telluride has a much newer Mountain Village with ritzy ski on ski off accommodations, but we were just as eager to check out the town of Telluride as the slopes. Thankfully for us we have a dear friend who has called Telluride home for over ten years and she was able to give us the lay of the land pointing out the best yoga, coffee, dinner and trails. We enjoyed a delicious meal together at The National which is located in a beautiful 120+ year old building right off of main street.

Now, the reason we were really there… the skiing! Telluride is pretty boom or bust, they either get a lot of snow or no snow. This season they’ve had just over 100 inches and have a 35 inch base, but the winter we visited they had one of the snowiest on record with nearly 350 inches. We didn’t have any new snow while we were in town, but it was cold and sunny which made for exceptionally beautiful weather to cruise around and explore. The resort is known for offering great terrain for all types of skiers and lengthy lift served vertical (3,845 feet). While we enjoyed exploring all that Telluride had to offer, my personal favorite skiing was accessed via hiking the ski area boundary at the top of the Prospect Express lift and skiing down through Black Iron Bowl (pictured below).

Hiking to ski Black Iron Bowl (Telluride)
Tree skiing (Telluride)

Purgatory

Our next multi day destination was Silverton (just under two hours away), but we couldn’t help but take a pit stop at Purgatory on our way. We decided to take the long route down through Ophir and checked into the Leland House in downtown Durango with the plan to ski Purgatory the next day before heading onward to a few days at Silverton. Unfortunately for Purgatory we’d just come off of four days skiing Crested Butte and Telluride, think big, wide open lengthy ski runs… needless to say Purgatory is not that, and we skied it when conditions were quite firm. While it’s always fun to check out the “off the beaten path” ski areas, sometimes they don’t always knock your socks off. We zipped around for a few hours before hitting the road again to Silverton.

Silverton

Having been to Silverton only once (in the summer) during my college days at University of Colorado at Boulder I had a pretty idyllic vision of the place in my head. It did not disappoint! Silverton, like the towns of Crested Butte, Telluride and Durango, was developed as a mining town in the 1870s and shifted to a recreational hub for the outdoor enthusiast when the mining industry shuttered over one hundred years later in the 1990s. The town sits at just over 9,000 feet in elevation with the surrounding mountains towering at 14,000 feet. It’s an incredibly beautiful, unique and low key town.

We still had our four legged sidekick, Rumble, along for the ride so opted for a simple, dog friendly Airbnb right in the center of town. (Next time, we’ll stay at The Wyman). We enjoyed checking out the few stops in town for coffee, beers and dinner and played many, many rounds of backgammon at the bar at The Grand Imperial (pictured below).

Located about 15 minutes from the town is Silverton Mountain. Skiing Silverton Mountain is one of the most unique ski experiences I will likely ever have. It certainly is not for everyone, but for us skiing there had been high on the bucket list for years. There is a single chairlift, no groomed terrain, a yurt for a “lodge” and old school buses for transportation. You can ski Silverton’s nearly 2,000 acres of terrain in a variety of ways – with a guide, without a guide or go heliskiing (they offer a single drop option). We opted to hire a guide to show us the terrain for the two days we were there (fun fact, John Shocklee was our guide). Upon arrival you take the single chairlift to the top and hike to a variety of skiing options from there – big wide open bowls, tight tree skiing and quite steep long pitches. While the terrain at Silverton was absolutely incredibly we were not blessed with excellent snow conditions which made the skiing a bit tough, but fun was had by all. We will certainly be looking to return to Silverton in better snow.

Hiking the ridge at Silverton Mountain
Drinks at the bar at The Grand Imperial in Silverton

A few notes on road trips…

  • Road Trippers is a free website that you can plug in your starting and final destinations and it will provide restaurants, activities, sights to see and lodging along your route. We’ve found it to be a lot more fun than Google for road trip planning.
  • If you are a food snob like me, take the time to ask around, do your research and plan out some options for breakfast and dinner (eat lunch on the mountain!) so you’re not hangrily trying to search through Trip Advisor or Yelp trying to find yourself a good cup of coffee.
By Charlotte Miller
conSKIerge co-founder

Charlotte Miller caught the ski bug early from her dad. An avid skier and gearhead, Charlotte claims Sugarbush, Vermont and Alta/Snowbird, Utah as her home mountains. In addition, she has explored many other resorts throughout North America and northern Japan. Despite having a job in the corporate world, she skis 40+ days a year. She is an Ambassador for Atomic. Warning – while she loves to share her love for the mountains with others, don’t try to keep up with her on the hill – it won’t end well.