NEWS
ASPEN: A new $10 million base facility at Buttermilk ski area, one of the four ski areas run by Aspen Snowmass, will include a new children’s centre as well as ski school offices and a rentals outlet. The area is also getting enhanced snowmaking. The new facility is due to open for the 2015-16 ski season.
BRECKENRIDGE: The Colorado Super Chair is being upgraded from a high speed quad to a high speed six-passenger lift.
The new chair on Peak 8 will provide a faster route from Peaks 6 and 7 to Peak 9, where an entire interior remodel of the existing Peak 9 restaurant, along with a new kitchen will also take place this summer ready for winter 14/15.
ARAPAHOE BASIN: A new three-story Kids Centre will provide younger skiers and snowboard customers with a place to meet their instructors, rent their equipment and eat lunch. There will also be a new first aid room plus expanded office spaces for Ski Patrol.
This in turn means shorter lines for adult rentals in the Winter Sports Building, and a more streamlined process for kids’ lesson and program check-in.
TAOS: Skiers and boarders will be able to get a lift into the Kachina Peak area of the New Mexico resort for the first time next season. Visitors previously had to hike in.
The new triple chair will be one of the highest chairlifts in North America and one of the 10 highest accessing ski slopes in the world. It will increase the mountain’s advanced and expert lift-service terrain by 50 %.
VERMONT: A $200 million development plan at Okemo ski resort will see the creation of a new ‘South Face Village’ which will include two new ski lifts, seven new ski runs and homes for a new residential community which should grow over the next 10 years to around 500 people. Work will begin this summer and if all goes according to plan the lifts will be operational next season.
America
A gem of a road trip
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You are never too old to hit the highway for a tour of some of Colorado’s ‘ma and pa’ ski areas says editor FRANK BALDWIN
Having a whole run to yourself is fairly rare unless you go at the very start or the very end of a season but I have found not just one ski area but a whole group of them where you are almost guaranteed this sensation. They are called the Colorado Gems.
Boarder crossing
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Alta is one of three American resorts that continue to ban snowboarders from their slopes. But the Utah ski area is now facing a lawsuit that could force it to overturn the ban
When the neighbouring Utah ski areas of Alta and Snowbird in the Wasatch Mountains decided to link together on one lift pass in 2002 there was a slight problem to resolve.