My ski club visited Telluride Ski Resort this ski season and stayed at Bear Creek Lodge. While the club had stayed here at least once before, it was my first visit.
Bear Creek Lodge (photo: booking.com)
Getting There
Telluride is in southwest Colorado and the closest airport with a significant number of commercial flights is about 75-90 minutes away in Montrose, Colorado (MTJ). American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, Southwest Airlines and Breeze Airways all fly to this airport. If you’re in a regular vehicle, Bear Creek Lodge is about an hour and fifteen minute drive from the airport. If you’re in a motorcoach or a shuttle van laden with lots of ski gear it takes slightly longer.
Arrival
We were deposited at the front door. Check-in was a little slow as it appeared one person was in training, so there was only one person to check in all of our rooms, although they had our packets ready ahead of time. We tried to make it easier by having 2-3 of us (each representing a different room) at the counter at the same time so we could all hear the spiel at the same time and the associate didn’t have to repeat himself.
Bear Creek Lodge Front Desk
Lobby
The lobby is a large, warm and welcoming place. I love all the exposed wood. The ceiling is over two stories tall and there’s always a fire burning in the gas fireplace. The lobby is big enough that we were able to have both our welcome reception and our farewell reception in it. They set up tables for the food we provided and high top tables for us to stand around.
Bear Creek Lodge Lobby
As the property is on the side of a mountain, the main floor is actually the third level. Our unit was on the second level so we took our bags down one floor in the elevator. Unfortunately there’s no porterage available at Bear Creek Lodge, something I’ve learned to appreciate when I’m hauling ski luggage.
There’s only one elevator – though at least it’s pretty large – but there are outdoor stairwells that are very convenient when heading to or from the slopes – just not convenient if you have bulky bags.
Unit 203 A/B/C
This unit can actually be split into 3: the A unit is a one-bedroom with the kitchen, dining area, living room and laundry facilities. The B & C units can be lock-off hotel-type units with just beds and baths, although they each have a mini-fridge, a microwave and a coffee pot available.
There are no physical keys for these units. Instead, each outside door has a numeric keypad. Our code only worked on the A door but that was fine once we got all the luggage inside. Having the three doors did make it easier to get our luggage out of the unit too as it meant there were no tricky corners to navigate with big ol’ ski bags.
Entry area
The A unit was our entry point. Once inside, just to the right of the door is a bench with cubbies, good for helmets, gloves, etc. There was a series of hooks above the bench where some folks put their ski poles while others put jackets there.
There was another set of hooks or pegs on the left wall of the entry, just past the outside door. That was also well-utilized for jackets by my condo-mates.
Kitchen/Dining/Living Area
Just to the left was a short hallway that led to the utility room as well as one of the bedrooms. We’ll get back to that in a minute. Stepping further into the unit was the kitchen on the left and the dining table on the right. The kitchen was separated from the living room by a large open bar with several stools.
Our only gripe about the seating was that both the counter stools and the chairs at the dining table made us feel like little kids at the grown-ups table. The stools were just a few inches too short. The first morning I felt like I was shoveling cereal in a direct horizontal line from the bowl to my mouth. With the dining chairs, they appeared to be the correct height but when we sat in them, the seats flattened out so much we were again lower than we’d like to have been. It could have been that if we’d tried some of the other chairs they weren’t as soft but we ended up swapping out one chair from the living room that was a bit firmer and that helped.
I loved the design of the kitchen. The fridge was quite large and even with 5 of us in the condo we had plenty of room for everything. There was a built-in microwave above the stove/oven unit as well as a toaster oven. The wine rack came in handy as several of my condo-mates had bought a bottle for the week. The coffee maker did the job (according to everyone else, since I don’t drink coffee) and if you run out of the provided coffee, the front desk is happy to provide more.
While I don’t personally ever cook in our condos, I did hear from some of the others that a few more pots and pans would have been a nice addition, as well as some resealable-type plastic containers. The doors next to the fridge are for the pantry, which came in handy. There was a trash can under the sink and another one in the pantry. I’m not sure if one of those was supposed to be a recycle bin or not but they both got used as trash cans for our purposes.
The living room was fairly spacious and we had lovely views into the trees. It was nice to have all the light and not have to worry about anyone seeing into our unit. The sofa and all the chairs were quite comfortable and got a lot of use as we sat around and chatted during the week.
The gas fireplace was easy to use as all you had to do was set the timer. The TV was easy to operate and if you are into board games, that cabinet below the TV is full of them.
We had a small balcony that faced the woods. The area had received about 2.5 feet of snow the week prior to our visit so the balcony furniture was covered when we arrived, but it had all melted by the end of the week.
Bedrooms
The bedroom in the A unit is the smallest of the three. As I would have assumed this was the master bedroom, I was surprised it did not have the king bed. (Supposedly, most of the bedding in this complex is split kings; that is, king beds that can be split into twins but that’s not universally true.) I guess they just gave us what they had, but if they’d looked at the rooming list it would have made more sense to have the single person in this room with a king bed and have the B & C bedrooms with the twins. The advantage of this room is that it has a huge closet (not shown). That was helpful because none of the rooms have much in the way of storage chests or dressers.
