What a drought year teaches you about a mountain you thought you knew
I-70, Georgetown, Colorado. 12:47 a.m.
Last February, our annual President’s Day ski trip announced itself with a fishtail on Route 40 out of Empire, the rear end slipping out just enough to remind everyone the mountains had plans and we better put the truck in 4-wheel-drive now. It never stopped snowing that weekend at Winter Park. Thirty-six inches, more or less, from Friday to Monday. We skied powder until our legs quit.
This year, the announcement came differently. No weather. No drama from the sky. Just red and blue lights appearing on an empty I-70 after midnight near Georgetown, one cruiser, then two, then several, and the slow realization that the lights weren’t moving. That nobody was moving. A few people got out of their cars walked up to the police line and come back with news: guns drawn, stand-off, stay in your vehicle. What?
Two President’s Days. Two trips that opened with something unexpected and slightly wrong. The difference was that last year the mountain was trying to bury us in the best possible way. This year, the sky was cloudless and the snowpack was thin and a man twenty-five yards ahead of us was in a car stopped by a spike strip and law enforcement on three sides. We sat for an hour and fifteen minutes. We pulled into the condo at 2:00 a.m.
It seemed, at the time, like the worst possible start to a ski weekend. By the end of three days at Copper Mountain, it would register as merely the most dramatic of the complications. A trip defined less by what the mountain gave us than by what it withheld, and what we learned to find anyway.
The Mountain and Its Promise
Copper Mountain sits seventy-five miles west of Denver in Summit County, right on I-70, between Frisco and Vail. It opened in 1972 with five lifts and two buildings, and it has been called the athlete’s mountain ever since, not as a marketing conceit but as a descriptor with actual teeth. The U.S. Forest Service, which controls the land, has designated it as having the most naturally organized skier layout of any resort in the country. The terrain difficulty increases methodically from west to east: beginners in West Village, intermediates in Center Village, experts in East Village. It is a mountain designed the way mountains rarely are, as if someone actually thought it through.
The resort runs on a different identity than its Summit County neighbors. Breckenridge has the historic mining town and the nightlife. Vail has the cache and never-ending marketing budget. Copper has the mountain. Its 2,538 acres include 60% north-facing terrain, a figure that exceeds Vail, Beaver Creek and Telluride, a geographic accident of I-70’s east-west bearing through the Ten Mile Range that happens to produce exceptional snow preservation. Twenty-four lifts, including a trio of high-speed six-packs, keep the lines manageable. The village is both functional and charming, the restaurants honest and aspirational. The people who love it tend to love it quietly, the way you love something you don’t want discovered.
This season had not been kind. Colorado’s 2025-26 winter was, by most measures, a drought. The snowpack heading into President’s Day weekend sat well below historical averages across the state. Copper’s upper mountain, the bowls, the chutes, the terrain that justifies the “athlete’s mountain” label, was largely closed or barely holding enough snow that most skiers wouldn’t even venture in with their “rock skis”. Twenty-two of twenty-four lifts were running; roughly 93 of the resort’s 126 kilometers were open. Copper Bowl’s Mountain Chief and Blackjack lifts sat idle for most of the weekend.
The spike strip and guns drawn incident on I-70 felt like an omen, and in a sense it was: we were heading toward a mountain that would require some negotiating.
What we found was more interesting than we expected.
The Geometry of a Dry Year
The first morning revealed the situation clearly. The mountain looked like Colorado in a drought year looks: suggestive of skiing rather than definitively snowy. The upper elevations had coverage, thin in places and adequate in others, but the bluebird clarity that greeted us both Saturday and Sunday, the kind that makes you pull out sunglasses and feel briefly optimistic, turned out to be largely beside the point.
