For the outdoors set, Boulder, Colorado is well known for being the premier hip and cool “mountain” town. A place where you can enjoy a five mile run in the morning, stop and get some great trade coffee on the way to work or on the way to your home office, where you can cut out early to go for an adventurous mountain bike ride with your buddies and then enjoy some good local brew at a new brewpub at the end of the day. Boulder also has easy access skiing. Eldora is the local’s mountain just 20 miles away. It’s a college town with an outdoor sports addiction.
The problem is Boulder is so super cool and everyone knows it. Thus, the population has grown 15% in the last twenty years and home prices have skyrocketed. That hip and cool lifestyle has become unattainable for most, except maybe for Coach Prime who just moved to Boulder a few years ago (but I don’t think he is staying).
But what if you could go back to the 1990’s and buy that fixer upper house on the corner with good schools, nearby brew pubs, trail access and close to good skiing? You can, just not in Boulder. Let me introduce you to Flagstaff, Arizona. The next great mountain town.
Flagstaff today is what Boulder, Colorado was 20 years ago. You can bike, run, hike, and drink great coffee or beer all in the same day. It has an up-and-coming university (Northern Arizona) and a largely still undiscovered housing market. Oh, and yes you can ski from November to May most years!
Flagstaff averages 101.7 inches of snow per year. To put this in perspective, Boulder’s annual snowfall average is 89 inches. This is Arizona but not the desert. Tall ponderosa pines prevail and not a catus in sight. Seven miles out of town you will run across Arizona Snowbowl, the largest and steepest ski area in the state and within a 500-mile radius.
One of the oldest continually operating ski areas in the country, it began operations in 1938. It is located on the western slopes of the San Francisco Peaks, a grouping of four mountains that dominate the Flagstaff skyline. These peaks include Arizona’s highest peak Humphreys Peak at 12,633 feet.
Arizona Snowbowl started with just a rope tow powered by a car engine. Today the area boasts eight lifts, 1 “Chon-dola” (gondola + six-pack), a high-speed six-pack, two fixed quads, a triple, a double, and a couple of magic carpets. These lifts serve 777 acres of terrain with 61 designated trails. The lift-served terrain tops out at 11,500’ but there is additional 800 feet of vertical “hike to terrain” above this.
I found most of Arizona Snowbowl to be a real skier’s mountain. The trail map does not do it justice. Most of the trails off the south ridge were steep, narrow, and long. My thighs were burning after long runs down off the two main lifts Grand Canyon Express Quad and the Arizona Gondala. These drain to a large center bowl that funnels the traffic back to the base.
The snow normally comes in big storms and hangs around for awhile due to the elevation. The mountain had received 100 inches of snow the two weeks before I arrived, so the coverage was excellent. But this was March, so the mountain went through the normal Spring freeze/thaw cycle. Thus, the runs were just the way this East Coaster likes them, bulletproof in the morning and then slowly softening over the course of the day.
One of the other interesting features of the area is the Hart-Prairie beginner area, where the original rope tow was located. This is a wide alpine meadow with a manageable 650’ vertical, two fixed lifts and two surface lifts. It provides a great learning environment on the mountain but away from the bigger lifts. Clearly one of the finest all-novice areas in the country.
If there is a dig on Arizona Snowbowl it is the supporting facilities. It’s spartan at best. With such strong trail infrastructure and a great lift system, one would think there would be a strong base area. This is a day use only mountain; there is no on-site lodging. The base area has a couple bars, a cafeteria, and that’s about it. They do have a couple of large deck areas as this is Arizona, and it can be sunny.
Arizona Snowboard is not on any of the mega passes nor even the Indy Pass. Owned by Mountain Capital Partners, it is on their Powder Pass, which includes an odd mix of thirteen mostly similarly-sized western resorts. Once again, I was able to take advantage of their surge pricing model. By planning my trip in advance and on a weekday, my lift ticket was only $35. Since I booked online I was given 10 “snow bowl bucks” which I then used to bring my rental cost down to $25. So, for $60 I was able to get 17 runs in for 26,000 ft of vertical. And you thought skiing was expensive!
Arizona is the 31st state I have skied in. Given the advanced terrain, strong lift network and interesting supporting town I don’t know why it took me so long to get here. All in all, I greatly enjoyed my visit to both Arizona Snowbowl and Flagstaff. If nothing else, I have a new destination to Zillow-stalk houses!
Robbie Allen is an avid small hill skier. He has written several articles on the many small hills he has sought out.
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