If you’re looking for another convenient bus in the Denver metro area to get up to Loveland, Keystone, and Arapahoe Basin: check out the Front Range Ski Bus. With pickup locations at Sports Authority (Arapahoe and I-25), Union Station, and the Wooly Mammoth lot and trips every Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday this might be just the ticket. Adult tickets start at $39.

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We took a bit of a break and hadn’t been up for nearly a month due to work, holidays, sickness and.. well, the fact there has been absolutely no new snow along the I-70 corridor (Vail, Beaver Creek, Summit County).

We decided to make a weekend out of it and headed up to Keystone on Saturday. It was as you’d expect: some new man-made snow on the front with plenty of bare spots and grass (yes grass!) poking through in the back.

Sadly, the crowds are great for getting a table at any of the restaurants. We never had to wait or wander to find 4 or 5 open seats together.

As the big storm rolled by in the afternoon (around 2 it started coming down) most people had cleared out but there was already 1-2 inches of fresh snow on top of everything. This made for an enjoyable afternoon but meant hell for the commute to and from the mountains.

Luckily we stayed in the high country for the night but the new snow meant the 1-2 hour drive into Denver took 4-5 hours for most. I’m torn between having good commutes and no snow versus lots of new snow and not having to sit in the car for two feature length movies. Not really, I want the snow, but sheesh!

Check out the photo gallery for more…

Posted from Dillon, Colorado, United States.

Keystone Mountain is open for ski season and to celebrate continued snowfall and fantastic ski conditions, the resort is offering a “White Sale.” For a limited time only, book a one-night winter holiday getaway and get two nights FREE. It’s the simplest gift you’ll buy all season. The White Sale applies to stays of three nights or more and is valid December 17-23, 2011. Rates start at $79 per night in a Forest Studio Condo and represent a savings of 67 percent!!

Wow, this sounds like a great getaway deal for folks already in town or coming out before Christmas. Visit http://www.keystoneresort.com/.

Denver International Airport (DIA)

This central hub is the easiest to fly into from across the country (even the world) and within a two hour drive you can arrive at:

• Echo Mountain
• Eldora Mountain Resort
• Loveland Ski Area
• Winter Park Resort
• Arapahoe Basin
• Copper Mountain
• SolVista Basin

Regional Airports

From DIA it’s actually possible to connect to regional airports serving the following locales on the western slope:

• Gunnison (Crested Butte)
• Aspen
• Telluride
• Durango (Durango, Wolf Creek, Silverton)
• Steamboat
• Montrose
• Grand Junction (Powderhorn)

In addition to Aspen and Eagle…

Aspen/Snowmass

American Airlines has announced new daily non-stop flights from both Dallas/Fort Worth and Los Angeles for the winter season beginning December 15, 2011.

Frontier will continue to offer four daily flights to Aspen/Snowmass from their Denver hub for a total of up to 30 daily flights in and out of Aspen/Snowmass on three airlines.

More details can be found at flyaspensnowmass.com.

Vail/Eagle County Airport

The Vail/Eagle County Airport serves the following:

• Vail
• Beaver Creek
• Ski Cooper

More details can be found at snow.com.

Once you get to Colorado you need to get to the resort. While there are plenty of shuttle services at DIA and Eagle, I’ve learned that Colorado Mountain Express (CME) is one of the more prominent services in the area. Learn more at coloradomountainexpress.com.

Destinations

The University Ski bus will travel to to Breckenridge, Keystone, Vail, Beaver Creek or Arapahoe Basin.

Weekly destinations will be chosen based on customer demand.

Pick-up and Pricing

As the name implies, the service departs the University of Denver campus with tickets ranging from $19-$29.

A secondary pick up location of Regis University is being considered and might be added at a later date.

More Information

Founded and operated by DU students, you can learn more and purchase tickets at www.UniversitySkiBus.com. For more information, contact Tyler Perlmutter at (847) 830-8797 or tyler@perlmutter.net.

It was a fun day up in Summit County. It’s early season so there’s no traffic, Dillon seems still quieter than usual and the lifties won’t let you on until 9 AM.

We used our first day as a dry run to work out all the kinks: adding the ski rack on the roof, making sure we grabbed all the proper gear (we did!), break in the new boots, and, of course, hit that one piece of bare snow to get your first divot of the season (damn!).

Keystone was busy down at River Run because most people are working out issues with their passes. If you need a replacement pass, new photo, etc. you have to do it at Keystone. If you are getting a “replacement pass”, you only get one freebie a season so hang on tight. Oh, and look for all the guys and gals in green suits: they’ll take your EpicMix photo. Just make sure you remind them to scan your pass. They’re still working out their kinks, too, though: I have two photos that were set as taken today (a day in the future).