Copper’s north-facing terrain, the feature that makes it exceptional, doesn’t soften in February sun because February sun barely touches it. The solar arc stays low and southern; it illuminates the mountain without warming it. Mid-30s air temperatures with no direct solar input on a north-facing snowpack produce one thing: firm snow that stays firm. The east-facing terrain around Resolution Bowl and Spaulding Bowl may have caught a brief window of morning softening when the low sun hit them directly at dawn, but by the time skiers arrived in numbers, traffic had done the rest. Copper Bowl, the south-facing terrain that might have offered afternoon relief, spent most of the weekend closed. Blackjack opened briefly mid-day Saturday, a small concession from the mountain gods, and then shut again. Ski patrol at the gate was clear: chopped up, terrain unfamiliar, hazards present. We took the advice and moved on.
The deeper irony here is worth noting for anyone planning a trip in a lean year. Copper’s famous north-facing aspect is marketed as the great snow-preservation asset, and in a normal year it absolutely is. But in a drought year with a thin base, those same north-facing slopes become relentlessly cold and firm, with no arc of softening to chase throughout the day and no west-facing afternoon refuge to ride out to when the east side gets scraped. The mountain that holds snow best in a powder year also holds hardness best in a dry one. In a good year, Copper’s aspect is its superpower. In a drought year, it’s just cold.
What this meant practically was a skiing day that had a shape: get on the mountain early, work the groomers while they were still fresh, and find the terrain that traffic and time would be slowest to destroy. We got reasonably good at it.
The Shape of a Good Day
The move was this: American Eagle lift out of Center Village, then the short connector to the Excelerator, riding it to its top at just over 12,000 feet. From there, Ptarmigan, a blue run that opens wide and fast off the top, feeding into Main Vein or Fairplay all the way back to the Center Village base. Just about two thousand two hundred vertical feet, confirmed by the tracker. On paper it sounds like a warm-up run. In practice, on fresh corduroy in the early morning with nobody on it, it was some of the best skiing Copper had to offer all weekend.
The first couple of runs each day were the ones you remember. Saturday morning a few inches had fallen overnight and the upper pitch held something close to soft snow, not powder and nothing approaching what Colorado can produce when it’s feeling generous, but forgiving enough that the skis bit cleanly and the turns stacked up without interruption. The grooming corduroy gave way to slightly worked-over snow as the morning went on, and by early afternoon the lower connectors, Fairplay especially and the feeder runs back to the base, had gone firm and then icy. The geometry of the day had a hard edge on it: the first four or five laps were pure speed runs, and each subsequent lap required a little more negotiation.
By Sunday, the third day, that math had resolved in our favor. Two days of laps meant the blind rollers weren’t blind anymore, the transitions were memorized, the run had stopped being something we were figuring out and become something we could actually ski. I was running it top to bottom without stopping, speeds over fifty miles an hour in the open sections, the kind of skiing where the mountain stops being an obstacle and becomes something else entirely.
Standing at the top of the Excelerator in bluebird sunshine, taking in the full sweep of the Ten Mile Range and the peaks stacking up in every direction, I didn’t think once about the snowpack. That’s what the Colorado Rockies do to you , the scale of it and the clarity of the light at 12,000 feet, makes everything else temporarily irrelevant.
I’ve felt it before at so many resorts in the world, but this reminded me of on of my favorites, the top of Lakeview chair at Palisades (formerly Alpine Meadows) staring out over Lake Tahoe. I felt it here. The views are not a consolation prize.
Going West
By mid-morning we had worked out the daily migration. The Super Bee side, East Village, Resolution and the runs adjacent to Spaulding Bowl, was skiing well early but tracked out and crowded faster than anywhere else on the mountain. The solution, which took us half of Friday to discover and the rest of the weekend to exploit, was the Sierra lift.
Sierra is the gateway to Union Peak, and Union Peak is where Copper’s expert terrain gets genuinely interesting. The runs off the front face, Revenge, Endeavor and Little Trees, are steep, consequential, and in a drought year, thin. We knew this going in. What we found was that thin didn’t mean unrideable. Revenge in particular: steep and flat, great for quick aggressive kick turns, the kind of run that rewards a direct line and punishes hesitation. Little Trees and Endeavor were bumpier, more technical, but manageable, steep enough to be serious but not so bombed out that they became a chore. Standing at the top of Sierra looking down at those runs, I kept thinking about what they’d be like with two or three feet of snow. The bones are excellent. Give them coverage and they’d be among the best runs in Summit County.
