Sports & Recreation

When LuvByrd founder Mike Keshian was living in Crested Butte, he realized that it's not always easy for people who love the great outdoors to find like-minded romantic partners, particularly in smaller towns. That was the seed that grew into LuvByrd, a matchmaking website that caters to ski bums, river rats and everyone in between. After signing up, LuvByrd members can choose their favorite activities from a list of dozens, then start making dates to indulge in their passions.

This is it, folks: the Broncos' last best chance to make it to the Super Bowl with Peyton Manning. It's 2016 or bust. Once PFM is gone, it's going to be a while before the team gets close again (can you say "rebuilding?"). So let's leave it all on the field this year.

Readers' choice: 2016

The list of Broncos who played worse last season than they did in the season before that is long, and there are a lot more names on it than just Peyton Manning's. Running back C.J. Anderson is a clear exception. At the start of the 2014-2015 campaign, the undrafted free agent from 2013 was an afterthought. But when neither Ronnie Hillman nor Montee Ball took control of the position, Anderson showed he belonged with a 51-yard touchdown catch-and-run versus the Raiders that may have been the single best Broncos play of the season, and more solid performances followed. With new coach Gary Kubiak expected to institute his venerated zone-blocking scheme, we can't wait to see Anderson take the next step to stardom.

Readers' choice: Peyton Manning

Justin Morneau has been around. He made his major-league debut in 2003 and followed up a long and successful stint with the Minnesota Twins with a brief stop in Pittsburgh before inking with Colorado — and in his first season with the Rockies, he batted a brawny .319 by way of 160 hits, seventeen of them home runs. And unlike more vaunted names, he was a relative paragon of health, playing in 135 games. He even earned a couple of MVP votes — evidence that his value to the Rockies shouldn't be underrated.

Readers' choice: Troy Tulowitzki

The Denver Nuggets have been a team in turmoil this season, losing their coach, several big names and plenty of games. But while other players started to phone it in, Kenneth Faried continued to work hard, which is why he remains a fan favorite. Although he's sometimes asked to do too much, he's also a freakish athlete whose energy and enthusiasm should be infectious for teammates. Under the next regime, we hope they will be.

Readers' choice: Kenneth Faried and Ty Lawson (tie)

The Avs are loaded with young talents (including Matt Duchene, Nathan MacKinnon and Ryan O'Reilly) who overachieved in 2013-2014 before coming back down to earth this season. But Jarome Iginla, one of the oldsters on the squad, just kept going and going and going. He's had a storied career since the mid-'90s, mostly for the Calgary Flames, and he's not done yet. Throughout the season, he's been among the team leaders in goals, points and plus/minus, all the while offering a steadying influence to a youthful roster in desperate need of one.

Readers' choice: Matt Duchene

Although Deshorn Brown has only been a Rapid for a couple of years, he hasn't been shy about taking charge. In 2014, as in his first season with the club, he absolutely dominated from an offensive standpoint, leading the team in most categories by a lot; for example, he took 121 shots, with the next closest player (Dillon Serna) coming in at 39. It would have been nice if a few more had gone in, especially since the Rapids finished eighth in the nine-team MLS Western Conference. But Brown is definitely doing all he can to make the number of victories rise.

Readers' choice: Dillon Serna

Although he's not the team's number-one star — that's still John Grant Jr. — Adam Jones is giving the spot a run for its money. His point total rivals Grant's, and when he's on, he can provide instant offense, even under difficult conditions. During a game against New England, for example, he scored three goals in under six minutes using a borrowed stick — a necessity, because the team's bags had been waylaid. No, professional lacrosse isn't always glamorous. Still, Jones has what it takes for the long haul.

Readers' choice: John Gallant

Attackman Eric Law is a hometown boy — a native Coloradan and graduate of Arapahoe High School who played his college lacrosse at DU. But he isn't an Outlaw for sentimental reasons. He followed up a scorching rookie season with an equally impressive sophomore stint, during which he earned all-star honors for leading the team in goals, points, shots on goal and shooting percentage, not to mention recording four hat tricks through the first six games of the season. Unlike most other professional franchises in Denver, which experienced down years, the Outlaws finished 2014 as MLL champs, and Law was a big reason why.

