The best skiing events often coincide with major festivals, such as the Vail Film Festival every March or events at Aspen, Breckenridge, or Steamboat Springs. Crested Butte is a little more out of the way than some of these more well known resort areas, but it more than holds its own insofar as major ski events are concerned. Maybe it’s just that people in a close-knit community like Crested Butte enjoy life a little more, and have a bit more fun. Having fun can be contagious as anyone who has participated in a Crested Butte Santa Ski & Pub Crawl will tell you.
Many of, and perhaps the best, or at least the best-known skiing events take place in the spring. Ski season in some Colorado resorts often extends into April and many of the top events in the state take place in March. The one exception of course is the winter festivals that usually coincide with the holidays.
One of the better attended events is the Annual Bud Light Spring Jam held at Aspen/Snowmass during the latter part of March. Major happenings during recent Spring Jams included the NASTAR Championships, where skiers from almost every state in the Union converged to compete for a number of national skiing titles. Even without the NASTAR events, the Bud Light Spring Jam is well attended and worth attending.
Loveland has several events in late March and early April featuring everything from scavenger hunts on skis, the Loveland Derby, which is the longest running amateur ski race in America, and Skiing Magazine’s Don’t Stop Skiing Day, which may or may not be an annual event at Loveland every year.
Arapahoe Basin has an annual Easter Egg Hunt on the beginner’s slopes (adults need not apply), and the Annual Grind, where contestants are not required to purchase a lift ticket, the reason being they have to climb up the slope on skins, a popular method back when rope tows were first coming into prominence.
You could take a ski vacation in Crested Butte and participate in the Santa Ski & Pub Crawl, one of the major events in which you’re not merely a spectator, and then hit another resort in the spring. Or, you could make a return trip to Crested Butte where the fun has not really stopped. This time, the main event is not a combination Santa Group Ski and Pub Crawl, but a combination of downhill skiing and pond crossing. If you choose to participate, your goal is to gain enough speed, and have good enough balance, to make it all of the way across a 50-foot pond of water at the bottom of the slope. This is your chance to see yourself on YouTube, and cap your ski season with a mild case of hypothermia. In the meantime, everyone else at the event is having fun watching.
There are of course many other events as well. What many of these events have in common is that they are conceived and sponsored by people who think outside of the box, or those who having watched someone on water skis, figure it’s no big deal to cross a large body of water on a pair of downhill skis or a snowboard, but probably not on cross-country skis.