Why does the golf course two minutes from your driveway stay open a month after every other course up-valley has already put the flags away for winter?
It's a fair question if you live in Singletree, because the answer isn't really about golf. It's about where the neighborhood sits. Singletree occupies the sun-facing, lower-elevation shelf of the Eagle River valley, and that one fact quietly explains more about daily life here than any amenity list ever could. This past August it also explained why 84 of the state's best amateur golfers spent four rounds on the Sonnenalp Golf Club course instead of somewhere along the Front Range, where most of Colorado's golfers actually live.
Three Times in Forty Years
The Colorado Golf Association Amateur Championship almost never leaves the Front Range corridor, simply because that's where the state's population sits. In the last fifty years, the tournament has ventured to western Colorado only five times, and Sonnenalp Golf Club in Edwards has now hosted it three of those times: 1985, 2017, and this August. The field for the 72-hole event ran 84 players deep, with the top 40 and ties after 36 holes advancing to the final two rounds.
Only two courses west of the Continental Divide have hosted the CGA Amateur in the last fifty years. One of them is in your neighborhood.
That's not a small thing for a course that started life as the Singletree Golf Course before the Faessler family bought it in 1987 and folded it into the Sonnenalp brand. The course opened in 1980, designed by Jay Morrish and Bob Cupp, and it has carried Colorado Open Championships and a USGA Junior Amateur before this summer's return to the state amateur stage. When a tournament committee has its pick of courses and keeps coming back to the same one in the same down-valley neighborhood, that's a signal worth reading.
What the Sun Actually Buys You
Here's the mechanism behind all of it. Singletree sits lower and sunnier than its neighbors up toward Vail and Beaver Creek, and that combination gives the Sonnenalp course one of the longest golf seasons in the region, typically stretching from early April through late October. That's not a marketing phrase. It's a function of elevation and exposure, and it's why a tournament committee scheduling a 72-hole event in August can trust the greens and fairways to be in form weeks before and after courses at higher elevation would even consider it.
If you've lived in Singletree through a full year, you already feel this without needing the golf calendar to prove it. Snow melts off your driveway before it clears in Beaver Creek. Your south-facing slopes green up earlier in spring. The neighborhood's own nickname, the Sunbelt of the Valley, isn't just a real estate flourish. It's a description locals use because it holds up against the thermometer.
Trails That Skip the Mud Season
The same exposure that extends the golf season shapes the hiking here too, and it's worth knowing the specific trails rather than treating them as a generic amenity.
- Mesquite Trail climbs moderately from a trailhead at the end of Mesquite Drive, with views south into the Lake Creek Valley and north across BLM land. It's a high desert trail, closer in feel to sagebrush country than to the aspen-and-spruce trails you'd find in Vail proper.
- Knob Hill Trail starts on the east side of Winslow Road above the Sonnenalp clubhouse and connects into the upper June Creek Trail, eventually reaching the ridge and national forest land. It closes seasonally from December 15 through April 30, which is standard for terrain that sees winter wildlife use.
- Singletree Avon Connector Trail links the neighborhood to Avon at Nottingham Road, rolling along south-facing slopes that stay hikeable and bikeable most of the year. The trailhead sits on June Creek Road, and there's no parking there, so most residents access it on foot or by bike rather than driving in.
None of these trails are dramatic alpine scrambles. That's the point. They're the kind of trails you can walk out your door and use on a Tuesday evening in a way that a resort's showcase trailhead never quite works for daily life.
The Clubhouse Everyone Can Walk Into
Golf membership at Sonnenalp is separate from what the club actually offers the neighborhood day to day, and Harvest Restaurant & Bar is the clearest example. It sits inside the club at 1265 Berry Creek Road, open daily from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. for lunch and dinner, with a menu built by Executive Chef Rosa Provoste that leans on international technique applied to comfort food. The deck looks out over the golf course toward Vail Mountain's Game Creek Bowl on one side and Arrowhead Ski Area on the other, which means the same sun exposure that stretches the golf season also stretches the outdoor dining season on that patio.
You don't need a tee time to eat there. That distinction matters in a neighborhood where the golf club is also, functionally, the closest thing Singletree has to a town square.
What This Adds Up To
None of this is a coincidence stacked on top of another coincidence. The lower elevation and south-facing exposure that let Sonnenalp open in April and close in late October are the same conditions that dried out the Knob Hill and Connector trails weeks before their equivalents higher up the valley, and the same conditions a state golf association has now trusted three separate times across four decades. Singletree isn't marketed as a ski-in neighborhood, and it never will be. What it actually offers is a longer window on every side of the ski season, which is a different kind of value entirely, and one that shows up in how long your golf clubs stay in the trunk rather than the garage.
If you're weighing what a longer shoulder season is worth to your own address in Singletree, or you're curious how the neighborhood's sun-facing position has shaped values on streets near the Sonnenalp course versus those farther from it, Denton Advisory Group has been tracking Vail Valley micro-markets across four decades and can walk you through what the data shows for your specific street.
