EMSC
Well-known member
Another smallish, oddball resort with a whopping 3 fixed grip chair lifts. Also on the Freedom Pass/partner pass from my Greek Peak pass this season. These two days makes it 10 days that I will get on that ski pass, which is quite the accomplishment considering. Eagle Point was still ticket on a wicket, but Sunlight has upgraded to barcode tickets, not that they seem to scan them more than once or twice per day at completely random moments...
Sunlight probably had about as many if not a touch more skiers on weekdays in March than Eagle Point had on their Saturday. Neither are exactly crowded. It seems clear that Sunlight is making money for sure, but it's not overly clear where the funds are going. The ancient lifts seem to be well maintained and the lodge it not falling apart, though it looks ancient from the outside. But other very simple stuff is in terrible shape like all the signage that is heavily faded, yellowed or worse. And while they do have maps if you ask, they do their best to not hand them out.
Hey what time is it?
Contrary to some belief the lift system is not efficient. The beginner lift out of the base runs slow and has multiple hundreds of vert of overlap with the summit lift. The lift that goes 2/3 of the way up has something like 900 vert of overlap too. The better news is that contrary to my previous skiing here where all lifts seemed to run at a snails pace I would guess that both of the double chairs were running at 450 or even 500 feet per minute ("standard" speed for a fixed grip is 400 feet per minute). But any time you want to ski the best of the terrain over on the east ridge, it turns into a double lift extravaganza at at least a half hour per getting back up to the summit. They recognized this back a few years ago and began cutting more glading and even a lift line with a plan to put a lift over there... until last fall when they basically reneged on that promise ((East Ridge page). Sort of makes sense timing wise (pandemic finances), but if you read the whole post you can read between the lines that it ain't happening perhaps ever.
Anyway, the terrain itself is a solid entry in the world of medium sized areas. they claim over 2K vertical, but lift served is 'only' 1,750 with the rest from hiking out of the bottom of the steep east ridge section. There are some really fun blues and blacks when the snow is right. We had a mixed bag ourselves. Day one was quite chilly with overcast and even a few snow showers. A handful of areas still had full on winter snow, some had lightly re-frozen underneath of an inch or two of softness and a few areas were icy refrozen. A bit of exploration required to find the best of the snow. Day two was much warmer with the same snow across the mountain in the morning with things softening rapidly by ~12:30 and fully softening pretty much everywhere by late afternoon.
Summit lift (yes all lifts are riblet, two are center pole doubles):
On Zephyr
Top of East Ridge. Mostly black diamonds really, but with the trees and one section of steeper they get mostly upgraded on the map.
Tom J's glade
Somehow this short open area on the East Ridge has like 5 or 6 trail names on the map...
Base area lifts
Erector set style towers on the old double that goes part way up.
Bizarre tower guard. Its like they are actively enticing teens to get their poles stuck and then ripped out of their hands or something.
Mt Sopris in the background (sort of)
When negotiating with family for a spring break week, it helps to have plenty of options in the area:
Glenwood Hot Springs
Doc Holliday's "not-a-grave"
Glenwood cavern and adventure park on top of the nearby mountain.
Sunlight in the distance at center...
Final notes - Somehow Glenwood has gone mad for recently claiming bigfoot apparently, despite bigfoot never having been claimed in history to be in Colorado at all (that's a Pacific NW thing). Ridiculous tons of bigfoot junk merch to be found...
And I really must be getting old; I just don't get the branding behind this find in the local market:
Sunlight probably had about as many if not a touch more skiers on weekdays in March than Eagle Point had on their Saturday. Neither are exactly crowded. It seems clear that Sunlight is making money for sure, but it's not overly clear where the funds are going. The ancient lifts seem to be well maintained and the lodge it not falling apart, though it looks ancient from the outside. But other very simple stuff is in terrible shape like all the signage that is heavily faded, yellowed or worse. And while they do have maps if you ask, they do their best to not hand them out.
Hey what time is it?
Contrary to some belief the lift system is not efficient. The beginner lift out of the base runs slow and has multiple hundreds of vert of overlap with the summit lift. The lift that goes 2/3 of the way up has something like 900 vert of overlap too. The better news is that contrary to my previous skiing here where all lifts seemed to run at a snails pace I would guess that both of the double chairs were running at 450 or even 500 feet per minute ("standard" speed for a fixed grip is 400 feet per minute). But any time you want to ski the best of the terrain over on the east ridge, it turns into a double lift extravaganza at at least a half hour per getting back up to the summit. They recognized this back a few years ago and began cutting more glading and even a lift line with a plan to put a lift over there... until last fall when they basically reneged on that promise ((East Ridge page). Sort of makes sense timing wise (pandemic finances), but if you read the whole post you can read between the lines that it ain't happening perhaps ever.
Anyway, the terrain itself is a solid entry in the world of medium sized areas. they claim over 2K vertical, but lift served is 'only' 1,750 with the rest from hiking out of the bottom of the steep east ridge section. There are some really fun blues and blacks when the snow is right. We had a mixed bag ourselves. Day one was quite chilly with overcast and even a few snow showers. A handful of areas still had full on winter snow, some had lightly re-frozen underneath of an inch or two of softness and a few areas were icy refrozen. A bit of exploration required to find the best of the snow. Day two was much warmer with the same snow across the mountain in the morning with things softening rapidly by ~12:30 and fully softening pretty much everywhere by late afternoon.
Summit lift (yes all lifts are riblet, two are center pole doubles):
On Zephyr
Top of East Ridge. Mostly black diamonds really, but with the trees and one section of steeper they get mostly upgraded on the map.
Tom J's glade
Somehow this short open area on the East Ridge has like 5 or 6 trail names on the map...
Base area lifts
Erector set style towers on the old double that goes part way up.
Bizarre tower guard. Its like they are actively enticing teens to get their poles stuck and then ripped out of their hands or something.
Mt Sopris in the background (sort of)
When negotiating with family for a spring break week, it helps to have plenty of options in the area:
Glenwood Hot Springs
Doc Holliday's "not-a-grave"
Glenwood cavern and adventure park on top of the nearby mountain.
Sunlight in the distance at center...
Final notes - Somehow Glenwood has gone mad for recently claiming bigfoot apparently, despite bigfoot never having been claimed in history to be in Colorado at all (that's a Pacific NW thing). Ridiculous tons of bigfoot junk merch to be found...
And I really must be getting old; I just don't get the branding behind this find in the local market:
