Next, I suggest you find accommodations in the quaint alpine village at Beaver Creek Resort and take a spin around Beaver Creek Golf Club. This Robert Trent Jones Jr. design showcases the namesake creek, expansive views of area ski slopes and slender (bordering on anorexic) fairways. The par-4 14th is a typically skinny swath of grass between groves of aspens, with a picturesque old cabin as a backdrop.

Beaver Creek is not so severe a test that you can’t ably tackle the newish and sparsely sublime Arnold Palmer Signature track at Eagle Ranch the same day. Nearly treeless and relatively flat (“mountain golf at its level best,” quippeth the King), the course is framed by tall native grasses and seemingly afloat in water hazards where it’s not adrift in sand. It rarely offers a flat lie, thus earning its lusty 141 slope.

If you’re looking for a top-shelf stay-and-play spot, you can’t beat the quiet, European-style Lodge & Spa at Cordillera and its four acclaimed courses. The hypoxic Jack Nicklaus Summit Course was built at such high altitude (9,000 feet), it doesn’t even open for the season until mid-June. This beauty is big, playable and grandly over-reaching, ranging from gape-mouthed, ridge-topping rippers (the par-5 eighth) to gulch-hugging downhill prayers (No. 12, a par-4). The requisite forecaddie is a dire necessity—mine was a 6-handicap local kid who saved me a dozen strokes.

After this mountain experience, give yourself a breather and bat a few balls around the Dave Pelz Short Course. Then try Hale Irwin’s Mountain Course the next day. This rollicking, 141-slope test left me muttering about my ride but still grateful for the trip. The perfect greens are windshield fast and every hole is smart and pretty, including a brutal-but-scenic downhill cascade through a forest at the third, and a big carry over wetland willows to a blind landing at No. 11. And so it goes throughout, beauty and pain alternating like an expensive catechism.

You can mull this lesson on the drive to Keystone Resort for your last two nights. Here, the Ranch Course’s links-style front is highlighted by the third, fourth and fifth turning out across a broad meadow framed by the big peaks of aptly named Summit County. A beautiful abandoned homestead makes No. 5 feel like it runs through a ghost town. The back nine arcs gracefully across pine-laden hillsides and valleys, closing with a short par-5 beside a long lake.

The River Course, centered around the bustling Snake River and laced through thick woods, is the resort’s showier layout. It starts with a skyscraping drive on the “oh, wow” first, where your tee shot plunges 100 feet to a roomy fairway bounded by sand and trees and backed by the Continental Divide. Another monster drop, this one some 200 feet, comes at the popular par-4 16th hole.

Keystone guests should also consider a high-mountain horseback ride, followed by loin of high-country venison and green-chile polenta at the AAA Four Diamond-rated Keystone Ranch restaurant. Sure, it’s a full schedule. But here in the Vail Valley, it’s the only way—there’s simply too much you don’t want to miss.