Overall the conditions are as you expect: a bit iffy and very crowded. The weather was nice with sun most of the day and some cloud cover rolling in and out. Overall, a successful start to the season.

Posted from Dillon, Colorado, United States.

Another quick post over at buzz on how to connect your social media profiles like Facebook and Twitter to Vail Resorts’EpicMix social network.

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Copper Mountain opened to a great crowd this season on November 4th. Just down the road, Keystone also launched the 2011 year with new EpicMix photos. Be sure to look for the green suits for your own free professional photos.

Posted from Breckenridge, Colorado, United States.

Today is the big day for two big resorts in Colorado. The 2011/2012 seasons kicks off this morning at Copper Mountain and Keystone. If you’re headed up send us your photos and we’ll get them posted!

With some slick design changes and updates for the new photo sharing, you’ll want to make sure you have this in hand if you’re heading up to Keystone this opening weekend.

If you didn’t get last weekend’s Sunday Post then you’re in luck: the Denver Post has published it’s 2011 ski guide. It’s a nice overview of most of the CSCUSA spots across the state with pass pricing, location, lifts, and other vitals. If you’re looking to bone up and learn more about Colorado’s gems, check out the guide.

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Lots of awesome pictures came in today from the various resorts. It’s definitely coming down hard up in the mountains today!

Check out the photos above (you can use left/right arrows to navigate) from all over Colorado.

Various sources include:

• Colorado Ski Country USA
• Aspen/Snowmass on Facebook
• Eldora on Facebook
• Breckenridge on Twitter

Any changes (early opens! fingers crossed) will be posted here and on the events calendar.

Updates

If you aren’t already, be sure to get on the mailing list and follow cosnow on Twitter and Facebook to get the latest updates this season:

Follow @cosnow

Openings by Resort (Alphabetical)

Openings by Date

Sources:

• Vail resorts
• Colorado Ski Country

Posted from Denver, Colorado, United States.

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RFID-enabled passes

I remember when resorts were first trying out RFID-enabled passes: the ones with the chips in them that, with special scanners, can be picked up when you get close to them (no line-of-sight needed to scan, keep it in your jacket or pocket). I distinctly remember Copper Mountain trying these with their “Fast Lane” customers. I always laughed because people would thrust their chests up against the scanners because the technology wasn’t quite there yet. That was the early 2000s.

Now its 2011 and all Vail Resorts passes, season and day, will be RFID-enabled. This certainly means one thing: no more maintaining two technologies at Vail Resorts, no more training on two ways to scan (though, how hard is it?). It also means: everyone can get all the perks of the EpicMix scanners at each lift that track your vertical feed, lifts visited, etc.

cosnow’s take: This is a fun way to get more people visiting Vail Resorts from out of town or are just going with their friends for one or two days. They all get the benefit of the EpicMix profile and stats (and Vail learns a bit more about them, in return).

Free, Professional Photos

The exciting piece is Vail Resorts is offering their free, professional photographers access to take a picture of you and ‘tag’you using your RFID-enabled (scan through your jacket) pass. Yes, those photographers that you ski past on the slope and wonder: “Was that a cool photo of me? Oh well, I don’t want to pay so I’ll never know…” and the ones at the top of the lift: “Do I really want to spend 15 minutes taking photos with my family not knowing if I like how they’ll turn out?”

No worries, says Vail. The photogs can ‘tag’everyone in the photo and, through EpicMix, show up immediately for you to view and share on your social networks (Facebook, Twitter). If you decide you like the picture, you can buy the full-resolution version, save it, print it, etc.

cosnow’s take: This is epic, pun intended. Vail knows how to make money and this is it: give people awesome photos with the great app experience and encourage more purchases. Sure, most people will just share their photo on Facebook and move along. But for many, if it’s easy, they will buy photos they otherwise never would have even had taken. Plus, it sounds like your own photos can live in EpixMix alongside the professional photos as peers.

EpicMix Remix Collage

At the end of the day, EpicMix will now generate a “Remix” collage of your vertical feet, photos, pins, etc. In short, you have a nice collage showing off your day on the mountain to remember forever.

cosnow’s take: This is nearly perfect. Yes, for most people a big photo on Facebook will be all they need to remember the day. But I’d hate to have an album of flat image files. I’d rather data that I can take and show elsewhere: a widget to put on my site with days visited, vertical feet, recent photos, etc. This is a great way to send traffic back to a site (EpicMix) while allowing me to take it and use it elsewhere. I’m not sure if I’d ever reliably use this feature.

I’m excited to see the technology evolve, this is right up my alley. I love photos, stats, and skiing so I see myself continuing to experiment with the new features. I’ll be sure to post my thoughts as the season gets rolling.