This Season’s Colorado Ski Resort Upgrades
Besides helping you save loads of cash during your winter vacations, one of our favorite activities here is to provide you with all of the news about ski resort upgrades happening each season. This year, Colorado leads the pack with the latest in ski tech, as well as on-mountain improvements to elevate your ski experience. Here are just some of the enhancements that will meet you at your favorite Colorado ski destinations tin 2015-2016.
Beaver Creek has added more fully-automated fan guns to its snowmaking power to ensure idyllic and smooth snow conditions. This season, 23 guns were installed over Beaver Creek’s two most popular intermediate trails, Centennial and Red Tail. This follows the installation of 24 guns installed last season on their Gold Dust trail, in addition to the guns added to touch up groomed trails throughout the resort.
Breckenridge’s increased snowmaking capability on its lower-mountain terrain on Lost Horizon and Barton Breezeway trails on Peak 6 will allow for smoother early season conditions. Additionally, Breckenridge widened trail to double the width of the Monte Cristo run that connects Peak 6 to Peak 7, to improve on skier and rider experience by funneling skiers back to the base areas.
Keystone is vested in their snowmaking system, and has spent nearly $2M on maintenance and upgrades to its snowmaking system. Skiers will be pleased with the Keystone Lodge and Spa remodel with new carpet in the hallways, new woodwork and doors, as well as new pillows and linens in the guest rooms.
Loveland Ski Area has re-aligned its main chairlift, Chair 2 at the base. The original chairlift will be shortened to drop riders off at the base of Chair 6, and the newer upper section – Ptarmigan Lift – will serve the Bennett’s Bowl and Ptarmigan Roost areas.
Purgatory has replaced its original Legends Lift 8 with a high-speed detachable quad on the backside of the resort. The new high-speed chair will cover a 1,500 foot vertical rise in five minutes, providing a much faster ride time to the summit, along with easier loading and unloading. Two additional advanced trails have been added to the west of the new quad. In conjunction with the new lift and trail installations, the unloading area at the top of Lift 8 was widened, and the mid-way loading area of Lift 8 was removed, creating a faster non-stop ride to the top. Lastly, snowmaking equipment was installed at the bottom of the lift, providing better coverage and more consistency at the bottom terminal.
Sunlight has remodeled its restaurants by upgrading the kitchen with new appliances, adding the ability to enjoy made-to-order food from the bar area. They are also expanding their retail shop. In addition, Sunlight has given more power to its chairlifts, for a smoother ride to the top.
Steamboat’s popular breakfast and lunch takeout restaurant in the base area, has added more space to order and go, as well as to eat in. The Four Points Lodge will expand its kitchen in order to serve more customers at once. The Rendezvous Lodge will receive be upgraded with a new exterior, along with some interior touch-ups.Steamboat will allow its frequent guests to bypass the ticket window line by incorporating RFID technology into the QuickTrax card, the primary lift ticket and multi-day or season pass product. The pass is a first for Steamboat, and can be reloaded online or by phone. Guest will also have the option to use the new Resort Charge technology, which allows guests to make purchases at any resort operated restaurant, rental and retail location, ski and ride school, and more with their QuickTrax or pass, eliminating the need to carry cash or a credit card while they enjoy the mountain.
Telluride riders will rejoice over the new custom-made features at the resort’s largest terrain park, Hoot Brown, along with new tower mounts for snowmaking within the park. Telluride has updated its snowcat fleet with the addition of a new PistenBully 600 snowcat for more efficient and snowmaking throughout the resort.
Vail replaced its primary frontside lift with a new, high-speed, six-passenger chair that will reduce wait times by up to 30%, and improve reliability. Vail will also debut EpicMix Time upgrade to its app this season, which calculates and provides real-time liftline wait times to users. This new technology will be available across 55 lifts and gondolas at Vail, as well as Beaver Creek, Breckenridge and Keystone.
Winter Park has also installed RFID technology and Resort Charge into its lift tickets and pass products using the QuickTrax card. RFID installation at Winter Park includes the Zephyr Express, Arrow, Gemini Express, Challenger and Super Gauge Express chairlifts.
Which one of these improvements do you most look forward to enjoying when you ski Colorado this year?