Colorado Winter Park Town Gondola?

[Chris Walker]

For years and years I have heard that the powers that be at Winter Park were once planning to build a gondola to connect the resort with the town like they have in Telluride. I gather that in 2007 the plan was getting close to fruition, including even clearing some trees for the gondola right-of-way, and purchasing some land in the town to house the bottom terminal. I hear that the plan also included a lot of real estate development in the Vasquez Ridge area of the resort, but then the crash of 2008 happened and the entire plan was mothballed.

I found this document on line which discusses the gondola plan in some detail starting on page 79:
http://www.wpgov.com/DocumentCenter/Home/View/127

Interestingly, looking at the route plan diagram on page 90, it also looks like there was a plan to cut some new trails and it appears there are 3 or 4 lifts sketched in that don't exist today. Including one that possibly accessed the Cirque from the opposite side as the access today (the diagram cuts off so it's not clear where exactly this potential lift was imagined to go).

Does anybody know if the project was permanently scuttled or if there is any possibility of it being revived? Or if any of the other expansion plans are still on the table?

This fuzzy diagram shows the potential gondola route in red, and most of the thin black lines represent existing lifts, but a few (and some trails) are in places where there are none today.

 

[pete]

interesting ...

I really like WP from several perspectives, one being I can Amtrak it overnight on a near perfect sched ... 6pm out and arriving in WP at 10am and then back home leaving WP at 4 pm ...

Downtown add would be great, pricing today is reasonable in comparison and I presume the town could see a nice boom. I can see the long term benefits but too those not wishing to cost the village (ski base) possibly a big hit on valuation.

on alternate note .. trails, since I'd lose this figured to toss a link here:

http://www.frasercolorado.com/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=852

 

[Chris Walker]

Yeah that's a pretty good point. The document talks a lot about positive effects on the town of Winter Park, but not much about the negative impacts on the Village. If I'm not mistaken, there's been quite a bit of development at the Village since that plan was written, so maybe they just decided a third base area wasn't needed after all. I haven't found much newer information on line.

Now that DIA is linked to Denver Union Station by rail, I was thinking more people might be looking at the Amtrack option (fly in to Denver and all the way to WP by train instead of shuttle or rental car). Seems like if you're staying in Fraser or the town of Winter Park that would be a viable option and having this gondola would make shuttling to the resort and back less complicated. But I haven't heard anything lately about the gondola being built.

Thanks for posting the trail link. That's really cool to see.

 

[pete]

ran across this YouTube vid from 2010, says it's the line o sight of the proposed Gondola ...

Vid's ok but with Grateful Dead background ... how can it not be?

 

[Chris Walker]

Yeah, actually it was that very video that got me curious about the planned route for the gondola in the first place. After too much wasted time comparing Google Earth images with the diagram posted above, I'm still not sure exactly where the video was made.