Delta has a section of their site dedicated to Colorado vacation travelers. If you’re headed to our wonderful state and want to scope some good flight, lodging and ticket deals check out Delta’s website. Click here for Delta ski vacation deals and getaway packages.

Ritz Carlton in Beaver Creek for $150

The Ritz-Carlton Bachelor Gulch is a great year-round destination. You’ll be in easy reach of fantastic hiking and Colorado’s best golf courses. Plus, the hotel is home to The Bachelor Gulch Spa, the area’s only Mobil 4-Star spa.

Located in Colorado’s Vail Valley/Beaver Creek area, this luxurious mountainside resort is running this special from April 13 - May 22, including weekends.

Click here to visit Travelzoo to get more details.

Fly to Denver from 50+ cities on Frontier

Here’s a great deal where prices to Denver start at $49 each way. Cities from Albuquerque and Austin to Washington DC Wichita.

Click here to visit Frontier and book a flight.

I just spent an awesome (long) weekend up in Keystone and I had a blast. It’s amazing the many things you can do in the mountains and never get bored. Here’s the top 4 things I recommend you do if you have some extra time:

1. Ski the Outback. I had never been as far back as I had until a friend led me around. Sometimes that’s all it takes: someone else to explore with you. With plenty of hard blues and expert diamonds theres something for anyone riding intermediate-and-up. Be sure to hit the trees off of Wolverine. The best part? Experts don’t often head to Keystone so you’ll have plenty of room to yourself!
2. Night ski. For most people a day of skiing and snowboarding ends around 2 or 3 when the lifts start shutting down. But, at Keystone your day doesn’t end until 9pm! Head up Friday afternoon, ski all night and then get a full day on Saturday from open to close.
3. Ice skate at Lakeside. How often do you get to skate on an outdoor pond? Lakeside (due West of Mountain House (which is due West of River Run) has five-acres of Zamboni-maintained ice. If you get a condo your skating is free or else it’s $11 to skate and $7 for the rental. The surroundings are worth it.
4. Have a burger at Wolf Rock Brewery. Delicious burgers from one of the highest microbreweries you’ll ever visit. With a build-your-own-burger menu and your choice of buffalo, well, ’nuff said.

I’m speaking from very recent experience. Keystone (and all the other resorts) have tons of activities to keep you entertained. Sometimes the locals don’t stick around to explore all the other fun things to do off the slopes. Instead of taking an expensive flight somewhere warm this winter why not stay in the hills for a bit?

Yesterday I was at Vail and it was surprisingly crowded (for a Tuesday). Lots of fresh snow everywhere and perfect blue skies all day. New snow has started falling today (Wednesday) and the mountains are under a winter storm warning. Again, travel is not easy so be prepared and take caution.

Find discount airline tickets for your trip to Disney world in orlando. To make games come to life, keep a flight simulator game for the kids to play on the airplane. Remember to make hotel reservations in advance for spacious rooms. All orlando hotel rooms have great rates and amazing views. When heading out to travel into orlando city, get your self great bus travel deals. When you’re traveling, ask your travel guides for places for great photography.

From the Associated Press: “A ninth person died Monday after a bus carrying skiers home from a Colorado resort plunged off a damp, twisting highway in southeastern Utah and landed 41 feet below with its tires ripped away and the roof destroyed … Arrow Stage refused to identify the organizers who leased the bus for the trip. Roden said it was among as many as 17 chartered for a long weekend in Telluride, Colo.” Please be careful navigating the roads this season–these last few days have been dangerous in the high country.

Thanks to I-70 closing on Sunday and Monday “Loveland Ski Area, a favorite of Front Range skiers, shuttered all of its slopes for the first time in four years, while other resorts struggled with accommodating stranded tourists.” Read more at the Rocky Mountain News.

Whiteout conditions stranded over 2,000 people in Silverthorne as officials closed I-70 from Vail to Georgetown (eastbound) on Sunday night. Hotels were full, restaurants were packed and many people never made it home. Shelters were set up on Sunday and Steamboat Springs reported over 17 inches. Visit CBS4Denver.com for more.

I just finished up watching my first documentary in high definition: Heli-skiing: living the dream. Produced by Discovery HD Theater this was an awe-inspiring look at Mike Wiegele’s “Wiegele World” in BC, Canada.

An expensive trip that is worth every penny as Wiegele has cited numerous clients walking away telling him it was “best day of their life” every day of their trip. With snowcat and helicopter skiing you’re welcome to ski unlimited vertical feet on mountains that few have ever touched. You become part of a tour group (with highly skilled guides) and packages include three square meals, lodging and terrain you’ve never dreamed of. Things you won’t get at Wiegele World: crowds or lines.

