9 minute read
Explore Beaver Creek
Perched on the mountainside high above Bachelor Gulch with the uninterrupted views of the magnificent Gore Range, Zach’s is the epitome of fine dining at its peak. Guests are whisked away for a starlit sleigh ride, pulled by a Beaver Creek Snow Cat. Famous for its artful assemblage of fresh Alsatian fare featuring the finest regional and seasonal ingredients paired with excellent vintages for the perfect dinner experience.
Citrea
Debuting an entirely new menu and concept last season, Citrea combines Colorado ingredients with modern culinary interpretations of Mediterranean cuisine. Located in the heart of Beaver Creek Village, alongside the ice rink, Citrea focuses on upscale dining and offers guests the opportunity to immerse themselves in a sophisticated and high-energy setting. With a patio alongside the Beaver Creek Village ice rink, Citrea is the perfect place to relax and unwind for Après.
CULINARY ADVENTURES FOR THE ENTIRE FAMILY
The Ice Cream Parlour
Located at the top of Haymeadow Express Gondola (#1), the Ice Cream Parlour offers nostalgic ice cream novelties, or a quick soup and sandwich lunch. Menu offerings include root beer floats, ice cream by the scoop, house-made hot chocolate, grilled cheese, tomato soup and more. The Ice Cream Parlour is accessible by skis and by foot, and for foot passengers, a lift ticket is not required to ride Haymeadow Express Gondola.
Beaver Creek Candy Cabin
The Beaver Creek Candy Cabin gained fast fame among guests when it opened its doors during winter 2014-15. Located at the top of Strawberry Park Express and Upper Beaver Creek Mountain Express lifts, the Cabin’s vintage candy store design of yesteryear invites kids and kidsat-heart to explore myriad palate-pleasing sweets – and to discover local artisan craft chocolates found exclusively at the Candy Cabin. Other popular selections include bulk candy sold by the pound and classic Pepsi products made with real cane sugar. It’s the sweetest place at 9840’. A Beaver Creek tradition rises to new heights at Red Buffalo Park’s Cookie Cabin. The interior of the Cookie Cabin is open as a special experience for Beaver Creek’s ski and snowboard school guests, where students can stop in for chocolate chip cookies and hot cocoa throughout the day. Designed to welcome kids and adults alike with a comfortable and cozy environment, the Cookie Cabin offers the rest and relaxation students need between exhilarating runs at the top of the mountain.
Mamie’s Mountain Grill
With a new direction this winter, Mamie’s Mountain Grill will transform and transport guests to a traditional German biergarten! Offering traditional fare like pretzels and bratwurst, as well as beer on tap, Mamie’s will provide a fun-filled atmosphere for the whole family. Mamie’s will also offer nourishing soups and stews, replenishing and revitalizing guests’ energy after a delightful day on the slopes.
Teamwork makes the Dream Work on the Talon Crew
Since 1997, the famed Xfinity Birds fo Prey World Cup race course is built at the beginning of each winter to host the fastest men on skis for North America’s Downhill at Beaver Creek. But just how does a mountainside in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado transform into a World Cup race course voted No. 1 on the circuit by coaches and athletes who participate?
Meet the internationally known Talon Crew, an all-volunteer crew that provides a critical piece of the course build and maintenance work. The Talon Crew – made up each year of an average of 325 volunteers from all over the world – is an intensely dedicated and experienced group that strives to produce the most well-prepared Audi FIS Ski Men’s World Cup race course on the circuit. Partnering with the Vail Valley Foundation (the local organizing committee), U.S. Ski & Snowboard, Beaver Creek Mountain, Vail Resorts and Ski & Snowboard Club Vail, the Talon Crew finds itself each year on the icy slopes of the Xfinity Birds fo Prey race course, building fence and installing safety devices, watering, preparing a race-ready surface and providing course maintenance every winter. The Xfinity Birds fo Prey race course has become legendary in the ski world not only for the speed and challenges it presents to racers, but in the quality and consistency of its track. “We’re the gold standard that everybody’s trying to follow and model after what we do here,” said Talon Crew Volunteer Coordinator Steve Prawdzik, who has been with the Talon Crew since 2006. The volunteer Talon Crew, of course, is not the only crew behind the scenes of the making of the Xfinity Birds fo Prey: they join up the Beaver Creek Mountain Race Department, Snowmaking Team and Mountain Operations Crew and Ski & Snowboard Club Vail coaches, parents and athletes, and many more to create the “One Team” that makes it all happen. It’s a “One team, same dream” mantra among the teams on the mountain. Prawdzik said. “It’s kind of cool to see it all come together.”