Readers' choice: Eric Law

We come not to bury the Denver Broncos, but to praise them. True, the team followed up its humiliating Super Bowl defeat by getting bounced out of the playoffs the next year after one game. But since Peyton Manning came to town, Denver has been among the most exciting franchises in any league, generating terrific story lines week in and week out — and with Manning returning to the fold for what's likely to be his final season and prodigal son Gary Kubiak coming back with a mandate for returning to glory, the drama could ratchet even higher in 2015-2016.

Readers' choice: Denver Broncos

It's been a rough year for pro coaches of the big four teams in Denver: John Fox jumped from the Broncos before he could be pushed, Brian Shaw was unceremoniously dismissed by the Nuggets, and Walt Weiss managed to survive as Rockies skipper only because general manager Dan O'Dowd was the designated (and belated) sacrifice. That leaves Patrick Roy, whose team didn't manage to hit the heights of his first year in charge. Yet he still struck a fine balance between positivity and hard-assed realism, figuratively skating over some often-thin ice with the sort of confidence that makes us believe better things are ahead.

Readers' choice: Patrick Roy

For coaches at colleges outside the power conferences, validation for a job well done comes when bigger universities come calling, and that's what happened for Jim McElwain, who was hired by Florida after the end of the regular season. When he took the CSU gig following several strong years as offensive coordinator at Alabama, observers knew he might be looking at Fort Collins as a way station. But this sort of plan only works if a coach wins, and McElwain did, quickly turning around a moribund program and registering a 10-2 record en route to becoming Mountain West Conference coach of the year. He earned the promotion, and CSU is in a better place moving forward because he did.

Readers' choice: Jim McElwain

KOA longtimer Alan Roach has manned the public-address system at a slew of Super Bowls, but not at the 2014 edition, because of the theory that hearing him would have given the Broncos an unfair advantage over the Seattle Seahawks. In general, this is an absurd notion, and not only because even the voice of God couldn't have helped Denver enough to win. Then again, Roach's bottomless tone is the next best thing to divinity, at least as far as most local fans are concerned. To people in Colorado, Roach simply sounds like sports, and for someone in his line of work, there's no greater compliment.

Readers' choice: Dave Logan

Vic Lombardi continues to stand head and shoulders above his sports-anchor peers, in part because he refuses to be confined to TV. In addition to his work at CBS4, he's become a regular on the 104.3/The Fan morning show alongside Mike Evans and Nate Lundy, giving him even more opportunities to exercise his keen wit and incisive analytical skills, and he's also a near-constant presence on Twitter. All of this activity demonstrates that Lombardi is as passionate about sports as ever. He just can't stop talking about it, and we still love listening.

Readers' choice: Vic Lombardi

It's a combination that shouldn't work. Sandy Clough is Denver's resident sports intellectual, breaking down teams, players and strategies with the scholarly acuity of a scientist, while Scott Hastings has a reputation as a fun-loving goofball who's incapable of pronouncing any "g" at the end of a word. But they bring out the best in each other: Hastings loosens up Clough when he's in danger of getting lost in pontification, while Clough inspires Hastings to reveal the genuine depth of his knowledge, particularly when it comes to basketball. They're radio's odd couple, and they make a highly enjoyable match.

Readers' choice: The Drive, with Big Al and D-Mac

Okay, okay: Betty Fitzgerald Hoover and Peggy Fitzgerald Coppom, known collectively as the Twins, aren't traditional mascots for CU-Boulder, which already has a fine one (hello, Ralphie). Instead, they're something better: a wonderful symbol of how love of sports can last a lifetime. The ninety-something pair first became CU football season-ticket holders in 1957, adding men's and women's basketball games to their schedule 22 years later. Since then, the sisters, who dress identically and seem to get more adorable with each passing decade, have been cherished by generations of athletes and fans — and we hope that continues for a long time to come.

