Winter Park

With a convenient location close to Denver and more than 3,000 acres of terrain, it’s hard to beat Winter Park for a hassle-free Colorado ski vacation. While the mountain isn’t perfect, it delivers a very well-rounded experience that many will appreciate.

Sitting just west of Colorado’s continental divide, Winter Park enjoys very strong snow quality, with accumulation comparable to that of the state’s best resorts. The resort often sees powdery conditions that allow its best terrain to stay reliably enjoyable throughout the peak season. Winter Park can occasionally experience dry spells, and slopes can see icy or crusty conditions after several days without snow. But the resort employs early-season snowmaking on a number of slopes to ensure a resilient base layer.

Winter Park holds snow well thanks to its high elevation. However, this height can be overwhelming for some, especially if you’re visiting a high-alpine environment for the first time. If you’re not fully comfortable with the high altitude—and most people won’t be—make sure to observe caution and drink lots of water when you first arrive.

Winter Park’s footprint is large, with a wide variety of slopes. Visitors ranging from beginner to advanced will find days’ worth of terrain to explore here. The resort is technically made up of seven resort territories, but they can essentially be broken into two mountain sides: Winter Park and Mary Jane.

The Winter Park side, for the most part, consists of beginner to advanced groomers and a few tree runs. This side is great for beginners, with green terrain off every lower- and mid-mountain lift in the vicinity. A number of lifts are dedicated entirely to easier trails. High Lonesome is one of the few mid-mountain resort zones in Colorado that caters entirely to beginners.

The Winter Park side is also solid for below-treeline intermediate terrain. Blue runs are the place to be for enjoyable cruising terrain, while blue-blacks in this area are steeper than typical intermediate slopes but still typically groomed. For experienced guests, the Winter Park side also offers some daunting black-diamond mogul runs.

The Winter Park side also hosts the resort’s impressive family of terrain parks, which includes features ranging from small to large as well as an 18-foot halfpipe. It’s worth noting that in order to access the Dark Territory Park, which boasts the resort’s most intense freestyle features, the resort requires you to watch a safety video and sign an affidavit.

The Mary Jane side features more difficult terrain. Trails here generally boast steeper pitches and receive less grooming than on the Winter Park side. If you’re looking for long, unrelenting bumps, you’ll find them here. While we wouldn’t call them the toughest runs in Colorado, the extremely steep, cliff-riddled Mary Jane Chutes will give even experts a run for their money.

But it's not all insane at Mary Jane. Upper-mountain Mary Jane is a bit mellower with some great intermediate groomers. In addition, the Mary Jane base is home to a small bunny hill. However, if you go up any of the main mountain lifts, there are no green trails back down to the Mary Jane base.

When it comes to getting up the slopes, Winter Park boasts a modern lift setup, including multiple high-speed chairlifts, a gondola, and a cabriolet in the base village. The resort upgraded the Sunnyside chair to a high-speed six-pack a few years ago, making the upper Mary Jane terrain it serves much more desirable to lap.

In the strictest technical sense, you can get to and from all of Winter Park’s lift-serviced terrain through high-speed lifts. In practice, however, the advanced and expert Eagle Wind area really only makes sense to lap via a slow, fixed-grip triple. It’s also worth noting that some chairlifts have very weird footrests.

A small area of terrain—the resort’s Cirque Territory—isn’t directly lift accessible. You can technically get to this area without taking off your skis, but it's an extraordinarily flat catwalk that takes about 20 minutes of full-body workout to traverse. At least as you get your cardio in, you'll be soaking in the most beautiful views at the resort. The resort runs a “sled” service to this terrain (you ride on a trailer pulled by a snowcat) when conditions allow, and as of last season, this service is finally free with a lift ticket.

You should check the Cirque out if you’re looking for a memorable high-alpine experience. This terrain, which features the longest continuous above-treeline acreage at the resort, feels notably isolated, boasts steep pitches, and features obstacles such as cliffs and rocks. 

Winter Park has some directly lift-serviced above-treeline terrain, but it’s limited compared to what you get at some other Colorado resorts. On the plus side, the resort’s main bowl area contains intermediate-accessible slopes and offers some truly remarkable views. However, above-treeline terrain only continues for a few hundred feet before you get back into tree-defined runs. In addition, very few truly advanced lift-serviced bowl areas exist. That being said, Winter Park is right on the edge of the continental divide, and some incredibly striking snow-capped mountains are visible even from below-treeline mid-mountain areas.