My sons Chuck and Hank were with us for some of these, which led to one of the weekend’s better moments. Coming off Sierra into a section of genuinely large moguls on a steep pitch, volkswagen-sized bumps on a slope that demanded respect, and I looked back and yelled the only reasonable parental instruction available: “Do not follow me.” They followed me anyway. We all came through intact, which is either a testament to their skiing or to dumb luck. Probably both. They are good in bumps. Better, honestly, when there’s powder underneath rather than a thin hard pack, but good.
One thing worth noting for anyone planning a trip to Copper: the hike from the top of Sierra to the top of Union Peak is short on a map and real in the lungs. At 12,000-plus feet, even a modest hike extracts a price. The run itself is worth it, steep and not bumped out due to light traffic, with great turns on thin but workable snow. Do it early, when you still have energy in reserve.
From Sierra, the natural continuation was Timber Ridge, a run that traverses the back of the mountain and feeds down through Copperfield or Jacques Pique to the Timberline lift. Not as long or as fast as the Ptarmigan top-to-bottom, but with its own rhythm: the traversing momentum of Timber Ridge giving way to the slightly technical pull into Jacques Pique, where manageable bumps and a bit of speed added something different to the end of the run. The snow over here wasn’t deeper than the east side. But it was less trafficked, especially Friday before the President’s Day crowds arrived. By Sunday afternoon the western runs had their own crowds, but all weekend they skied cleaner later in the day than anything off the Super Bee.
It was somewhere on the Sierra chair, legs burning, replaying the run we’d just had, that Jim turned to Chuck with something his old boss used to say: “You know what the biggest room in your house is? The room for improvement.” We laughed for about half a chairlift because it is simultaneously true, useful, and the kind of thing that belongs on a motivational poster in a conference room from “The Office”. Jim’s boss meant it sincerely, which was exactly what made it funny. After a morning of steep runs on thin snow at 12,000 feet, it landed like the truest thing anyone had said all day.
The Second Day, Late
Saturday afternoon told the clearest story of the weekend.
Jim had headed back to Denver around 2:00. Chuck and Hank took off to the terrain parks. Copper’s parks are legitimately world-class, with multiple features across different ability levels and a full halfpipe, the kind of setup that makes teenagers disappear for hours, which is not a complaint. I had skied roughly 17,000 vertical feet already that day and my legs knew it. My skis were perfectly tuned and sharpened, which matters when you’re explaining what happened next.
I went back to the Super Bee side for a few more runs. What followed was a clinic in what a tired skier on icy terrain actually feels like, not dangerous so much as relentlessly humbling. Every stretch where I thought I could build speed ended the same way: an ice patch, a near-slide, the kind of abrupt loss of edge that throws you out of your set and forces a full stop and recalibration. The perfectly sharpened edges found the ice and skittered off it anyway, because ice in a drought year at a north-facing resort at 2:00 p.m. is ice in a way that equipment can only partially address. I didn’t have these problems, not to this degree, on the center or western runs. The east side was simply more skied-down, more traffic-exposed, more used up by that point in the day.
Off the Mountain: Eating, Drinking, and the Things That Make a Trip
Copper’s village dining runs a predictable resort spectrum: expensive, convenient, occasionally surprising. Over three days we found enough of the latter to make it worth mapping out.
Start with Moon Fries, right at the base of the American Eagle lift, and start there every day if you can. The place opened just weeks before our visit, in January 2026 and it’s the kind of operation that makes you wonder why nobody thought of it sooner. The concept is simple: gourmet loaded fries, a handful of sauces and toppings, and a variety of 16 ounce beers for $5. At a ski resort where a beer at most establishments will run you $10 or better, this qualifies as an act of civic generosity. The signature moon fries are the kind of thing you split with someone and then immediately regret not ordering two. Do not walk past this place. It is not a difficult instruction to follow.