Readers' choice: Rocky

Quick — what's Colorado's fastest-growing recreational pursuit? You know, besides that. Sweet Mary Pain, aka Emily Lucks, is co-captain of the Rocky Mountain Roller Girls' all-star 5280 Fight Club travel team, and also skates as both blocker and smokin'-fast jammer for Dooms Daisies, one of five gloriously named RMRG home teams (the others are Kill Scouts, United States Pummeling Service, Sugar Kill Gang, and Red Ridin' Hoods). No one is better at name games than Colorado skaters.

Readers' choice: Daisy Dukes-Up

The Denver Roller Dolls rebranded themselves as the Denver Roller Derby this year — the league's tenth — partly to mark the addition of a new traveling men's team, Ground Control. The latter joins the high-flying women's traveling teams Mile High Club, Bruising Altitude and the Standbys, and was just accepted into the growing Men's Roller Derby Association. For now, the gents are thrilled to be following the ladies' lead: Led by Tim "Dirt Monkey" Burns and Scott "Scott Free" Paul, Ground Control is coached by Bruising Altitude blocker Lisa "RockScar" Cassell and Tracy "Disco" Akers, a founding member of the Roller Dolls and longtime star of the Mile High Club.

Riding motorcycles isn't just for the boys: Each week, the Scarlet Headers, a group of hog-riding women who promote equality in the world of motorcycling, come together to ride, gear up on motorcycle maintenance and support rookie riders. The group's goal is to encourage women to be comfortable in the scene, and the Headers welcome all interested parties with open arms and a spare helmet.

If you've ever had the inclination to practice your best Miley moves, the Twerkshop at Tease dance studio is the perfect place to burn some cals while learning a sexy new routine. You'll be dancing to some sick beats, for sure, but don't be fooled: This is a high-energy cardio class, and nobody's wasting time twerking in place. You'll be catwalking and crab-crawling across the floor and back before you know it, bouncing, laughing, and shaping your badonkadonk in the process.

In Hinduism, "bhakti" means love and devotion — and that's what Katrina Gustafson's classes are all about. As the owner of Karma Yoga, Gustafson incorporates bhakti elements into every class and encourages her instructors to do the same. The best offering is Thursday night's Live Music Bhakti Flow class, with drumming from musician Zay Alejandro Rios, locally renowned for his work at Cleo Parker Robinson Dance. This class gets packed, with upwards of thirty students doing an active asana series that culminates in freestyle dance followed by a shavasana (deep relaxation) set against soft piano. Drop in for $15, or buy a package and save.

For a sweet new hashtag showing off Denver in all its glory, check out @lafitara's #yograffiti on Instagram to see the Denver resident flexing and posing in mind-boggling fashion in front of street art and city buildings, showcasing often-overlooked parts of the 5280. The #yograffiti project started with ad agency and photographer friends @giggletron4k and @tsirotek, a talented and creative bunch whose aim is to bring visibility to Mile High artists and culture and fitness enthusiasts. If you're wondering how this flexy chick gets her body to bend like that, well, you're not alone. Inversions, man.

It's not easy to run, climb, jump or do lunges before the sun comes up — much less in inclement weather. But it helps when you get support and hugs from fellow members of the November Project. The group, which is an officially sanctioned part of Civic Center Moves, takes free outdoor fitness to a new level with its early-morning workouts in Civic Center and other city parks. The collectively nicknamed Tribe promotes an active lifestyle, team-building and accountability — meaning you're supposed to be there regardless of conditions — but all fitness levels are welcome, and the workouts are adaptable. Expect Taylor Swift songs, some burpees and a positivity award handed out after a solid chunk of time spent running. Oh, and someone might spray-paint "November Project 5280" onto your T-shirt as an official welcome.

Awaken is not your average gym. It doesn't feature rows and rows of treadmills, sweaty exercise bikes and back-to-back episodes of House Hunters International playing on wall-mounted TVs. Instead, the sunny studio on Santa Fe is filled with rings, bars and a pommel horse, and offers classes such as Handstand Strength and Gymnastics Foundations. If you've ever dreamed of sticking the landing like Olympian Nadia Comaneci, or of building rock-hard abs and Michelle Obama arms in a fun atmosphere with no HGTV, Awaken is your spot.

