A major snowstorm hit Colorado before Halloween, delighting ski resorts with some of the earliest significant snowfall in years.

If seeing the winter storm on newscasts and websites made skiers decide to bite the money bullet and head west this winter, Ari Stiller-Shulman, a spokesman for Colorado Ski Country, said they could find plenty of deals.

Lift tickets are the biggest expense after lodging, so the 22 ski areas that are part of Colorado Ski Country (coloradoski.com) offer season packages combining different resorts. A pass that provides unlimited skiing at Winter Park and Copper Mountain, for example, runs $399 for adults. That's a great deal for a skier or rider who will be on the slopes more than five or six days; a three-day regular lift ticket costs $222.

Most Midwesterners, though, will be better off looking for the advance ticket purchases that all resorts offer or checking with friends who live in Colorado and may have access to special deals for residents. Most resorts offer cheaper lift tickets if they're booked at least 48 hours before they are used. Even the most last-minute of vacationers can usually accommodate that.

During a quick visit to Copper Mountain last spring, my sister and I found a buy-one, get-one lift ticket by buying 10 gallons of gas at the right service station.

While many visitors stick to the big-name resorts like Copper, Aspen or Winter Park, Stiller-Shulman said the nine ski areas called the Colorado Gems are worth investigating. They are smaller resorts with just as much terrain and snow but fewer frills.

"There's great skiing and riding, but it's easier to keep track of your group," he said. While these resorts might not offer sleigh rides or tubing parks, what they do have makes up for it: Cheaper lift tickets, shorter lift lines and smaller crowds. The Gems consist of A-Basin, Echo Mountain, Eldora, Loveland, Monarch, Powderhorn, Ski Cooper, Sol Vista and Sunlight.

This year, a new Gems discount card that sells for $10 can get skiers huge discounts and free lift tickets at those nine areas, with certain restrictions.

All the resorts offer lift tickets online, and buying them that way can save a family several hundred dollars. Another option is to see who's hanging around the ticket windows. Sometimes, a skier bites off more than he can chew and will sell the last day of a three-day lift ticket at a deep discount, wanting to just get back something. Just be sure to check the valid dates of the ticket before agreeing to these informal sales.

The worst deal a skier will find is walking up to the ticket windows to buy lift tickets. "No one wants to walk up to the window to buy their tickets without some kind of a deal already in hand," Stiller-Shulman said.