One Night In a Colorado A-Frame Village Inspired by 1970s Ski Style

Welcome to One Night In, a series about staying in the most unparalleled places available to rest your head.

When friends of mine mention they’d like to "get into skiing," I warn them: it’s expensive, dangerous, and a logistical nightmare. If you aren’t already hooked, don’t try to get hooked. Save yourself, because I’m already past saving. However, this doesn’t mean I don’t try to rope friends who already love snow sports into trips with me. And so, in late March, I recruited two of my favorite other snow rats to join me for a few days in Winter Park, Colorado, to close out the season.

I associate skiing with well-worn, cookie-cutter condos and salt-stained carpets—whatever is functional and as cheap as I can find to get the job done and let me eke out a full eight hours on the slopes. Indulging in a more elevated experience hadn’t occurred to me until I heard about the A-Frame Club, a new ’70s-inspired property in Winter Park’s Old Town. Designed by Skylab Architecture, a lauded Portland firm (delightfully responsible for the famous Hoke House, featured as the Cullen family home in Twilight) and opened by Zeppelin Development, the 31 A-frame cabins are rounded out with an on-site saloon and bar. The hotel had been open less than two months when we booked our trip, and only a few of the cabins were ready. We were excited to be getting in on the ground floor.

Friday

Evening: We arrive at the tail end of a storm that promises a bluebird ski day and blankets the property in snowdrifts. The cabins, constructed in knotted cedar and birch that will weather grayer, peak out above the powder. The metal roofs with their wing-tipped eaves are set at a dramatic slope in congruence with the surrounding evergreens.

I am immediately surprised by the club’s modest footprint. Set on a four-acre property, the cabins are not spread out, but instead clustered together and nearly overlapping, connected by a labyrinth of raised wooden paths that feel almost like tunnels when cocooned in snow. My friend Kevin, an architectural designer and obsessive of high-density housing, adored this feature. Rather than feeling claustrophobic, the effect is a cozy one. It allows for privacy but efficiency of space: no sharing condo walls or hearing an upstairs neighbor tramp above your head.