Best New Ski Lift 2010 | Palmyra Staircase | Best of Denver® | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Denver | Westword
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Best New Ski Lift

Palmyra Staircase

Okay, so it's not exactly a "lift," per se, but the gnarliest new way up a hill this year is Telluride's stairway to heaven in the Gold Hill Chutes on Palmyra Peak. It consists of a pair of steel staircases and a bridge flown in by helicopter that now link Gold Hill Chutes #8 and #9. After a twenty- to thirty-minute hike from the Revelation lift, Gold Hill Chute #9 starts out with a steep, narrow drop-in, then opens up into the Palmyra Basin bowls below. This is in-bounds skiing? Only in Telluride.

Best Terrain Park

Snowmass

Named by TransWorld Snowboarding as one of the top ten sites nationwide, the three different terrain parks at Snowmass — Scooper, Little Makaha and Snowmass Park — cater to shredders of every stripe. There's a 22-foot Olympic-sized pipe in the mix, along with some of the biggest rails, boxes and jump sets in the state. And the best part? You can watch the yard sale unfold from the comfort of your lift chair on the Coney Glade.

Best Guess for When Colorado Will Host the Winter Olympics

2026

Colorado had its chance to host the Winter Olympic Games back in 1976, but after winning the bid, voters — egged on by then-governor Dick Lamm — rejected the award. Every four years since then, Coloradans have debated the economic and environmental impact of making another attempt. The talk is now on for a try at the 2022 Games, but that's four years too soon. Why? 2026 will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the last try and give the state sixteen years to get a high-speed train running between Denver and the mountains. Plus, somewhere there's a Colorado kid being born who will grow up to win the gold in snowboarding that year.

Best Rapid

Conor Casey

A Carmelo-like no-brainer here: Conor Casey's 2009 season not only cemented him as the anchor of the Rapids, but he emerged as an MVP candidate, setting a club record with sixteen goals and coming one score shy of the league's goals title. The hometown fave — he graduated from South High — earned himself an all-star berth and a place on the U.S. national team, for which he netted two goals in a World Cup qualifier against Honduras. There's a Golden Boot award in Casey's future; let's just hope it happens here.

Best Move by a General Manager

Firing Clint Hurdle

Those are hard words to read, considering that Clint Hurdle managed to lead the Rockies to their first World Series appearance. But last spring, with the Rockies limping out of the gates, it was time for a change, and GM Dan O'Dowd pulled the trigger, ousting Hurdle in favor of bench coach Jim Tracy. Whatever Hurdle was selling, the players weren't buying — and the change of salesman helped the Rockies shock-and-awe their way back into the playoffs.

Best Public Golf Course

Saddle Rock Golf Course

Public golf must be measured by value, and few courses in the metro area combine the value, character and playing conditions of Saddle Rock. Built in 1997, the course — tucked into the southeast corner of Aurora — features 7,351 yards of well-manicured rolling plains, with large elevation changes and swaths of ravine making it a challenge from every tee box. It's riddled with memorable holes, including the short-but-sweet second, the enormous par-five sixth, the water-guarded ninth...and that's just the front side. The back is just as fun, and with greens fees peaking at $36, playing all eighteen is a steal at any time, on any day.

Best Old Museum Within a Museum

Denver Wax Museum/Forney Museum of Transportation

The Forney Museum of Transportation is an often-overlooked Denver attraction, featuring one of the world's largest locomotives, early electric-car prototypes and other eccentric vehicles. What makes it even cooler? The kitsch-tastic Denver Wax Museum, closed to the public in 1981, lives on inside the Forney like some sort of creepy alien symbiote. The Forney purchased the wax museum's figures when it shut down and has installed them among its exhibits. A bug-eyed Amelia Earhart sits in the actual "Gold Bug" Kissel Speedster she made famous, and Mark Twain and Huck Finn snuggle up in a corner. All that's missing is General George Custer cruising by in a Rolls-Royce.

Best Motocross Action

Thunder Valley

Thunder Valley Motocross Park is not merely the best place to rev your engines around Denver; the 130-acre facility is among the best in the world, which is why it was picked to host the Red Bull FIM Motocross of Nations in September, only the third time the 64-year-old event has ever been held in the United States. Thunder Valley will also host several major events this year, making for the best motocross spectating in the state. And the track is open year-round to local riders Wednesday through Sunday. Start on the kids' track, work up to the intermediate option, then head to the big show to start chasing those trophy dreams.

Best New Ski Terrain

McCormack's Maze and Hoody's

In December, Purgatory expanded its expert terrain offerings by 30 percent with the opening of 125 acres of steep new tree-skiing runs known as the Legends and serviced by the Legends lift. McCormack's Maze and Hoody's — named for Durango's senior VP of mountain operations Mike McCormack and VP of base area operations Jim "Hoody" Hards — represent the first phase of the first expansion at Purgatory in more than twenty years. To clear the new terrain, the resort used an environmentally friendly "lop-and-scatter" method, following U.S. Forest Service guidelines to cut only standing dead timber, hazard timber and non-merchantable timber less than six inches in diameter, and leaving the cut trees on the forest floor to eliminate the need for heavy machinery and enhance wildlife habitat. Translation? It's tight in there. Watch out for that tree!

Best Halfpipe

Main Vein Superpipe

To push progression in the sport and keep pace with pioneering riders like Shaun White, the International Olympic Committee super-sized its snowboard halfpipe specs in time for the winter games last February, ditching the eighteen-foot transitions of yesteryear for a longer, steeper pipe with 22-foot walls. Copper beat every other resort in the Northern Hemisphere to get its early-season superpipe open in time for the first event of the U.S. Snowboarding Grand Prix (White won it), then maintained it all season. To truly appreciate the magnitude of White's double-cork 1260 — he's calling it "The Tomahawk" — try dropping in on Main Vein to get your blood pumping. It's big. Real big.

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