Piney Lake beneath the jagged peaks of the Gore Range, with golden aspens and autumn brush along the shore
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Piney Lake and the Gore Range. The ranch closed in 2026; the view didn’t get the memo.
A Wandering Mustache Series · Greater Vail Valley

The Greater Vail Valley

Two ski resorts, one valley, and a decade of figuring out which one we are.

For more than a decade we’ve been skiing Vail and Beaver Creek. Same valley, same company, same pass. Two very different ski resorts. During Covid, like a lot of people, we spent a summer in Bachelor Gulch. We fell in love with the valley all over again, this time without skis on.

This series is everything we’d tell a friend before they book: where to stay, where to eat, what to do, and what we got wrong. It runs down the valley from Vail, through Minturn, all the way to Edwards. The valley is too big and too different from one end to the other for one post, so it’s three: Vail, Beaver Creek, and a third for the down-valley towns where the locals actually eat.

Usually it’s She-Stache, He-Stache and Buddha, our Pup-Stache. Sometimes the Wee-Staches. Sometimes a few Scout-Staches, the friends brave enough to travel with us. We drive up from Denver in summer and fall. In winter we try very hard to skip the drive, for reasons explained in The Gripe. It’s practically Denver’s backyard, and we still managed to make mistakes in it. Several. They’re all below.

The Series Vail  ·  Beaver Creek  ·  Minturn, Avon & Edwards

Full Disclosure
Trip Dates 2015–2026, Winter & Summer · Style Ski weeks, summer & fall, one long Covid stay
Incentives Not a Dime · Photo Creds All Stache

We paid full price for everything. Every link in this series goes straight to the vendor. No commission, on links or on reviews. Ever.

Trust us? Check out our Vail Wander Map, our Vail Valley, Avon & Beaver Creek Wander Map and our Edwards Wander Map.

*As always, no commissions from our links. We encourage booking early and direct. These maps are always a work in progress, and are curated from all past trips and current research.

These pins also power ai-tinerary, our invite-only itinerary tool. Same stamps, same opinions.

The Gripe

The Tunnel, the Traffic and the Bill

We’ll do the bad first. We always do.

The drive is no joke. Vail is just under 100 miles from Denver, and on a bad day every one of them is a negotiation with I-70 and the Eisenhower–Johnson Memorial Tunnels. Before we retired, we spent far too much of our lives in that traffic. One MLK weekend we sat for more than four hours just getting through the tunnel. Four hours. You can fly to New York in four hours.

So plan the drive like you’d plan a flight. Don’t go up the mountain on Friday or come down on Sunday. CDOT’s own ski-weekend forecasts put the worst westbound traffic on Friday evening and Saturday morning, and the worst eastbound from Saturday afternoon through Sunday evening, and they warn that the trip can take twice as long as normal. GoI70 posts a weekend forecast every Thursday. Better yet, in winter, don’t drive at all: Epic Mountain Express (the old Colorado Mountain Express) and plenty of other companies run shuttles from Denver International and from Eagle County Regional Airport, which is about 40 minutes from Vail.

Back when we flew in, we flew into Denver, because we believed the drive took two hours. In winter it is often five or more. So why not fly into Eagle? Because mountain weather does not check your fare. A ticket to Eagle can cost more than double, and it can still land you in Denver. Then you get the drive anyway, and the bill.

It’s expensive. These are high-end ski resorts, and they price like it. Plan accordingly. Both mountains belong to Vail Resorts and sit on the Epic Pass, and the activities and lessons cost about double what they should. They are not twice as good.

Stop One · The Big One

Vail

He-Stache in ski pants on a bench with his arm around a bronze statue of Albert Einstein, outside a shop in Vail Village
He-Stache and Einstein, comparing notes. Einstein’s hair won.

Of the two mountains, Vail is the one for advanced skiers. It has seven Back Bowls, more than 3,000 acres of them. It sits right off the interstate at the bottom of the valley, which gives it room to sprawl: a big, walkable village, easy strolling between the bases, a free town bus, and the most varied resort restaurants in the valley.

