I got back on Sunday from four days of skiing with my father at the huge Colorado Resorts in the rockies, you might be wondering why I’d be talking about skiing on my website dedicated to public transit. The reason is two fold, firstly the High Mountain Colorado Counties offer an interesting quandary and nightmare in public transit options. Me and my Dad did have to rent a car, not to help us get around Eagle and Summit Counties themselves but to reach the places in the first place. Both counties have excellent public transit options within them: EcoTransit and Summit Stage (this service is completely free throughout Summit County), they only connect in Leadville (not along I-70) but that connection would require an overnight stay. Reaching the counties by public transit is non-existent, the only options are Greyhound and expensive Airport Shuttle Services. I’m currently writing my senior thesis partially on this very topic: Assessing the Environmental Impacts of I-70 Intermountain Corridor Expansion and during my research I made this diagram of all the transit options in the corridor, only some portions are served by public transit companies:
The map doesn’t show (since none are within the actual I-70 corridor) the additional free shuttles of the major ski resort towns in Summit County of Breckenridge, Copper Mountain, and Keystone (none really operate within the I-70 corridor like Vail’s and Avons). The second reason is if ski lifts particularly gondolas could be a practical form of urban transit.
In terms of the transit I road for the first two nights we were staying at the Holiday Inn at West Vail which operated its own shuttle van into Vail Village, we could also take Vail Transit’s (a Free Servive) West Vail Green Loop into the village and Red Loop away from the village (the two buses followed the same loop just in different directions). The first night we took the Holiday Inn Shuttle into town and back for dinner, almost taking the Green Loop back except the shuttle (picture any hotel shuttle at an airport except this one had less luggage space and a ski rack attached to its rear bumper) came as we were waiting for to return. The next day (last Thursday) we went skiing on a day with no lift lines and ten inches of powder, I-70 was closed for part of the day, it was snowing all day and took the shuttle round-trip. On the trip back the shuttle was so full (with the driver breaking the law since people were standing in front of the white line) and the ski rack so full that the weight of all the skis pulled the rear bumper off the cutaway-van. On Friday morning we took the shuttle back into town (with its bumper still broken) for a more crowded day of skiing and on the way back finally the Vail Transit bus came first, we put our skis on the ski rack on the side of the bus and took it back to the hotel and drove to our next destination Dillon in Summit County. One moment I watched both afternoons, waiting at the Vail Transportation Center for the hotel shuttle or the bus back from a day of skiing, was the contrast of tourists in ski apparel waiting for the town’s shuttles while the staff that runs the village (most of whom could could never afford to live there, many were hispanic) waited to take EcoTransit and go home to where they lived in other parts of Eagle County, a huge crowd of them I also watched get on the twice a day Leadville Bus.
For our first day staying in Dillon we took the free Summit Stage to get to the immensely crowded (it was the Saturday of Presidents Day Weekend) and too warm Keystone Ski Resort. The day was a bit frustrating since we spent a lot of it dodging other people and in lift lines. Summit Stage required us to bring our skis onto the bus and was about 50-50 skiers and locals. The way there at eight in the morning was fairly empty, the way back at three thirty was quite full especially because the bus driver stopped not in a stop for us and we were rushing to get on.
On Sunday the final day of skiing we went to Breckenridge driving there to return to Colorado Springs that evening. We did use transit in a way to get up to the ski area, parking and taking the Breck-Connect Gondola up to the base of the lifts (we took it down at the end of the day too). Our other three days also started with gondola rides (used by sightseers and mountain bikers in summer, non-skiers even in winter can by a ticket for a ‘Scenic Ride’ there also open later than skiing is permitted for dinner guest at their top lodges) but the one at Breckenridge is different, you don’t need a lift ticket to ride, its free and has two intermediate stations (one is at a new housing development, the other at the base of Peak 7 before it continues to Peak 8), and made me wonder if a gondola application has ever been used in an urban application. Certain Ski Area transportation like T-bars or pomalifts are unrideable without skis or a snowboard, chairlifts can be ridden but getting off of them is a bit hard since you can’t simply ski off). It turns out there are. A few mountainous cities in South America, particularly Medella, Columbia (which has three separate lines directly connected to their metro system) has recently built them to connect certain hilly neighborhoods. I found this excellent photo essay and travel log to that system along with one in Caracas, Venezuela. Similar to ariel tramways (like the Roosevelt Island Tram, originally designed to be temporary, where a recent ride on their new tram cars made me feel like I should be at a ski area, perhaps it was seeing the Poma logo on them. A logo that is all over ski lifts) there quite cheep to build but offer the advantage over ariel tramways of having a new car arrive and depart each station every few seconds, instead of having just a few cars. The day at Breck also included a few runs from the top of the Imperial Express Lift which is the highest ski lift in North America at 12,840 feet (interestingly enough you need to ride on old fashioned conventional lift or the T-bar to reach it), although it was so windy up there that the lift wasn’t running at its usual express speeds for the short ride.
Well my count of transit for the long weekend was five trips on the Holiday Inn Shuttle, one on a Vail Transit Bus, two on Summit Stage, two on Vail’s Eagle Bahn, one on Keystones River Run, two on Breckenridge’s Breck-Connect, Gondolas, six rides on two different six-person Poma SuperChairs, two on the same conventional quad-chairlift, one three-person chairlift, one ride on two different two-person chairlifts, two Poma platter surface lifts, and countless rides on four-person Poma Express Chairlifts (which have become the standard lift at modern ski resorts).
Sorry no pictures, skiing with my SLR is just too much of a pain! Hopefully I’ll get some updates in between writing chapters of my thesis!