By day, PATH Movement is the country's only fully customizable parkour gym, offering patrons new ways to jump, swing and climb on its movable obstacle course each day. But on the second and fourth Saturday of each month, the place becomes a NERF war zone, a fully stocked tactical training facility offering guns and ammo of the foam variety for hours of fun-infused combat. Learn battle strategies through PATH's NERF Madness sessions and then take that knowledge into its NERF Warz, where sixteen-person teams go head-to-head in glorious, all-out foam-ammunition-loaded scrimmages.

8000 S. Lincoln St., Littleton
720-443-1164

Elitch Lanes attracts everyone from weekday pizza-and-beer leagues to late-night bowling aficionados. Business and blue-collar types, high-schoolers and senior citizens have bowled alongside each other for years as the booze and sodas flowed. A North Denver institution from a bygone era when its namesake family ruled this part of the city, Elitch Lanes will close this May, but there's still time to come in for a few frames, stay for the buffet and cocktails, and hang with your Denver neighbors.

Flush with its success in the Ballpark neighborhood, ViewHouse opened a second outpost last September right off I-25 in Centennial — and it turns out that residents of the southern suburbs had been hungering to get in the game. From almost the moment it opened in a transformed Trail Dust Steak House, this ViewHouse has been packed at all hours, with groups gathering to drink and chat, linger over weekend brunch, party late into the night — and maybe even watch some games. ViewHouse is filled with big screens where you can watch just about every sporting event imaginable live, and there's room to stretch out while you do (and plenty to snack on off that expansive menu). But on the rare occasion when there's nothing to catch on television, you can watch all the action as suburbanites meet, greet, eat and possibly cheat. Or you can just gaze off to the west at that stunning view of the mountains, from both the ground-floor windows and the rooftop deck. Bonus: When you leave this ViewHouse, you don't have to worry about running into the LoDo let-out crowds.

Readers' choice: Blake Street Tavern

The winner and still the champ! Since 2003, Blake Street Tavern has been scoring big with sports-bar fans — and the best got better when Blake Street opened Underground Social, the ultimate solution for a big basement space that now features its own bar, jukebox and photo booth, along with plenty of games: shuffleboard, ping-pong, darts, cornhole, Giant Jenga, Giant Connect 4 and many more. Of course, there are big-screen TVs down here, too, in case you want to watch games as well as play them. And upstairs, Blake Street remains as accommodating as ever, with another game arcade, private rooms that groups can claim for watching their favorite sporting events, big booths and tables that are perfect spots for taking on some of the big offerings on the menu — like the green chile cheeseburger and the Blake Street nachos — and a huge rectangular bar from which you can catch the action on TV, or just around the rest of the room. Score!

Readers' choice: The 1up

When Highland Tap & Burger opened in September 2010, it was a sports lover's secret spot for catching a game. Not only could you walk in and grab a seat at the bar (where there are five TVs alone) or a table without a hassle, but the staff was more than willing to tune in to whichever obscure sporting event you were searching for. But word soon got out about the Tap's top-notch burgers, sinful bacon-topped mac and cheese, and standout smoky Stranahan's wings with a sticky, crackling glaze perfect for nibbling on with one of the bar's many local beers. These days, the joint is always hopping, and often too crowded for people who like to watch games in relative quiet — but for most fans, that crowd just means more friends to help you cheer on the home team. There may be better bars for watching a pitcher's every move or capturing the hushed whisper of the Masters at Augusta, but you won't find a better menu at any of this town's other sports-crazed bars.

Readers' choice: Highland Tap & Burger

There is no place in this state quite like Lakeside Amusement Park. On a perfect Colorado summer evening, a stroll through the grounds reveals a gathering place shaded by mature trees and lit by thousands of twinkling bulbs, all accentuated by the sounds of the rattling Cyclone roller coaster and a chorus of happy screams and hollers. The turn-of-the-century amusement park wears its age well and with pride. From Victorian-era buildings to the art-deco additions of the '30s, Lakeside is just as much a place for fun as it is a home for those who appreciate beautiful historic architecture.

