Mountain Creek Beginners

Photo Credit: Mountain Creek

Mountain Creek’s beginner terrain is situated entirely on the Vernon Peak side of the resort. South Peak and Bear Peak are home only to blue square and black diamond trails, though many of those ratings overstate the difficulty of runs in comparison to other resorts in the East. Strong beginners will be able to handle most, if not all, of the intermediate trails on the mountain. Strong beginners will also likely want to challenge themselves to step up in class due to the limited number of green trails offered at Mountain Creek.

The learn to ski area is located at the bottom of the Granite Peak, where the Sugar Quad accesses an eponymous green slope. Two magic carpet lifts surface the children’s learn to ski area on the opposite side of the Red Tail Lodge.

Progressing beginners have only two options – one from the top of each of Granite Peak and Vernon Peak. However, one of those green runs (the Osprey-Red Fox combination run on Vernon Peak) is accessible only from lifts that have no green trails to their bases. As a result, the main green run from the top of Vernon Peak (Upper and Lower Horizon) tends to be incredibly crowded. Sheer boredom forces beginners onto blue runs to escape the monotony of Horizon and while most beginners are able to handle the slight increase in difficulty to some of Mountain Creek’s easier green runs, some are not, creating a veritable minefield of fallen beginners on many of the blue and black trails.