Arapahoe Basin is the closest thing the Front Range has to Aspen Mountain. Ajax, of course, is one of the most highly rated ski areas in the country. The celebrity factor is considerable, but the skiing really is outstanding. Arapahoe Basin has many key similarities: both areas are fairly small (less than 1,000 acres apiece), both have plenty of steep terrain (Ajax has no beginner runs, A-Basin has about four), and they're both crammed with interesting nooks and crannies.
I skied there today with a friend who was on the ski patrol there for about 5 or 6 years. He's a great skier and obviously knows his way around the mountain. I've skied there for over 30 years now, and we still found a couple places I'd never been before. The last run of the day, we dipped through the gate to North Glades and kept going straight into the trees instead of banking right into the Glade runs themselves. A few turns through the trees brought us under the Pali lift line. Then it was back into the trees for steeper, tighter turns. The snow was great and most (but not all) of the rocks and stumps were covered. There had been some traffic through these trees, and as a result, lots of the trees had troughs around them for making turns. It was just like a toboggan run, just put your skis in the slot and swoop around the tree (and hope there's not a big rock in the middle).
We did another run neither of us had done for years that was in similar condition. The Third Alley was prime, with soft snow, primo bumps, and toboggan troughs around the trees, where the run turned into more of a glade. My Chute was another seldom-skied run that we did that also had great snow, a great pitch, and great bumps.
The amount of acreage doesn't hold a candle to places like Vail, but the pitch is the thing. Turning over those bumps is like jumping out of an airplane, a second or two of weightlessness, then zoom, around the bottom of the bump and up over the next one. Like Ajax, all the little hidden slots, glades, and chutes keep you coming back for more, even if you don't see any celebrities on the mountain.