Thankfully, Winter Park’s general below-treeline nature allows for the resort to have some of the best glade terrain in Colorado. A variety of tree areas exist across the resort, including thinly wooded glades at high-alpine Eagle Wind, steep, technical woods at Mary Jane, and mellower, intermediate glades in lower Winter Park. These trees tend to hold snow longer than other areas of the mountain and see low crowds, making the experience in them feel quite pleasant and isolated. You can find some hidden hammocks and log cabins in the trees, which is pretty neat.

Overall, however, Winter Park attracts large crowds thanks to its convenient location. While the resort feels relatively local compared to the somewhat commercialized Vail-owned resorts nearby, popular beginner and intermediate trails can get especially crowded.

High capacity at some major junctions, including the main base, helps mitigate congestion. However, a few areas could really use capacity improvements. The Mary Jane base area is a large chokepoint; the Super Gauge Express provides the main access from Mary Jane to the rest of the resort and sees serious lines during peak times. This high-speed six-pack does have some alternatives, but they’re slow or out of the way, making them undesirable. And the Panoramic six-pack, which provides the only lift service to the high alpine, is an absolute madhouse on weekends and holidays.

But the Winter Park side isn't spared either. Another chokepoint is the Pioneer lift, where visitors at the bottom need to take the lift to get out of the area. Same goes for the Olympia Express, which serves popular beginner and intermediate terrain. If you’re looking to avoid lift lines on your trip, you might want to look somewhere else.

Winter Park is quite a large resort, but that doesn’t mean it’s terrible to get around. Very few resort areas involve catwalks, which snowboarders will appreciate. Guests will generally find clear signage with trail, lift, lodge, and resort area markings, as well as well-placed trail maps at major junction points. Some lifts also have safety-bar-mounted trail maps. But there are some downsides. The trail map could be better designed, with a front-facing depiction that doesn’t fully do the resort’s layout justice. In addition, a few less-tracked trails and terrain parks can be difficult to find if you aren’t paying attention.

If you’re looking to stop in for a break, Winter Park offers several facilities to choose from. Nearly all major resort areas exist within close distance of the nearest lodge; a few relatively removed areas live within close proximity of public bathrooms and warming huts. However, the act of physically reaching these lodges can be somewhat arduous depending on where you are—getting from Panorama to Lunch Rock without taking any other lifts requires an irritating uphill catwalk, while getting to the Sunspot Lodge from any upper mountain area requires taking a short surface lift.

One of the biggest advantages of Winter Park—at least from the Denver area—is its ease of access during peak times. Winter Park is the only Front Range resort that can be accessed by train, and the Winter Park Express Amtrak service runs once a day in each direction on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays during core season dates—once to the resort in the morning, and once back in the afternoon. Theoretically, guests who take the light rail from the airport can get to Winter Park without setting foot in a car—although the morning trains are too early to practically do this without an overnight stay in Denver. There are also a number of shuttle services, but they can easily get snarled in I-70’s notorious traffic.

Lodging

Winter Park offers several lodging options both in the base village and directly surrounding the resort. Hotels and condos in the village offer easy access to the slopes, and some are ski-in/ski-out. However, they’re all relatively expensive. If you’re looking for cheaper lodging, consider staying a few minutes up the road in Downtown Winter Park—the town provides a free public bus service to and from the resort, so you won’t need a car.

Compared to other major resorts, Winter Park is convenient to reach as a day trip from Denver. The resort typically takes 1.5 to 2.5 hours to reach from downtown Denver, depending on traffic. On weekends, Amtrak uniquely runs limited train service to the resort; no other Front Range ski area can be directly accessed by train.

Apres-ski

Despite the sizable base village, nightlife at Winter Park is somewhat laid back. That’s not to say you can’t have a good time after you get off the slopes, however. Casual joints in the base village offer excellent happy hour vibes and deals, and some areas feature live music on weekends and peak times. If you’re looking to start your apres before the end of the ski day, you can soak in the sun at one of several mid-mountain bars with outdoor seating.

Verdict

So while Winter Park isn’t perfect, it delivers a very strong Front Range resort experience. A wide variety of visitors, from families to mogul fiends, will find a lot to like here. Tickets can get expensive, but they're somewhat reasonably priced compared to other destination resorts and can be bought at significant pre-season discounts. For many, the Winter Park experience will be quite worth it.