

The fuss-free, eight-room Mammoth Inn, located downtown and recently renovated, is decidedly not. The Mammoth Inn (Photo: Courtesy Mammoth Inn) Mammoth Lakes, Californiaīed-and-breakfasts can sometimes feel pretentious.
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Regular hotel rooms start at $204 a night, but if you don’t mind sharing your space, you can get a bunk starting at $70, and that includes a free breakfast spread of pancakes and eggs Benedict, as well as mulled wine at après-ski.

They like to keep lodging affordable, just like it used to be. Ralph isn’t with us anymore, but his family still runs the place, and his wife, Marian, shows up each day for breakfast. You can’t beat the location: it’s less than two blocks from the gondola at Aspen Mountain. This European-style hotel has been around since 1954, shortly after a skier named Ralph Melville moved to town and bought a plot of land on the corner of Mill Street and Durant Avenue for $2,000 in 1953. The Mountain Chalet is like stepping back in time to old-school Aspen, before Gucci and Prada set up shop. What if we told you all of that was possible on a budget? Yep, you can stay a short jaunt from the lifts at world-class resorts for less than $150 a night, and you don’t even have to sleep on a couch. Throw in a free hot breakfast and a place to stash your gear overnight and you’re one happy guest. And perhaps you’d prefer if that bed is closish to the hill, since that’s what you came to ski after all. After all, ski bums have existed for generations by sleeping on friends’ couches or in cars parked in the base-area lot. Ski trips don’t have to drain your bank account.
