Crested Butte

Crested Butte is one of Colorado's ex-mining haunts and well worth a visit and has recently refurbished the entire base area of the mountain. It has gained a good reputation as a snowboard-friendly resort, but is best known for is its extreme and hard core terrain. Indeed, you could call this place the extreme freerider's heaven in the USA, as it has successfully staged several US Extreme Snowboarding Championships.

Crested Butte easily offers some of the most challenging snowboarding in America. What you get is a serious mountain for serious riders, and not your typical dollar-hungry Colorado destination. If you like your mountain high with steeps, couloirs, trees, major off-piste in big bowls, then Crested Butte is for you. With 85 runs, spread over 1,160 acres, no-one needs to feel left out, on crowd-free slopes, with a good average snow record. 

For 2010/11 the resort have relocated the terrain park and are building a new superpipe, but if you don't fancy that, there are endless natural jibs, jumps and fun things to play on all over the mountain.

What's more, if you fancy riding during November (25th until 15th Dec), pre-Christmas, as well as the latter part of April, you can ride for nothing, or put another way, free of charge!