The annual ‘Resort Roundup’ (published last year as “The Ski Bum’s Guide,” MG #137) is easily the most commercial piece of pandering that we publish in the Mountain Gazette. Designed in concert with our regular equipment column, Gear-O-Rama, it’s meant to stoke the fires of Rocky Mountain retail and fatten our magazine with ad pages galore. And, as a rite-of-winter rundown on the ‘coolest,’ ‘hottest,’ and ‘gnarliest’ new stuff on the slopes – which, geologically speaking, ain’t changed much themselves in the past couple millenniums – the Roundup includes no small element of that lazy list-making journalism that we have decried for so many years.

But ski areas also go a long way toward defining who we are. The MG was originally founded as The Skiers’ Gazette in 1966, with an editorial, advertising and distribution model aimed at reaching the new wave of snow settlers populating the ski areas that were sprouting like dandelions in seemingly every Colorado town where a mine was about to close. And a majority of our readers still live and work in ski towns, and spend more on skis, boots and season passes than they do on anything else except for pizza and beer. So it makes sense to honor the economic engine that drives a lot of our lives. But we like to celebrate how much pleasure skiing gives us, too. Plowing through powder, chairlift-sitting in the sun, or bombing laps on the groomers, it’s the best way of wasting time the winter will ever know.

This year we talk about the Colorado hills (with a few bonuses thrown in) that seem to still hold true to the values that inspired this magazine 40+ years ago: ski hills with mud parking lots, a sack lunch-friendly cafeteria, double chairs, friendly lifties, on-the-spot bars where you can cheer or boo the Donkeys, little to no mondo-condo-mania/development and absolutely incredible slopes and snow.

Arapahoe Basin Ski Area

A chair ride at A-Basin takes you back into a time when the sport was fresh and new—except the skis are much fatter now. All the better to enjoy the Alps-like terrain and snow that graces this saddle off the Continental Divide, which has one of the longest seasons in North America (typically from late October-June). Get-Your-Game-On-Skiers look longingly for the ropes to drop on the East Wall and classic rock-lined double black-diamond runs like First Notch, which when open, are worth the big hike. The mountain has a variety of aspects, which translates into a high probability of finding good snow. The newly opened 400-acre Montezuma Bowl offers long cruisers as well as chutes and trees, and the grand Pallavacini Face rivals any bump run around. Since bumps are only as good as the skiers who create them, “Pali” features a plethora of nice lines created by the talented every-day skiers who contribute to the Basin’s unique, confident vibe. The “Beach,” known as early-riser parking and a whole lot of before, during and après-skiing, has the festive vibe of the Indy 500 infield, where burning burgers, brats and duct-taped grills are de rigueur. Since the 1940s, Max and Edna Dercum’s “Legend” remains condo and attitude free. Arapahoebasin.com

Best Run: Non-stops on Pallavacini.

Best Beer: The very cold cans in your car.

—Krista Crabtree

Breckenridge Ski Resort

It may seem a stretch to include Breck on a list of “REAL Ski Areas.” After all this is the area with the most skier visits per year of any in North America—1.5 million—and the resort of choice for knock-kneed Barney’s from New York, Dallas, Chicago and God knows what other suburban hell. It is part of the corporate resort machine, which values real estate over the purity of powder turns, right? Plus, there are way too many long, flat runs on the lower hill. Perhaps in spite of all these factors, Breckenridge has developed one of the most core communities of yearlong skiers in Colorado. This is the place where those who never felt right in the godawful suburbs—who came out for a year as a liftie and ended up pounding nails, buying a pass and never going back – actually live, in a county where over two-thirds of the homes are second homes. In a sense, they represent the latest evolution of the American West, fueling the move away from the boom and bust of mining to the present service economy. Plus, it’s the former home hill of the Mountain Gazette itself, and tough to beat for powder-day face shots at 12K feet in the big bowls of Peak 8. Breckenridge.snow.com

Best Run: Anything off Peak 8 on a powder day

Best Beer: Burgers and pitchers at the Moose Jaw in Frisco, longtime supporters of the MG.

—Doug Schnitzspahn