Discount “Ski School” for Kids

Lara sent in some great, in-depth information on how they’re teaching their kids to ski at a fraction of the cost of ski school:

We paid big money to put our kids in ski school last year, but recently we discovered a great bargain for teaching our kids ourselves. Copper Mountain has a FREE magic carpet lift and tiny bunny hill at Center Village.

They also have another section called Green Acres (accessible from Center Village) that has a 2-person chair lift, poma lift, wide open green run, and green run with banked S-turns to practice turning.

The Green Acres lift tickets are $15 per person 6 years old and up.  Children aged five and under are free. You can park at the Alpine Lot (just beyond the entrance to Copper Mountain) for free and ride the free shuttle to Center Village. There is a warming hut at Green Acres where we ate our sack lunches and a porta-potty.

The only not-so-fun part was the 200-yard walk from Green Acres back to Center Village to grab lunch out of the locker (daddy did that) and to and from the shuttle.  You might want to ski with a backpack with kids’ tennis shoes, so they can walk this section in comfy shoes, carrying their ski boots, while you carry their skis.

We watched a few videos about teaching kids to ski the night before we went. They really got probably 20-30 runs in that day, instead of all the standing around waiting for their turn in group lessons. If parents know how to ski, it’s not as hard as they may think to “DIY” for their kids’ ski lessons.  (Here’s a video on how to snowplow and one on how to turn.)

My 5 and 7 year olds did fine and learned so much faster one-on-one than they did in their pricey group lessons last year. They were both able to get on/off the chair lift and poma lift, snow plow, stop, and carve turns.

I rented skis for myself at Christy Sport near Constitution on Academy. If you reserve 24 hours ahead of picking them up, you save 20%. Copper Mountain wanted $33 for skis, boots, and poles. I got the same at Christy Sports for $16.99. You can pick them up the day before going skiing- after 1 PM, and return them the day after going- by 1 PM, for that one-day rental price.

The Green Acres lift tickets are not advertised on the Copper Mountain website, but you can call to verify all of this information. For Guest Services & General Information about Copper Mountain, please call 866.841.2481 or 970.968.2318.

Thank you so much to Lara for sending in this great info!