As the snow melts, Vail's Adventure Ridge swaps out tubing, ski biking and a kids' snowmobile course for zipline tours, a climbing wall, a primo disc-golf course and other activities. The best of these is a pair of ropes challenge courses. You'll start with a ground-school lesson to make sure you know how to operate the can't-fall, can't-fail harness system, then spend thirty minutes up in the air on the North Course or sixty minutes on the more challenging South Course, quivering in that harness as you attempt to traverse a series of increasingly difficult obstacles. Don't sweat it when some adventurous little girl shows you up. Happens all the time.

With their name and image plastered on everything from T-shirts to car dealerships to street signs, it's easy to forget that the Flatirons are more than just a cool logo. But they're definitely real: majestic slabs of sandstone, punching up a thousand feet or more out of the ground just a scant few miles from Boulder's Pearl Street Mall. The best way to properly appreciate them is to rope up and scale one of the formation's many moderate lines, like the Direct Route on the First Flatiron. Climbing the Flatirons is far from a wilderness experience: The parking lot at Chautauqua Park is packed with dog walkers and hikers shortly after sunrise, and on game days you can watch instant replays on Folsom Field's jumbotron from halfway up the face. But convenience has its benefits: When you're done, you can hike straight off the summit and into the Chautauqua Dining Hall for a post-climb drink.

It may be rimmed by concrete and smell like feet on its best days, but for city-bound kayakers, Confluence Park is the best place outside of a swimming pool to sneak in an hour or two of after-work paddling. The park is located in the shadow of REI's flagship store, where Cherry Creek meets the South Platte River, and the water's waves and eddies give paddlers a convenient way to practice the basics before striking out on wilder rivers like the Arkansas or the Animas. Confluence Kayaks, located on Platte Street just a block and change from the park, offers beginner lessons in the water for $149 a pop, equipment included.

Carol and Punch Bohn, son of legendary boxer Eddie Bohn, run Lake Carol Anne, a private fishing enclave in north Denver. Fishing is belly-boating only, and membership is limited to a hundred — but those lucky fishermen can catch (and release) big bass, channel catfish, crappie, bluegill and brown, rainbow, brook and tiger trout — including the biggest tiger trout ever caught in Colorado. Joe Petrow's catch landed on the cover of a magazine, which brought him to the attention of the state and earned him a thirty-day license suspension, but he got to keep the bragging rights...and avoided a $1,000 penalty.

5880 Lowell Blvd.
303-429-3748

Denver Botanic Gardens offers one of the finest examples of nature play around. That's because naturalists used indigenous species, alpine plants and tons of natural materials to craft a legit mountain experience for kids and their families at its Mordecai Children's Garden. The highlight is Springmelt Stream, where children can dam things up with logs, skip stones and surmount rocks to their heart's content. Little ones can meander downhill to Chipotle Homes Harvest Garden — just beyond Pipsqueak Pond — then get elevated at Marmot Mountain, which features a rickety bridge, a picnic nook and furry friends. Because the environment is constantly changing, no two visits to this magical three-acre oasis are ever alike.

The Berrypicker trail out of Vail will get you into Colorado's famed scenery quickly as it heads straight up the mountain — the same one you ski in the winter — from either Vail Village or Lionshead. Named for the wild berries that grow alongside it, Berrypicker runs by streams, aspen trees, wildflowers and the occasional moose. But it's so close to town that hikers also have excellent cell reception, allowing them to make reservations — try Mountain Standard for a burger and a craft beer — on their descent. The trail is short but challenging, so you'll be hungry.

Boulder is full of good hikes and great beer, but there's one combination that stands above the others. Perhaps one of the most well-known trails in the area, the Mount Sanitas loop is a rugged three-mile hike that will take you to the rocky top of the 6,843-foot peak. From there, you'll have great views of the surrounding area, and you can pretend to make out Sanitas Brewing off in the distance. You'll certainly be thinking about a delicious saison or a black IPA by the time you and your sore knees get to the bottom. And from the patio of the brewery, you'll be able to gaze up at the peak where you just were.

