One of my goals as a skier is to take Colorado’s Ski Train. I’m used to commuter skiing here in the Mid-Atlantic, so doing it in the West seems normal. Doing without a car though? That sounds incredible, particularly due to the reputation of Interstate 701 from Denver to the ski resorts.
PBS is hosting two videos, each about 26 minutes about what’s now called the Winter Park Express.
Steel Rails to Ski Trails: Colorado’s Winter Park Ski Trains
Colorado Experience: The Ski Train
There is some overlap between the two videos. The second one is the better production of the two.
Colorado Dreamin’ on such a winter’s day
The modern day Ski Train has goes from Denver to Winter Park, Friday-Sunday during the early season and then Thursday – Sunday during peak season.
Last season, they saw more than double the patronage: The state lowered prices on the Winter Park ski train. Bookings jumped by 25,000 (Colorado Public Radio)
More potentially good news too: A Ski Train to Colo.’s Steamboat Is In the Foreseeable Future (Ski Magazine). Steamboat has been the dream ever since my brother (who wouldn’t ski back then2) got to go there the first Christmas he was dating his future wife. By all accounts, he took very well to the champagne powder, out-skiing his more experienced future brothers-in-law.
I am hoping to get out to Colorado in 2027 to celebrate a milestone birthday. I have a thread on dcski.com looking for suggestions.3 I’d probably not take the ski train, though if it’s running daily by then and up to Steamboat, that is another story.
More Ski Train details
Winter Park Express – winterparkresort.com4
All Aboard the Amtrak Winter Park Express – amtrak.com
Mid-Atlantic skiing day trips from D.C.
A commuter skier’s guide to ski areas close enough to do in a day from the Washington, D.C. area. Over a decade’s worth of profiles and rankings
Footnotes
- Pugski thread spanning 74 pages over 9 years ↩︎
- He had the reasonable concern of a knee injury which would hamper his martial arts. My wife joked “just watch, he’ll find a snow bunny and go with her.” I did drag him up to Camelback once. He wasn’t a fan of Pocono hardpack. ↩︎
- New England is the back-up plan. There used to be ski trains up there too. ↩︎
- The hero image on this blog post comes from Winter Park. I figure if I’m liking to their site, I can borrow their photo. There wasn’t anything good on flickr with a suitable Creative Commons license. ↩︎