After a solid night of sleep we were up slightly later than the day before (one of the perks of staying on the mountain). Some of our Denver friends met us at the lodge and we walked back over to Cool River for another round of breakfast sandwiches. Afterwards, we went back to the hotel, loaded our bags into the car and changed into our ski gear. Checkout was efficient and we were able to keep our car at the lodge throughout the day which was a nice perk, given how expensive parking can get around the slopes.
Right across from the front doors was a bus stop and after a quick 5 minute ride, we were dropped off at the bottom of the Snowflake lift for first chair.
The Snowflake chair drops you off fairly low on the mountain between the bottom of Peak 8 and Peak 9. Given that we had a lunch reservation at the Ski Hill Grill at the base of Peak 8, and had spent the day before mostly on Peak 9, we headed off to Peak 8 and on to Peak 7. While Peak 8 has multiple lifts (similar to Peak 9), Peak 7 only has the one Independence SuperChair serving a ton of runs (mostly blues). This led to some massive lines for the chair lift and we quickly backtracked over to Peak 8 where we had a few more options.
Independence SuperChair lift line
After warming up during our lunch reservation, and eating some overpriced, sad looking chicken strips, the GF and I split for the afternoon. She and half of the other couple went to ski the Blacks out in the bowl while the other member of our group and I headed to Peak 9 to try our hand at moguls for the first time.
After an afternoon skiing Peak 9, we all met back up at the top of Peak 8 and took the Four O’Clock to Town all the way back to the lodge where we loaded up our car and headed towards town. Due to traffic and the rapidly increasing snowfall, we opted to take 285 back as opposed to 70.
