Decision made, house confirmed. Ski-in/ski-out on the Sundance run, sauna and steam room, pool table, hot tub.
✈️ Ed’s flights are booked too — confirmed 27 September 2026. The airline, routing and fare aren’t recorded here, so ask him rather than assuming anything from the research further down. Nothing is recorded either way about anyone else’s flights — everyone books their own.
The one dated item left is the house balance, due ~5 Dec 2026. The ground transfer from Montrose still needs booking.
~$20,333 total · 4 nights
at 10 people
📍 Mountain Village — direct access to the Sundance ski run.
Booked direct with Exceptional Stays. Ski-in/ski-out is what makes a half-day of skiing on the Sunday departure possible — see the return flights below.
View the house →50% of the rent went in at booking. The remaining ~50% falls due 60 days before the 3 Feb arrival — about ~$1,016 per person at 10. Cancel inside that window and nothing is refunded.
✈️ Flights: Ed’s are booked. The old 30 Sept / 15 Oct flight-shopping deadline no longer applies.Plan on connecting through Denver. The seasonal EWR→MTJ nonstop remains on the winter 26/27 map. The published schedule changes it to weekly service from January but does not name the operating day. The 1 September exact-date check found no usable nonstop for 3 to 7 February. Treat it as unavailable unless United shows otherwise.
Ed’s flights are booked (confirmed 27 September 2026). The airline, routing and fare are not recorded — ask Ed, and don’t read them off the options below. No one else’s flight-booking status is recorded here, either way.
⚠️ Everything in this section is research from 1 Aug, 1 Sept and 8 Sept 2026, kept for anyone who still has to book. The schedule notes are the published seasonal schedule, and every fare, screenshot and range below is a past observation or a planning estimate — not a live price. Price your own dates before you buy.
What changed since the 1 Aug research. The winter 26/27 Colorado Flights Alliance schedule is now published, so the biggest open question on this page is closed. Corrections:
Source: Colorado Flights Alliance / Montrose Regional Airport, 2026/2027 Winter Non-Stop Flight Schedule and coloradoflights.org/schedule, both retrieved 1 Sept 2026. That is the published seasonal schedule, not a date-by-date seat check: united.com could not be queried for 3 / 7 Feb from here. Before you write the nonstop off completely, spend 30 seconds pricing EWR→MTJ nonstop on those two exact dates on united.com. Everything below assumes it comes back empty.
A real fare screenshot turned up in the trip records, captured 2 August 2026. It is a flight-search result card for United, EWR ⇄ MTJ, and it shows two things worth knowing:
⚠️ Read that carefully before anyone gets excited. The screenshot is cropped and does not show which dates were searched, and it was taken on 2 August — four weeks before the winter 26/27 schedule was published on 31 August. So it is not evidence that a nonstop exists on 3 or 7 February, and it is not a quote for our dates. What it is: hard evidence that a direct MTJ→EWR return was being sold on this route, which makes the 30-second nonstop check on united.com worth doing rather than skipping. We are not claiming to know why the nonstop did or did not appear on the exact-date check. Nobody has run that check for 3 / 7 Feb yet.
Also seen 8 Sept 2026: united.com's own month view advertises New York → Montrose from $359 round trip for Feb 2027. Treat that as a marketing lead-in price for the cheapest single seat in the whole month — not a fare for our dates and definitely not for ten seats together. Unverified for 3–7 Feb. No live date-by-date quote has been pulled from here.
Costs you a ~03:30 wake-up. Buys you a layover nothing short of a cancellation can break.
Lands at the house at the same time as Option A. The whole trade is 2 hours of sleep against a layover with no slack in it.
⚠️ 19:05 is near the last DEN→MTJ of the day (~19:32). A misconnect here means an unplanned Denver overnight — for ten people.
There is no onward flight to Montrose. You'd be sleeping in Denver and losing the Thursday morning.
Anything under about 1h15 in February is a bad bet — de-icing queues, ground stops, and ten sets of checked skis to re-tag. The one mitigant: United is entirely on Concourse B at DEN, so it's a same-concourse connection. The walk isn't the risk. The bags are.
Lifts open 09:00, so this is a genuine half-day on the mountain — and it only works because the house is ski-in/ski-out. No transfer into town, no wasted hour.
Home earlier, but you'd be leaving the house in the dark and skiing nothing on day four. Hard to justify.
Maximum mountain time. Rough on anyone who works Monday.
These are figures from 8 September 2026 and earlier, not live prices. One was observed on screen; the rest were planning estimates. No live date-by-date fare for 3–7 February 2027 was ever pulled, and the fare Ed actually paid is not recorded here. Treat the whole block as history — if you still need seats, get your own quote.
🗂️ $750pp was the planning number used before anyone booked — kept for the record, not as a quote. The $670 was a genuine on-screen price for this route, but it was a single seat on unknown dates, discounted from $695, and it is now months old. February peak and a ten-seat block both push the number up.