Globeville Landing Park, at 38th Street and Arkins Court, is home to the only disc-golf course within the Denver city limits, and although it's small and a little rough, it has its charms. Don't own any discs? Hop on the Platte River Greenway or the Cherry Creek Trail and ride to REI to pick some up, then head to the park. The tees are hard to see, so you may want to find a course map online first. After playing nine holes, get back on your bike and ride carefully down 38th and over the bridge to Walnut Street, then walk in the welcoming red door at Black Shirt Brewing. At the brewery, which specializes in beautifully crafted, hoppy red beers, you're likely to find a saison or a porter to help quench that recreational thirst.

The Colorado Trail celebrated its fortieth anniversary in 2014, and although it was designed for hiking, the trail's 28 segments are mostly mountain-bike-friendly, too (with the exception of six wilderness areas that you have to detour around). If you were so inclined, you could pedal out from Denver and end up in Durango some 535 miles later in a couple of weeks or so. Colorado Trail "completers" tend to throw around phrases like "life-changing," but even a day trip along any of the trail's segments is worth doing. Either way, get copies of the Colorado Trail Foundation's official guidebook and the CT map book at coloradotrail.org to plan it out properly.

Readers' choice: Lair o' the Bear

Bike Snowmass wasn't messing around when it named its 2.75-mile, 1,400-vertical-foot-drop downhill bomber trail "Valhalla" — but that's just one recent addition to a singletrack and freeride trail system that now spiders out over fifty miles across the mountain resort. The park, which boasts jumps, wooden wall rides and other freeride features, was designed and built by Gravity Logic, the crew behind the Trestle Bike Park at Winter Park and the Trestle Bike Park at Barnum North in Denver. A $41 day pass or $199 summer pass grants you and your bike access to the Elk Camp Gondola and Elk Camp Chairlift, and Four Mountain Sports offers bike rentals, body armor (no, seriously) and clinics. The park typically opens in late June and operates daily through Labor Day, then on weekends through the end of September.

It's easy to cycle on the Cherry Creek Trail and the Greenway Trail along the South Platte River, but pedaling gets a little trickier once you surface and merge into the urban grid. In 2013, Denver installed its first protected bike lane downtown — on 15th Street between Cleveland Place and Larimer Street — and then updated it last year. Riding this short but important route still takes guts, especially during rush hour, but the trip is worth it, especially if heavy use encourages city planners to add future bike lanes in the city.

Readers' choice: Cherry Creek Trail

It's no secret that Denver is a dog town — our canine friends are everywhere — and Berkeley Lake Dog Park gives our four-legged kings and queens plenty of room to roam off-leash. Its rolling terrain is mostly gravel, which is great for letting pups blow off steam without getting their paws all muddy. There's a separate area for lower-energy dogs to have fun, too, so older pooches and smaller hounds have as much of a chance to go wild as the bigger, giddier fellows. Lovely views of historic Lakeside Amusement Park to the west and Berkeley Lake to the east make the dog park equally inviting for the mutts' people friends, the ones who drive them there.

Readers' choice: Chatfield State Park

Three years after it opened, the 40,000-square-foot Arvada Skatepark remains the biggest and baddest — and most photogenic — in the state. This one was designed by Team Pain with a "build it big and watch them rise to the occasion" mentality that has clearly come to pass. Go there on any given day to see skaters of all ages tearing around the deep end of the massive snake-run section, carving over a full-sized doorway arch, boosting airs out of the big bowl, and getting creative on some of the most innovative street-course features ever built.

Readers' choice: Denver Skate Park

Leadville and Lake County raised nearly a million dollars over the past five years to overhaul Huck Finn Park, adding tennis courts, an ice-skating rink and one hell of a skate park. The 21,000-square-foot concrete arena was built by Native Skateparks with help from a $350,000 grant from Great Outdoors Colorado (your lottery dollars at work) and sources as diverse as the Tony Hawk Foundation, Leadville Elks Lodge #236 and the Climax Molybdenum mining company's charity golf tournament. The park features a huge left-hand kidney bowl that goes from six feet in the shallow end to nine feet in the deep end; an 8,000-square-foot flow-bowl section; and a straightforward but well-designed street section. Pro tip: Bring plenty of water and sunscreen, because you'll be feeling the 10,200-foot elevation as soon as you start skating.