The Talon Crew volunteers are made up of people from a mix of backgrounds and all walks of life. They are tradesmen and women, ex-ski racers and coaches, CEOs of companies, among other backgrounds. Since the Talon Crew is strictly on-course, all members must be expert skiers and physically able to work a shovel, carry something down a hill, sideslip in place, and navigate the extreme steeps of notorious sections of the course like “The Brink.” And when it snows on race day, the Talon Crew is out there helping clear the course and prep it for a safe and exciting race. “The more it snows, the more we have to push off. Our favorite expression is: ‘You don’t have to shovel sunshine,’” Prawdzik said. “Most of them know what they’re signing up for – it’s physical labor.” The Talon Crew spends countless hours prepping with each person assigned to a section of the course to work in teams within that
section. The “orchestrated chaos,” as Prawdzik likes to call it, then transitions to race days, when the crowds and television broadcasts going out to the world are in place. Then the Talon Crew sits back and watches, from the best seats in the house. A silence goes over the course before each racer, with the occasional radio chatter coming through. “We call it a ‘nose-against-the-glass kind of seat,’” Prawdzik said. “You can’t get a better seat – you can’t buy it. You have to earn the privilege of being there.” A typical day for Talon Crew starts around 6 a.m. with the all-team breakfast – as the crew waits for the sun to rise. “I’m still fascinated by why people do this,” Prawdzik said of the Talon Crew. “If you think about it, you spend money to fly here, rent a hotel, buy stuff, new ski gear, all to go stand on a steep pitch and shovel snow and do manual labor so that somebody else can ski.” But it’s the unique camaraderie that keeps bringing the Talon Crew back together year after year on Beaver Creek Mountain – Xfinity Birds fo Prey serves as a reunion of sorts for the crew. And then there’s also a desire to support ski racing that draws people to the Talon Crew each year. “You see the same people year after year, so a lot of it is about camaraderie … and meeting new people,” Prawdzik said. “It’s being a part of something meaningful and giving back to ski racing.” And for many on the Talon Crew, it’s a family affair. “When you’re in the upper echelons of ski racing and they mention Talon Crew, they know what Talon Crew is,” Prawdzik said. “We’re an international brand. They know about us in Europe.”
For the camaraderie, and the ‘coat’
Prawdzik first joined Talon Crew after hearing about it through a customer of his lighting business. He said many of the people on the Talon Crew joined thanks to referrals. But a running joke within the Talon Crew revolves around doing it to get the free coat. That’s how On-Hill Coordinator Sean Norris found the Talon Crew. His friend saw a woman with a “really cool coat” and asked how to get it – thus beginning their journey to finding the Talon Crew. “I remember hunting in Beaver Creek on that mountain before Beaver Creek was built,” Norris said. “We’re some of the very first people that were on the first inaugural year of the Xfinity Birds fo Prey, and we’ve stuck with it ever since.” Both Norris and Prawdzik are excited about the direction of the Talon Crew, having worked on many kinks over the years and dialing in the process of building a World Cup race course. “I came up with my buddy Kevin because I wanted to do this with my buddy,” Norris said. “Kevin did it because he wanted a coat. And so for a long time that’s always been the joke: ‘Hey, you get a free coat.’ But the whole point is that it’s camaraderie. It’s working together with people from all over the world. It’s working with people that you would have never met and likely would have never socialized with.” Globally, the ski industry is indeed a tight-knit community. “People come from all over the world to come work on the Talon Crew, and then they go back home and they tell their friends about it,” Norris said. “And they can’t believe that they worked that hard for that many hours for that many days … for a coat. And it’s not about the coat because you can’t reward these people enough for that sort of thing. The reward comes from the commonality of all of these diverse people coming together and throwing themselves at this mountain and pulling it off when the world says ‘There’s no way you can do it.’ And we don’t even stop to say ‘Watch.’ We just get ‘er done and show them that we did.” Some days the Talon Crew are the last ones off the mountain. Norris remembers coming off the mountain in the dark for the first time –
“that’s when you learn to carry a headlamp in your backpack.” Norris also remembers days where people might want to quit. “And you look around and nobody on the team is willing to quit because the job’s not done. You stay until that job is completed and finished,” Norris said. “Just the feeling of accomplishment is huge.” It’s that feeling of accomplishment, and the fact that they look good doing it in their Talon Crew coats, that keeps the Talon Crew going.