75-minute drive. Good news on timing: Feb 3–7 falls outside every one of Telluride Express's 25% peak-surcharge windows (Dec 20–Jan 5, Jan 15–19, Feb 12–16). We're paying standard rates.
One 10-passenger van will not swallow 10 adults plus 10 ski bags, 10 boot bags and 10 duffels. Book the 14-pax, or a 10-pax van plus an SUV for gear. Confirm luggage capacity in writing when you book — this is the single most common way this goes wrong.
It's the same money as the shared shuttle and categorically better — door to door, it waits for your flight, no strangers, no timetable. For a group of ten arriving together on one flight, this is not a close call.
Whoever you call: get the luggage capacity confirmed in the booking email.
The house is booked and Ed’s flights are booked. What’s still open: the house balance by ~5 Dec 2026, the ground transfer from Montrose, and your own flights, if you haven’t booked them. The flight material on this page is reference only.
Only relevant to anyone who hasn’t booked yet — how Ed booked his isn’t recorded. Ten-plus paying passengers qualifies, and it suits a part-booked group: you can hold a seat block at a fixed fare with a ~$50–200pp deposit, submit names as late as 72 hours before departure, and there’s usually at least one free name change.
⚠️ Third-party sources list the desk as +1-833-894-5333 — verify that number on united.com rather than trusting it from a blog.
These are the terms now running on the confirmed Two Trails booking (Exceptional Stays).
| What | Terms |
|---|---|
| Paid at booking | 50% of rent + tax |
| Balance due | By ~Dec 5, 2026 (60 days before the Feb 3 arrival) |
| Cancellation, before ~Dec 5, 2026 | Refund minus the first night |
| Cancellation, inside 60 days | ❌ No refund |
| Payment method | Max $5,000 on credit card; balance by wire / e-payment / check |
| Security | Damage insurance (up to $10K) in lieu of deposit, or a $3K–$10K hold |
➡️ Per person at 10: ~$1,017 down, ~$1,016 on the balance. The ~Dec 5 date is now the balance deadline, not a decision deadline — the decision is made.
Ten houses were on the table before Two Trails got booked. Kept here for the record — and for whoever organises 2028.
Per-person figures assume 10 guys. Prices as researched at the time. BOOKED VALUE LUXE HEADS-UP
| House | Total | /person | Ski access | The take |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6BR Mountain Village — |
$11,235 | $1,124 | ✅ 8min to gondola | Cheapest. Dated, weak seating area. |
| Slopeside Villa — |
$13,215 | — | ✅ ski-in | SLEEPS 9Good reviews, but too tight for 10. |
| Spacious Cabin InvitedHome |
$14,322 | $1,432 | ✅ 10min to gondola | Good value & living space; tight kitchen. |
| Gold Hill Exceptional Stays |
$14,786 | $1,479 | ✅ (AWD req.) | VALUEBest value w/ real bedrooms. 7,400sqft — "needs TLC." |
| Stone & Timber Exceptional Stays |
$16,000 | $1,600 | 150yd walk | VALUEPool table, media room, good views. |
| San Sophia Manor Exceptional / Executive Stays |
$17,000 | $1,700 | ❌ not ski-in/out | LUXEGolf simulator! But you have to shuttle to lifts. |
| On the Run at Castellina Exceptional Stays |
$17,500 | $1,750 | ✅ right on the run | Solid all-rounder, 5,000sqft. Good kitchen/living. |
| Grandview Chateau at the Lorian InvitedHome |
$20,204 | $2,020 | Walkable to lifts | Most bedrooms + best kitchen/living. Pool table. Walk (not true ski-in/out). |
| Two Trails Exceptional Stays |
$20,333 | $2,033 | ✅ Sundance run | ✅ BOOKEDSauna + steam room, pool table, 6,300sqft. The "go big" house. |
| Bear Paw Manor Exceptional Stays |
$21,726 | $2,173 | ✅ ski-in/out | Priciest. Games room (pool/foosball/air hockey) + central oxygen, 7,000sqft. |
↔️ Swipe the table sideways on a phone.
💡 Peter's note from the search: houses with >6 bedrooms are rare — bunk mattresses can be moved and doubling-up is fine (Chris Ford shared a room last year, no problem). So 6BR houses comfortably fit the crew.
"You know my motto. Go big or go home." 👍
"My favorite house is Two Trails — fits perfect under the 'go big' motto."
"San Sophia Manor is next-level luxury (golf simulator!!). But not ski-in / ski-out."
"That's what she said." ❤️
Two Trails it is. 🎿
Flight and transfer research carried out 1 August 2026. Flights re-checked 1 September 2026 (155 days before departure) against the now-published Colorado Flights Alliance / Montrose Regional Airport winter 2026/27 non-stop schedule. Fares and the nonstop question revisited 8 September 2026 (22 days before the booking deadline), adding the one real observed fare we have. Seasonal schedules are what an airline has filed, not seats it has confirmed for a given date, and they still move: price the exact dates before you commit ten people. Updated 2 October 2026: the house and Ed’s flights are booked, so the flight research above is kept as history for anyone still booking — no fresh fare check was run for this update.