Climbers in Colorado often have to hike for miles to find frozen waterfalls to scale. At the Ouray Ice Park, all they have to do is walk down the street. Located in the southwestern Colorado hamlet of the same name, the manmade Ouray Ice Park features more than 200 ice and mixed routes up the walls of the Uncompahgre Gorge, a steep canyon that cuts right through town. Every January, the park holds the world's best-known ice-climbing festival, a four-day affair whose competition draws some of winter climbing's top athletes. The park is free to the public, though gear rental will still cost you; San Juan Mountain Guides (ourayclimbing.com) teaches lessons for beginners.

Breckenridge gets its park and pipe up early — in time to host the Dew Tour each December — and keeps the pro-class setup running all season long. Most of the action is accessible from the Peak 8 base area: start in the more moderate Trygve's terrain park, then take Chair 5 up to scope out the bigger features in Park Lane, and watch for thrills and spills on two different triple jump lines and a wide selection of boxes, rails, wall rides and other features. Warmed up? Go big on the four make-it-or-break-it booters and other features in the Freeway terrain park and its 22-foot superpipe, where you'll be joined by more Dew Tour athletes and Olympians than you can shake your GoPro extension pole at.

Readers' choice: A51 Terrain Park, Keystone

Only a handful of resorts in the world have the equipment needed to build 22-foot superpipes to the specifications required by premier events on the World Snowboard Tour, Association of Freeskiing Professionals World Tour and FIS World Cup. Nobody builds them as well as Snow Park Technologies, the team responsible for the X Games pipe at Buttermilk and the Burton U.S. Open pipe at Vail. Buttermilk's U-ditch is at its best just before and just after the X Games in January, then gets sliced and diced and doubled up into a spine ramp for the Red Bull Double Pipe contest in March. It's a truly humbling experience worth dropping in on, if only to better appreciate precisely how nuts a full-on pro ski or snowboarding competition really is.

To follow in the tracks of your 2015 FIS World Ski Championships heroes, head to Beaver Creek and make your way to the 11,440-foot summit, the starting point for the Birds of Prey men's downhill course and, a bit farther down, the Raptor women's downhill course. Stay left on the double-diamond Golden Eagle run to ski the same terrain as the men, or point down Peregrine and Kestrel to get your Lindsey Vonn on. For the full experience, have your friends and family ring cowbells for you as you cruise into Red Tail Stadium before making your way to the new Talons Restaurant for celebratory drinks.

Readers' choice: East Wall, Arapahoe Basin

The best things in life are free, and at Copper Mountain, rides on the Tucker Mountain Snowcat are free with any lift ticket or season pass. The cat picks up at the base of the Mountain Chief chairlift, Friday through Sunday from 10 a.m. until 1:30 p.m., then dumps you into in-bounds terrain that feels like pure backcountry, including steep chutes and wide-open treeless runs above timberline. Tucker Mountain has been a focus of The 12s, a two-phase high-alpine development plan to expand the resort's offerings on its three peaks above 12,000 feet. The project has also seen the installation of a new T-bar lift on Storm King and the Celebrity Ridge lift, serving Union Peak, Union Meadows, West Ridge and Copper Bowl.

Lift tickets at many Colorado resorts have blown past the $100 mark and are now well on the way to $200, which makes bailing out before the Eisenhower Tunnel more appealing than ever. Loveland's lift tickets start at $51 in the early season — before most other ski areas in North America are even open — and jump to just $63 during the peak season. Once you've got your lift ticket, it gets even better: Sign a waiver at the lift-ticket office to pick up a free pass for Loveland's Ridge Cat, then catch a ride from near the top of Chair 9 that will take you along the North Ridge and save you from some hiking to get to the goods. The wind blows around quite a bit up there, so you're likely to make fresh tracks even if it hasn't snowed in a while. Drop in on double-diamond runs Tickler, Marmot or Rock Chutes for the best thrills money can't buy.

Ready to step up your game? A mere $999 will get you an all-day heli-skiing or snowboarding experience at Silverton Mountain. You'll ride in the same helicopter that's used to blast avalanche chutes in the area, and be shuttled to six runs on the steepest, deepest and highest-elevation terrain of any ski area in the state. If the 2014-2015 season is any indication, you'll want to book your trip — well in advance — for early March, when you just might get a 100-inch storm to help cushion the blow. Just need a taste? Single heli-drops are also available, for $179. And no worries if your gear is better suited to more conventional ski areas: Silverton can rent you K2 Powder Skis or a locally made Venture Snowboard, as well as a full avalanche equipment package.

