Spruced up Eldora ready for a new season, a new vibe

For those with flexible schedules during the week, Boulder Valley’s local ski area is offering an ideal weekday getaway this winter.

Formerly Eldora Mountain Resort, the ski area has rebranded to just, Eldora. The name change and new logo come with a physical makeover, including a new state of the art chairlift and facility improvements across the board. The company hopes Eldora’s makeover will boost its weekday attendance, attracting people from the robust entrepreneurial community along the Front Range who have some freedom to play outside on a weekday.

“For those who are not bound to nine-to-five jobs Monday through Friday, it’s a great opportunity to come up and ski for an hour in the morning and be back in town by 10:30 for the rest of the work day, especially with the new chairlift,” said Eldora Marketing Director Sam Bass. “It’s really a night and day experience here between weekdays and weekends. During the week, it’s very peaceful, you practically have the slopes to yourself, you can park close, you can sit down and have a quiet lunch and enjoy the scenery.”

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Last June, Utah-based Powdr Adventure Lifestyle Company bought Eldora and began an $11 million renovation. The company owns Copper Mountain and a handful of other ski resorts around the country. Bass explained Powdr’s approach as interesting.

“They don’t want to just keep growing and growing” he said. “They have carefully curated this collection of properties. They want to polish each one and make it the best version of itself.”

Eldora was a perfect candidate for a makeover. It had received very little investment in its infrastructure over the past 20 years. Some of the buildings were starting to show their age. There weren’t a lot of offerings for folks to enjoy.

The significance of the new Doppelmayr Alpenglow chairlift cannot be understated. Instead of waiting for nearly 15 minutes, the new high-speed, six-person detachable chair ride is only 4.5 minutes. Not only will that increase time on the slopes, “on a really cold day, that decrease in wait time can make all the difference,” Bass said.

Eldora’s other big change is the dining menu. Daniel Asher, chef at River and Woods in Boulder, was brought on as a consultant.Eldora is now offering high-quality, locally-sourced food in the form of creative dishes and snacks in its renovated cafeteria and new coffee bar.

“Overall, we are trying to align Eldora with the lifestyle and values of our region, the reason people like to live and work here in the greater Boulder area,” Bass said. “Our rebrand comes with a more supportive attitude in the community. We want to make Eldora something the locals are proud of. We are embracing our role as Boulder’s back pocket ski area.”

Eldora has a pretty simple slate of activity offerings. There’s aren’t sleigh rides, tubing or golfing like some high-end resorts in Colorado offer, but it’s the closest ski area to the Boulder/Denver area, which is a huge perk to many living along the Front Range.

“People are fed up with I-70 traffic,” Bass aid. “They can get up to our mountain relatively quickly and get home in time to barbecue and visit with their families. You can’t do that if you are stuck on I-70.”

Eldora’s base area is 9,200 feet. The summit is 10,600. Three new runs were cut last year, and this year, a new run was inadvertently created when the old lift line was removed. In addition to the major improvements already finished, Eldora is working on some solutions to solve the weekend parking issue, including building out its own parking lot and offering shuttle service from Boulder and Nederland. Bass also noted that Eldora is accessible from Boulder via RTD, the only ski area in Colorado to be on a public transportation route.

“We’re really excited to have the ideas and the energy of our parent company behind us,” Bass said. “We’re finally in a place where we can really prove that we intend to be good partners in the local community and embrace our role as the local ski area. We will be an escape from city life down in town, but simultaneously reflect what people are used to.

Bass said Eldora’s renovations have made the ski area a place where people want to linger—to stick around and have a beer after a long day or to relax and watch a football game, to enjoy lunch and a view.

“Before, we weren’t very welcoming outside of the hours of operation. There wasn’t really anything for anyone to do before or after,” he said. “We want to be known as a place where people can hang out, a fun place to be. A lot of little details are coming together to show that we’ve really improved the place above what we’ve been known for.”