Saturday morning, Chuck and Hank made the executive decision that Sugar Lips Mini Donuts was non-negotiable. They were right. The donuts are made to order, fried in front of you, and can be loaded with enough toppings, Nutella, powdered sugar, ice cream and Oreos, to render a nutritional label irrelevant. After a night of decent sleep following the I-70 incident, standing in the cold watching fresh donuts come out of a fryer is about as good as the morning gets before you put on ski boots. The question of how you eat just one is not a rhetorical one. The answer is that you don’t.
For a mid-day burger, Ten Mile Tavern in Center Village was the reliable choice. Formerly known as Endo’s, it sits steps from the American Eagle lift, close enough that you can be back on the mountain before your food settles, with a beer selection deep enough to any IPA snob smile. The burgers are straightforward and good, the pours are honest, and the location means you can watch the lift line from your table and time your return accordingly. In a drought year when every groomed lap counts, this kind of efficiency matters.
The best dinner of the trip was at Sawmill Pizza and Taphouse, also in Center Village, where the hand-tossed crust and house-made sauce do exactly what pizza is supposed to do after 20,000 vertical feet: arrive large, disappear fast, and leave nobody at the table feeling anything other than satisfied. Chuck and Hank voted for pepperoni, which is not an adventurous choice but is, it turns out, the correct one when the base product is this good.
The après highlight belonged to Jack’s Slopeside Bar, adjacent to Jack’s Slopeside Grill on the second floor of Copper One Lodge in Center Village, a room with a view of the halfpipe and the kind of afternoon energy that makes you forget your legs are destroyed. The bar runs live music Wednesday through Saturday from 3:30 to 6:00, and the two-man band we caught worked through a set of ’80s and ’90s material that was exactly what a tired group of skiers needed at that hour. Then they did something that stopped the room: a small, deliberate tribute to Bob Weir, who had died just five weeks earlier on January 10th at 78. They played “Uncle John’s Band” and “Throwing Stones” back to back, and the bar, the kind of bar that skews toward people who grew up with that music, got quieter in the way rooms do when something is being acknowledged rather than just performed.
Getting There: The Honest Version
Copper is one of the easier major Colorado resorts to reach. Seventy-five miles west of Denver on I-70, the route is straightforward: get through the Eisenhower Tunnel, pass the Silverthorne-Dillon-Frisco corridor, and you’re there. On a normal day it’s under ninety minutes from Denver. On a President’s Day weekend afternoon it’s something else entirely, but that’s an I-70 problem that applies to every resort along the corridor. Traffic tends to clear once you exit the highway.
Once you’re there, park free. The resort operates a shuttle from the outlying lots that is quick, frequent, and costs nothing, a meaningful consideration when the alternative is $55 or more per day to park near one of the three villages. Take the free lot, take the shuttle, and spend that money on Moon Fries.
What the Mountain Owes You
On Sunday morning, the third day, I stood at the top of the Excelerator at just over 12,000 feet. Jim had gone back to Denver the day before. Chuck and Hank were somewhere below, warming up or already plotting their first park run. The Ten Mile Range spread out in every direction under a sky that had no interest in clouds.
Below me: 2,200 vertical feet of a run I now knew cold. Every blind roller, every transition, every place where the corduroy gave way to something softer or firmer. I had skied it enough times over three days that it had become glorious.
I pushed off.
Somewhere over fifty miles an hour on the open pitch, the mountain stops being a collection of decisions and becomes a single continuous thing. The drought didn’t matter. The thin upper mountain didn’t matter. The near shoot-out on I-70 at 1:00 in the morning felt like something that had happened to someone else. What mattered was the snow under the skis, the turns stacking up without interruption, the base of Center Village getting larger at the bottom of a long fall line.
Top to bottom, no stops. Copper gave us what it had. In a drought year, that turned out to be, in a word, awesome.