The disadvantage of this room is that the bathroom is not en suite but since we were a bunch of women that was not really an issue for us. The A bathroom is a bit more compact than those in the B & C bedrooms and it had a tub shower instead of separate tub and shower facilities like the B & C bedrooms.
Across from the A bathroom was the laundry closet with a full-sized washer and dryer. The property also included some laundry detergent as well as some dryer sheets and more was available from the front desk as needed.
The B bedroom was a fairly standard hotel room with the bathroom on the left upon entering, a desk area in the little hallway and then the room opened up to where the bed was.
The bathroom in the B & C units had the sink and shower on one side with the toilet and tub on the other. The sink area was fairly small with very little counter space and only one hand towel. I always think each room occupant should have their own hand towel so I kept mine under the sink on top of my Dopp kit. The lighting in the room in general was not very bright until you turned on the one overhead light that also turned on the fan.
Bathroom B Tub
The shower was pretty great. Nice and big and I loved the bench across the back. It appeared the shower head could be detached from the holder but I could never figure it out. I do wish the spray could have been made a little stronger. I would also love to have seen a clothesline and some hooks in the shower. When we rinsed out our swimsuits and washcloths there was nowhere to put them except on the side of the tub. If we’d used the towel racks they’d have dripped on the floor. I know at least one of the units had a heated towel rack but the room was warm enough without us inducing any more heat!
The tub did have jets in it, although we never tried it out.
Bathroom C tub
The B & C bedrooms were mirror images of one another. The B unit had the bathroom & small desk on the left while the C unit had them on the right. The B unit had the fridge, microwave, and coffee pot right behind the desk (and near an empty entertainment center which provided a little storage) while the C unit had those items in the back corner near the window.
Both the B & C bedrooms had a really tall chair in the bedroom. It was too tall to be useful when putting on shoes, etc. so it was basically used just to hold “stuff” in our (C) room since the only drawers we had was in a single 6-drawer chest. That’s not a lot of space considering all the clothing that has to be brought for skiing a week.
Bedroom C Chair, Dresser, Fridge
Though I only took a photo of the C closet, it had a lot of hangers and extra bedding as well as humidifiers. Plenty of room for us.
Bedroom C Closet
The B bedroom had a king bed with night stands on either side, a wall-mounted TV across from the bed and what amounted to a table with a couple of small drawers underneath the TV. The entertainment center pictured in the other photo provided most of the drawer storage for this room.
Bedroom B Bed
Our C bedroom had twins with a single night stand between them. There was a single AC outlet behind it. As I was in the bed by the window, I was able to use an outlet on that wall for my phone and tablet.
Bedroom C Beds
Toiletries were by Bodyography and worked well enough. Shampoo, conditioner, bodywash and lotion were provided along with a small bar soap for hand washing.
I also loved that they provided robes, which were great for the trips to and from the hot tub. At first I thought the robes were all the same size and mine was a bit small. But one of my condo-mates, who is a much smaller person, had one that swallowed her up so we were able to switch and that worked great.
Common Areas
Level 3 was the lobby and our rooms were down one floor on level two. The gym, indoor hot tub, sauna, and steam room were down one floor further on level one, along with a few more condos.
Gym
The gym was fairly large and had a decent array of machines. A couple of treadmills, three different types of indoor bikes, and a stair climber for cardio purposes. Three sizes of stability balls were available along with a BOSU, a universal machine and a stand for pull-ups/dips was also available. There was also an adjustable bench with an array of dumbbells and a few kettlebells.
In the back was a ping pong table and I didn’t check but I’d assume the paddles and a ball were somewhere nearby.
Towels were available both here and just outside the pool area along with bins for used towels. The lodge did request that we not take the towels to our rooms unless we were planning to re-use them.
Indoor Hot Tub/Sauna/Steam Room
Behind the frosted door in the photo above was a large room with this indoor hot tub.
In this same room were two doors, one leading to the sauna and the other to the steam room. As I’m not a fan of either all I can tell you about them is what you see here.
Pool/Outdoor Hot Tubs
The pool and outdoor hot tubs (and grills) were down on Level B, along with the parking garage. The photo was taken from the stairway down from the lobby and beneath the stairs was a shelving unit with towels and bins for used towels. Each of the two tubs could hold about 12 people or so and often our group would completely take over one tub and spill into the other. The pool was, of course, heated though not nearly as warm as the hot tubs.
Shuttle
While the property has a funicular (a little cabin on a track) that leads to the slopes, it wasn’t working during our stay and from what I understand from those who had visited before, it rarely works. Fortunately the property offers an on-call shuttle with three stops within the Mountain Village. The closest stop is near the Mountain Market and from there it’s a short, free gondola ride to the main base of the slopes where there’s another free gondola that will take you up and over the mountain into the town of Telluride. The shuttle runs from 8 AM to 11 PM.
In the end
Since most units have split king beds in every bedroom, this makes Bear Creek Lodge a great place for our club to stay. While we do have some couples or people willing to share a bed, most of our folks are singles who do not want to share. Although it’s not slopeside, the free shuttle is quick and convenient and the free gondolas connecting the mountain to town are easy to access and a great way to avoid any issues with slick mountain roads.
We were able to utilize the large lobby for a couple of gatherings for our group and we loved the serene views from the property. I would expect that our group will try to stay here on our next visit and I would agree that’s a great plan.
2B Traveling 
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