CO Skiing and I-70

Marc_C

Active member
I had no idea that ski traffic has gotten so bad in CO. There's a thread on MountainProject.com about living on the Front Range vs Grand Junction. While primarily from the climbing perspective, some folks have brought up skiing. Two posts in particular stood out. Is it really that bad?

Good point about skiing. I recently moved to GJ from Boulder, and I gave up on trying I-70 on a powder day due to the traffic and crowds. I had a weekday only pass to Eldora and that sufficed, but even then was getting bad the last couple years with them partnering with the bigger resorts. I have never been to Powderhorn, but it will be my local mountain this winter and I look forward to (hopefully) having some powder after 9:30am.

Most of my days now are backcountry and eldora. I think I made it to copper and WP a total of 3-4 times.

Abasin is now 2-3 hours there and back, Vail is 6-8 total a day depending on weather. You can mitigate is by staying up there, and sometimes by getting up really early. Last year during a big storm it took us 11 hours to get home from beaver creek due to people with bald front wheel drive tires getting stuck at the tunnel. And honestly driving in bad conditions with all the traffic can be scary as hell. Had the trailer of a semi come around at me on black ice, and my friend was hit by a tractor trailer.

One of these years I either won't get a pass, or it will just be loveland or eldora. And snowboarding is my favorite thing to do. In the past 9 years it went from being an hour to Abasin to a half day on the road.
 
I think you are seeing a case of 50/50.

50% of the claim is true that traffic has gotten worse and during storms I70 is especially horrible to drive, but to completely alter all of your skiing because of it... I think you are looking at some folks that are getting older than they were when they were willing to day trip every day of the season and ignore it or perceive it as not a lot of time on the road vs today when the glasses are less rose colored about day tripping in general and spending time in cars in general... 9 years ago I was willing to put up with much more than I am today and for good reasons. Same for them and they probably perceived the 'good ol days' as biased toward the fast day commute drives and today they perceive and reinforce that perception with the worst of the commute days...

Yep it's worse than it ever has been, especially in the wrong conditions or holidays, but not to the point of being un-drive-able for the whole season or something.
 
EMSC will have the opportunity next season to comment on the situation regularly now that his family has RMSP passes.
 
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