If you’re a Comcast HD subscriber check out the documentary ON Demand. Oh, and the local tie: the documentary was produced by a team from Beaver Creek.

Click here to visit Mike Wiegele Helicopter Skiing.

This season Alpinist Magazine is hosting a film festival in Wyoming (which is a short-enough drive from Colorado, right?):

The 2008 Alpinist Film Festival will take place January 17-20, 2008, in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. In addition to the Snow, Surf and Stone nights, which showcase, respectively, the world’s best skiing, surfing and climbing films, a new People’s Choice Ceremony will screen the People’s Choice award winners from the preceding evenings, allowing the audience to choose the 2008 Grand Prize award winner.

This year’s beer sponsor is none other than Fort Collins’ New Belgium. Certainly reason enough to go, right?

Learn more about the 2008 Alpinist Film Festival.

Not only does it sound like a great time, the festival will offset it’s entire carbon footprint (and then some):

In keeping with the Alpinist’s commitment to preserve the places of our inspiration, the 2008 Alpinist Film Festival will offset its estimated carbon footprint with the purchase of renewable energy. All energy consumed by the 2008 Festival–from the travel of the speakers and the audiences to snow removal, the delivery of films and the ink consumption for posters and banners–will be accounted for in the estimated carbon footprint. In order to eliminate unaccounted carbon, an additional ten tons of offsets, nearly double the Festival’s estimated footprint, will be purchased.

Read more about the green initiative details.

The festival is sponsored by Patagonia which (via it’s founder, Yvon Chouinard) is known for pioneering the ‘green movement’ back in the 1980’s.

Tickets are not yet available but you can visit their site and learn more about prior-year’s festivals. Colorado Snow may be there this year to cover the events–stay tuned.

This year the Colorado Ski Train will open December 27th and run every weekend through March. Tickets are already sold out near the end of the season.

Ski Train Details

• Dates: Day trips will be available Saturdays and Sundays from January 5 through March 30, 2008, Fridays beginning February 1, 2008 and Thursdays beginning March 6, 2008.
• Morning schedule: Boarding begins at 6:30am, arrives in Winter Park at 9:30am.
• Afternoon schedule: Departs Winter Park at 4:15pm, arrives in Denver at 6:30pm.
• Pricing: $49 in Coach, $74 in Club

Click here to view the full Ski Train winter schedule.

Five of Colorado’s ski and snowboarding resorts were listed as the top destinations according to Orbitz during the ski seasons:

Lake Tahoe, Calif., is the No. 1 destination among travelers booking hotel and vacation packages at Orbitz.com for travel between Nov. 20 and May 1. Mammoth Lakes, Calif., was second, followed by Park City, Utah; Breckenridge, Colo.; Jackson Hole, Wyo.; and tied for sixth place were Steamboat Springs, Colo., and Vail, Colo. Three more Colorado ski spots finished up the list: Snowmass, Keystone and Winter Park. (Salt Lake Tribune)

Overcast skies, fog, and freezing temperatures are moving into Colorado. CBS4 reports a high of 10F for Friday with more fog, freezing drizzle and perhaps a “slippery mess.”

The windchill will also be extremely cold. I’ve had plans to go skiing tomorrow but I may rethink it. The road conditions won’t be great tomorrow morning so be careful.

If you’re the owner of a smart phone you probably know how convenient it is to have the internet on your phone. Personally, I own a Blackberry Pearl (T-Mobile) and have been checking out a ton of mobile websites lately.

One thing I learned is that CDOT provides a mobile version of it’s site at go.cotrip.org. I had no problem pulling up cameras of I-70 at Copper Mountain, looking for any road alerts, and so on.

Next time you get stuck (like I already have) and you’ve got an internet-ready mobile phone perhaps a little bit more information might help you.

For example: If you had tried to get home last Thursday you would have been greeted with 3 closures on I-70. Knowing an accident had closed I-70 near El Rancho means you would have tried to take US6 home. I did. Others didn’t. I got home at 7:30pm. Others got home at 1:00am. I’m just saying…

Wednesday, December 27th was the first time the Ski Train departed Denver for it’s journey to Winter Park.

Unfortunately, Round 2 of the Colorado Blizzard has forced the train to cancel it’s trips on both Friday and Saturday. The extra snow has made the conditions dangerous for travel both by road and rail.

The Ski Train runs both in the Winter and Summer months. Winter trips bypass the hassle of driving up to the mountains on I-70 but the trip (leaving Denver at 7:15) takes a little over two hours. The cost, too, may not outweigh the benefit. In any case, it’s a beautiful ride you can’t find anywhere else.

Find more details at their website, SkiTrain.com.