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For the last 80-some years, Winter Park Resort has made a name for itself as Denver’s slopes. Literally. The ski area came to life as a mountain respite for city dwellers back in the 1930s and was operated by the city of Denver until 2002 when it was sold to private investors. In that time, the ski area located about 65 miles from downtown Denver grew from a couple of trails served by a single J-Bar in the early 1940s—lift tickets cost $1 back then—to its current 3,081 skiable acres spread across seven distinct territories served by 28 lifts.
In 2017, Alterra Mountain Company bought the resort and wasted no time infusing money into the place. For the 2018-’19 season, Alterra swapped out the main village’s Zephyr Mountain Express chair for a 10-person gondola, greatly increasing lift capacity and easing congestion out of the base village.
When the resort unveiled its Winter Park Unlocked master plan in 2022, it felt massive and exciting, yet so far off that it was hard to visualize the end product. It included big-ticket items such as a 700-acres Vasquez Ridge terrain expansion, a gondola connecting downtown Winter Park to the slopes, and myriad base village upgrades, including hotels and condos.
Earlier this month, the vision took one big step closer to reality when the town council greenlighted the expansion proposal, with construction beginning next year. We walk you through the various components below.
Terrain Expansion
A major expansion includes a new area on Vasquez Mountain, increasing skiable terrain by 358 to 3,439 acres. This expansion will position Winter Park as the third-largest ski area in Colorado, following Vail and Steamboat. The plan also introduces several new chairlifts, such as a t-bar providing access to the Cirque from the new Vasquez area and additional chairs in the new area. The resort plans to replace the aging Looking Glass, Pony, and Iron Horse lifts with modern six-pack chairs and an eight-person gondola. The ultimate goal is to increase skier capacity by over 40 percent.
The resort will also up its snowmaking to cover 605 acres from the current 280, as well as improve the learning areas by making them easier to access. They’ll also add a new day lodge so beginners will have a home base closer to the slopes.
As for on-mountain amenities across the rest of the resort, The Sunspot and Snoasis day lodges are slated for upgrades under the plan, and a new restaurant is slated for the 9,500-foot summit of the Wild Spur chairlift.
Base Village Improvements
Gussying up the Village at Winter Park is still a big part of the master plan, and it aims to do everything from improve resort access to provide more amenities to get skiers to stick around for longer. The base area will be rezoned as a “Destination Center” district, which will set the stage for an additional 2,950 residential units, additional hotel beds, and 250,000 square feet of retails space for restaurants, bars, and other skier amenities.
In addition to bringing more services into the village, the goal is to creating distinct neighborhoods within the village, each with its own individual sense of place and make it easier for pedestrians to navigate the resort. The goal is to make the Fraser River and other natural landscapes the focal point of the ski area, bringing conservation efforts to the fore in the process.
Town and Regional Connectivity
The third initiative is to create more continuity between the resort and the town of Winter Park, a few miles down the road. The focal point of this plan is a town gondola ferrying skiers from the town up to the mountain’s Discovery Park learning area, then down to the Village at Winter Park base area.
Under the approved plan, the resort will work to form the Regional Infrastructure Cooperation Agreement (RICA), bringing together the town, Alterra Mountain Company, and other regional metropolitan districts coordinate the construction of the aerial transit system, with Alterra bringing the funding to the table. The 10-person gondola will span almost two miles and will originate in Cooper Square Park in downtown Winter Park.
Increased passenger rail from Denver’s Union Station to Winter Park, and eventually onto Steamboat in northern Colorado, is also part of the equation.
Construction on the town gondola is expected to begin in the summer of 2026. For more information, including maps and renderings depicting the resort’s upgrades, visit the Winter Park Unlocked website.