City to Ski

WH Creative Director Adam Williams discovers the dream urban and snow break, all in one place!

- Adam Williams

What if I told you there’s a Hogwarts Express-like service that transports you from the streets of a very cool US city straight to the snow, where you can carve up some ski powder in one of the country’s most underappreciated resorts?

It does exist (and you don’t have to run through a brick wall at Platform 9¾ to get on board). You’ll find this express ski train in Denver, Colorado. The Mile High City gets its nickname by being 1690 metres above sea level and is the perfect place to acclimatize to the altitude before getting on the train to Winter Park Resort. So, that’s what I do: after a 12-hour flight from Sydney to LAX on Virgin Australia, and a short aircraft swap to Denver, I spend the next 24 hours acclimatizing with a pre-snow, city sojourn.

My digs in Denver is the super stylish Kimpton Hotel Born, located a two-second trot from the airport train link at Union Station. Normally, I’d shy away from staying near a station in a big city (Rome or Budapest: perennially dodgy) but Denver Station isn’t like most. Chic restaurants and pimped wine bars cloister the main waiting area of the 1914 heritage concourse. The building shares the same bygone-era modern aesthetic of the Kimpton Hotel Born (with added wood-paneled, cabin-style cosiness).