Colorado Ski Resorts

Colorado skiing is the reason a lot of people fly into Centennial in the first place, and the choice is genuinely hard: more than twenty resorts, two competing mega-passes, and drive times that run from under an hour to most of a day. This guide lays the numbers side by side, base and summit elevation, skiable acres, which pass covers it, when the season typically runs, and how long the drive takes from KAPA, so the decision takes minutes instead of an evening.

Two passes carry most of the state. The Epic Pass covers Vail, Breckenridge, Keystone, Beaver Creek, Crested Butte, and days at Telluride. The Ikon Pass covers Copper, Winter Park, Steamboat, Eldora, Arapahoe Basin, and days across the four Aspen Snowmass mountains. A handful of the best-value mountains, Loveland, Monarch, and Wolf Creek among them, sit on neither and sell their own tickets for less than either pass costs per day.

For anyone flying in, the airport question matters as much as the pass. Eagle County serves Vail and Beaver Creek, Aspen has its own field in the valley, Yampa Valley at Hayden puts you 25 minutes from Steamboat, and Gunnison, Telluride, and Montrose cover the southern mountains. The resorts with a charter lane from KAPA link straight to that route guide on their pages, with honest flight times and the weather alternates named.

Every Colorado Resort, Side by Side

Figures are each resort's published numbers, rounded for planning; seasons are typical rather than promised. Drive times assume clear roads, which winter I-70 does not always provide.