Beaver Creek opened for the season on Wednesday with snow, sunshine and warm chocolate chip cookies.
Each year the Beav' lives up to their slogan "not exactly roughing it" by handing out warm, delicious chocolate chip cookies at the end of every ski day. For the past eight years Beaver Creek has held their annual Chocolate Chip Cookie Competition to kick off the season.
This year's winner, Shannon Bostrom from Georgetown, Colo., was one of 106 entries. In early October chocolate chip cookies start flooding into Beaver Creek when the preliminary round began. Of all those entries, five finalists were chosen. Each of the five finalists prepared 1,000 cookies to hand out for public judging on Beaver Creek's opening day.
"We usually get over a hundred entries and they come from all over the country," said Cat Coughran, Director of Events and Sponsorship for the Beaver Creek Resort Company. "Then we get employees from all the departments throughout the resort to come and taste the cookies and rate them based on appearance, texture, taste and ease of reproduction."
After those 106 entries are narrowed down to five finalists, the public is invited to come and taste the cookies and vote for their favorite. The plaza at Beaver Creek was flooded with cookie tasters on Wednesday afternoon and all 5,000 cookies were devoured in about a half hour.
"When I made the dozen cookies to hand in for the preliminary, it was the first time I had ever tried this recipe," said Shannon Bostrom, Cookie Competition 2011 Champion. "It's crazy to win, I've never won anything before."
The winner received $1,000, the runner-up $500 and third place took home $250.
As if you didn't have enough reasons to come ski Beaver Creek this year, now you have one more; delicious chocolate chip cookies.
-- Larisa Graham