The flaw is the same as the selling point. Vail is right on I-70. Book the wrong condo and you’ll be sharing a room with the interstate.

Read the Vail brag →

Stop Two · Not Exactly Roughing It

Beaver Creek

She-Stache in a white ski jacket and knit hat sitting outdoors at the Ritz-Carlton, Bachelor Gulch, with Pup-Stache snuggled across her lap
Pup-Stache’s favorite après spot: the couches at the Ritz. The staff spoil him. He has no tab. He does have a special-recipe dinner.

Beaver Creek’s own slogan is “Not Exactly Roughing It,” and it means it: heated walkways, outdoor escalators, ski valets, and, in ski season, fresh chocolate chip cookies every afternoon at 3 p.m. Instead of one big village, it’s three, Beaver Creek, Bachelor Gulch and Arrowhead, each tucked into its own side valley, away from the valley floor and the interstate. It keeps you tucked away, too.

Bachelor Gulch is our favorite place in the valley. A set of gates and no public parking keep the day-trippers out. They also keep the quick bites out, which leaves you at the mercy of the Ritz-Carlton and its very high food and drink tab. We pay it happily most days. When the bills get added up, we sometimes question our sanity.

Read the Beaver Creek brag →

Stop Three · Where the Locals Eat

Minturn, Avon & Edwards

A young bear with a cinnamon-brown coat resting high in the leafy branches of a cottonwood in Edwards
The Drunken Goat’s newest regular. Climbed down now and then for a drink from the fountain. Didn’t tip.

Down-valley is where the best-value restaurants are, and where we eat when we’re done paying resort prices. Tiny Minturn has a saloon, a whisky cottage and a taco shop, Avon sits at the foot of Beaver Creek, and Edwards has our favorite grocer, our favorite butcher and our favorite patio.

That patio belongs to the Drunken Goat, and this fall it acquired a bear. A young one got itself treed outside and climbed down now and then to drink from the restaurant’s fountain. You may be in town, but you’re still in the mountains.

The flaw: you’ll need a car to get to most of it.

Read the Minturn, Avon & Edwards brag →

Day Trips

Beyond the Valley

She-Stache in waders and sunglasses standing in a clear mountain creek near Red Cliff, holding up a small trout with her fly rod
She-Stache’s first fish. Also her last. She retired undefeated.

The valley is the headliner, but the side trips are where summer and fall get good. All of these are excellent hiking, and none of them come with a resort fee.

Piney River Ranch. Up a long dirt road north of Vail, about ten and a half miles from the interstate, Piney Lake sits under the Gore Range. Quite a drive, and worth it for the view. The ranch’s restaurant ran its final season in 2026 and has closed, but the lake and the Upper Piney trail are on Forest Service land, so the hiking carries on. The trail runs about three miles to a waterfall. We enjoyed the hike, though we never did find the big reveal at the end. Dogs on leash.

Red Cliff and Turquoise Lake. Red Cliff is a tiny town about nine miles south of Minturn, off US-24. Keep going over the pass and you reach Turquoise Lake, just outside Leadville. In fall the drive is all aspen gold.

He-Stache and Wee-Stache 2 in snowmobile helmets and winter gear standing on a snowfield under a gray sky
He-Stache and Wee-Stache 2, helmeted, visored and completely unidentifiable. We’re told they had fun.

In winter, when the legs give out, the valley has plenty that doesn’t involve skis. He-Stache and Wee-Stache 2 went snowmobiling in the mountains nearby.

Brush Creek and Sylvan Lake State Park. South of Eagle, Brush Creek Road climbs past the Brush Creek Valley Ranch & Open Space trails toward Sylvan Lake. It’s quiet, high and wide open. Dogs must be leashed in the state park, and you’ll need a park pass. The Brush Creek trailhead closes December 1 to July 1 for wildlife, so this is a summer and fall trip.

