If you’re a fan of baseball, you’ve likely heard of the 9-9-9 challenge. It’s a test of endurance and strength, asking you to eat 9 hot dogs and drink 9 beers through 9 innings of baseball (recently some MLB stadiums have introduced official stadium versions, but those feature tiny hot dogs and 9 small glasses that add up to a total of 1 single beer, all for around $65. It’s overpriced and absolutely does not count as actually completing the challenge).
A separate form of the 9-9-9 challenge has emerged from the mountain-loving atmosphere of Colorado. With Coors Field located just around an hour from the closest ski area, the Colorado 9-9-9 asks participants to ski 9 runs, play 9 holes of golf, and watch 9 innings of baseball, all in a single day. If you’re the type of person who’d like to try this out, know that you’ve got 3 days left this ski season where it can be accomplished.
Both Copper Mountain and Arapahoe Basin are open every day until May 3rd, but between today (April 29th) and their closing date, the Colorado Rockies only have 3 home games. This Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, the Rockies play the Atlanta Braves at home, with the Friday and Saturday games both starting after 6pm.
If you want to accomplish this challenge for yourself, your first stop is finding a tee time. There are plenty of golf courses around the city of Denver where you can get 9 holes in, including several Par 3 courses that can easily be completed in under an hour (the jury is out on whether a Par 3 counts to the challenge). The average person plays 9 holes of golf in around 1.5 to 2.5 hours, so booking a tee time at least 3.5 hours before the start of the baseball game probably gives you enough time. Remember: if you miss a single inning of the game, you didn’t complete the challenge, so the more space you’ve got to get to the stadium, the better.
If you pick the right mountain and get to the ski resort at opening, completing 9 runs before 12pm shouldn’t be too difficult. Just lap the same trail and the same lift, running the singles line if the lift line is too long. Then hightail it back to the city in time to hit some golf balls.
Sunday’s Rockies game makes things a bit more complicated, but it’s still theoretically possible. The game starts at 1:10pm, so you should be able to get 9 ski runs in before the game. With the introduction of the pitch clock, MLB games have dropped dramatically in length, taking less than 2 hours and 40 minutes on average in 2025. So if you could get your hands on a 5pm tee time and can crank out 9 holes before the course closes, you could probably complete the challenge.
That’s probably just about all the information you need to get the challenge completed. Tee times for Denver’s municipal golf courses are available here, while tickets for the Colorado Rockies games can be purchased here. Do you have what it takes to complete the Colorado 9-9-9?