Raise a toast to your pow-chasing peers at the Oasis Champagne Bar, a 2,000-pound mobile pop-up bar built on a snowcat trailer. Oasis is run by Sabato Sagaria, director of food and beverage at the Little Nell at Aspen Mountain, who says he wanted to marry food truck chic with Aspen charm to serve caviar and Veuve Clicquot from "secret" locations on the hill. Follow @TheLittleNell on Twitter to help track it down and start poppin' bottles.

Kids fourteen and under ski free at Arapahoe Basin from November 30 through December 19, with no purchase necessary and no strings attached. The ski area, better known for its extreme terrain and its base-area party scene, went all out this season to make the place more family-friendly with its new three-story, 7,100-square-foot, $2.3 million Kids Center, as well as a more developed system of beginner runs and family fun zones near the base of the mountain.

As single-day lift-ticket prices have skyrocketed astronomically across Colorado, multi-mountain season-pass prices have actually stayed pretty much the same. That's good news for locals committed to getting up to the hills for more than a couple of days, especially since those passes increasingly offer days at national and international resorts. For the 2014-2015 season, Vail Resorts' $579 Epic Local pass offered unlimited access to Keystone, Breckenridge and Arapahoe Basin locally, as well as Afton Alps in Minnesota and Mount Brighton in Michigan — plus, crucially, ten restricted days at Vail and Beaver Creek, and restricted days at Heavenly, Northstar and Kirkwood in Tahoe and — new this year — Park City in Utah. Planning your adventures during peak-season dates around the holidays? Splurge on the extra $200 for unlimited access to all of the above and some bonus days at a handful of international resorts.

Just when you think you've seen everything a ski film could possibly have to offer, along comes the next installment of whatever Nick Waggoner and his Sweetgrass Productions crew are up to. Best known for longer documentaries, this year they went decidedly short. The eleven-minute "Afterglow" features Pep Fujas, Eric Hjorleifson, Daron Rahlves and Chris Benchetler prowling the slopes at night in Alaska, bathed in swaths of otherworldly ambient light and wearing LED light suits. Yes, the film was actually branded online film content — it was basically an advertisement co-sponsored by Philips Ambilight TV and Atomic Skis — but it went massively viral and garnered Best Short and Best Cinematography prizes at the 2015 Powder Awards.

No weather forecast is perfect, particularly when it comes to predicting pow. But if you start to recognize your fellow addicts in line for first chair at whatever ski area happens to be boasting the morning's biggest snowfall, you can thank — or blame — Joel Gratz and his Open Snow app for blowing it out. Download the free app for iOS or Android, then subscribe to Gratz's Colorado Daily Snow and set powder alerts for all of your favorite mountains. Gratz tends to really nerd out on all the relevant weather science and computer storm models, which you'll appreciate as you check the app obsessively every night and again every morning when the 5 a.m. snow-stake tallies go live. Whether he got it right or wrong, it'll give you something to chat about on the chairlift.

Alpine touring skis were all the rage this season for anyone looking to leave the chairlift lines behind, whether headed for the backcountry, the sidecountry, or just taking uphill-downhill laps at a local resort. Icelantic led the charge with its new Vanguard, a cambered ski with an early rise on the tip and tail, an ultralight core, and stark art by Todd Parr on top to let the local wildlife know you're one of their kind. The ski, a Freeskier magazine 2015 Editor's Pick and Skiing magazine 2015 Official Selection, will be back for 2015-2016 with updated art on the topsheet.

In a season when powder dumps were few and far between, Never Summer's playful Funslinger freestyle board hit the sweet spot. The slightly asymmetrical deck is light, spring-loaded and extra-flexible, and features Never Summer's patented "Ripsaw Rocker" rocker-camber hybrid shape. Translation? Perfect for throwing around in the terrain park and ideal for urban jib missions. Not too shabby in powder, either.