She-Stache and He-Stache posing on a dry hillside above a mountain lake and a dirt road in the Brush Creek valley
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Proof we hiked. Lake in the back; smugness up front.
Snow-dusted peaks rising above a sea of low clouds, with bare aspens in the foreground
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The clouds came to us, so we didn’t have to climb any higher.
A wide high-country meadow of dry grass with snow-capped ranges on the horizon
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Brush Creek in October. Brown, gold and absolutely nobody else.

Hiking above the clouds. The clouds were lazier than we were.

Day Trips

One River, One Fish

In summer, we floated the Colorado River near State Bridge on a guided fly-fishing trip, and fished from the bank. The guide did the rowing, the knots and the patience. We did the photos. The water in this valley all heads the same way: Gore Creek through Vail and Beaver Creek through Beaver Creek both empty into the Eagle River, and the Eagle joins the Colorado downstream at Dotsero.

A fishing guide in a vest at the oars of a blue drift boat while She-Stache casts from the bow on the Colorado River
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Our guide, rowing. She-Stache, casting optimistically behind him.
He-Stache in a light-blue cap and life vest holding a fly rod in a drift boat on a green river
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He-Stache, demonstrating the classic “I’ve definitely done this before” pose.
She-Stache in a visor and life vest jokingly kissing a small trout in a drift boat
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Catch, kiss, release. In that order. Mostly.

Float fishing the Colorado. The guide did the rowing, the knots and the patience. We did the photos.

Getting Around

Buses, Bikes and the Case for a Car

For a weekend or a week, you can do without a car. Vail runs a free town bus between the villages and Lionshead. Beaver Creek runs Village Connect (it used to be Dial-a-Ride), a free on-demand shuttle, but every ride is booked in the app, and it only goes to Arrowhead in ski season. In summer you can hike from base to base, but getting up to the trail that connects them is a steep climb. Avon, Edwards and Vail are linked by Core Transit, the valley bus that used to be ECO, and the Highway 6 route is free. We haven’t taken it.

On two wheels, the paved Eagle Valley Trail runs from Vail down to Edwards, and e-bikes are welcome. There are a few short stretches where you’re forced onto the road, minimal unless there’s construction. Everything here is steep, and the air is thin. Think twice before you skip the e-bike.

The catch: the best-value restaurants are not on the mountain or in the resorts. You need a car to reach them. Without one in Beaver Creek, you’re at the mercy of the resort restaurants, which range from very good to very expensive for what you get.

And a warning about Avon. We’ve stayed at the Westin Riverfront and it’s a great property, but its ski access depends on the Riverfront Express gondola. The gondola doesn’t run unless the Leav the Beav trail is open, and in a low-snow year (more and more of them lately) it isn’t. Then you’re at the mercy of one or two shuttles to get up the mountain. There is a reliable ski taxi, but it can’t always drop you near the lift. Sometimes it has to leave you at the Vilar Performing Arts Center, which is quite the walk to the base in ski boots.

Hard-Won Lessons

What We’d Tell a Friend Before They Book

The whole valley is very dog friendly. Pup-Stache is a task-trained service dog, so pet policies don’t apply to him anyway. We’ll say so on the stop pages where a hotel isn’t dog friendly.

Why We Keep Coming Back

We’ve been coming here for more than ten years, in ski boots and hiking boots, with kids, with friends and with a very spoiled dog. We still find something new every visit, and we still complain about the bill every visit. Both are part of the deal.

Vail if you want the bowls and the buzz. Beaver Creek if you want the cookies and the quiet. Edwards if you want to eat well and pay like a local. And never, ever drive down on a Sunday.

The Links

We Wouldn’t Send You Somewhere We Wouldn’t Go

No kick-backs for links. Ever. Restaurants, hotels and shops live on the stop pages.

Start at the Beginning

Vail →  or  back to the Wander Brag index →