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[Sponsored by Copper Mountain]
Copper Mountain continues to amaze as a multi-year transformation continues to roll out incredible upgrades to the infrastructure around the mountain. Copper Mountain’s parent company, POWDR, has been pumping tons of cash into the resort to upgrade its lifts, dining, and overall experience of the mountain. POWDR has pledged to spend $100 million in an effort to really make this mountain shine amongst the other resorts in Colorado, especially the ones along the I-70 corridor.
Don’t Believe me? Check out what Dustin Lyman, President and General Manager of Copper Mountain Resort, had to say about the new infrastructure:
“I’m thrilled to announce Copper’s newest Tucker Mountain chairlift allowing more skiers and riders to access Copper’s unique high alpine terrain.At the same time, we will begin construction on a new mid-mountain lodge to replace Solitude Station and craft the designs for the Woodward Peace Park in partnership with Danny Davis, a U.S. Snowboard Olympian and X Games gold medalist. This is all complementary to our other recent additions, including the American Flyer and American Eagle lifts, the Rocky Mountain Coaster, Koko’s, Downhill Duke’s and more. Copper has something for everyone and is undeniably the place in Colorado for the whole family. There has never been an easier or better way to access authentic, Colorado adventure.”
One area of expansion that Copper Mountain is really trying to focus on is a new lift on Tucker Mountain. The new lift will be off the backside of Copper Mountain and will take skiers to expert high alpine terrain intended for advanced skiers. The lift will start spinning for the 2019-2020 season and will be a three-person fixed grip lift. Originally, this stunning terrain was only accessible by snowcat services on very weather dependent days. Now, the Tucker Mountain Lift will start at the base near the Blackjack chair and rise up over 1,100 vertical feet and reach near the summit of Tucker Mountain at 12,200ft. The terrain in the area will be steeper chutes like the Taco Chute and open gladed runs; sounds perfect to me! Also, near the Mountain Chief chair will be a new ski patrol warming hut and new restroom facilities.
Another fantastic upgrade that Copper Mountain is heavily invested in is a new mid-mountain lodge that will replace Solitude Station. The new mid-mountain station will be 25,000sf and will be conveniently accessed from the American Eagle lift. Some of the main features include a full-service casual restaurant, full-service bar and lounge, a private dining area, cafeteria, and panoramic views of the beautiful Colorado Rocky Mountains. The new station will be completed for the 2020-2021 season and construction is already underway.
One final massive development in this astonishing multi-year transformation is that Copper Mountain, in partnership with Danny Davis, will be adding Woodward Peace Park terrain park to its mountain. Danny Davis is a legend in snowboarding and a visionary when it came to innovating tricks with style. He has competed on the biggest stages including wins at the US Grand Prix, X-Games Gold, Dew Tour Champion, and a US Olympic Snowboard athlete. Danny first came up with Peace Park in 2011 as a secret “pros only” venue for experimenting with different terrain features. Woodward and Copper want to make that experience available to the public while adding Woodward’s self-directed learning, fun, and progression to the terrain. Peace Park will open for the 2019-2020 season.
The key takeaway is that Copper Mountain is developing the mountain for future generations of ski and snowboard families:
“With all of the exciting development at Copper, now, more than ever, is a great time for the next generation of skiers, snowboarders and families to call Copper Mountain Colorado their home mountain,” said Dustin Lyman.
Copper is doing everything it possibly can to lose the soul that it has/had. From this Lyman guy bragging about upping ‘snowmaking capacity 50%’, to adding a Tucker Bowl chair…these are not improvements, they’re wastes of money that will undoubtedly LOWER the quality of the mountain. If you want snowmaking, go to Keystone. People don’t come to Colorado for boilerplate that you can see cat tread in, with blown granular on top of it like sand on glass. Like I said, for that go to Keystone. Making it easier to get back to Tucker will RUIN Tucker. Period. Changing the two main chairs at the mountain was idiotic. American Flyer is an overweight pig that they ‘thought’ would give them bragging rights for being the longest bubble chair in North America. It didn’t give bragging rights, it gave all of us that loved the original chair nothing but a freaking headache, from being subjected to the pansies that needed to have that insipid bubble put down, to stopping 6 to 7 prolonged times every trip up the thing. Even more ridiculous is the area towards the top that had to be roped off underneath the chair due to the chair bouncing so low upon these aforementioned stops that the skis and snowboards of the passengers were leaving imprints in the snow below. That impact, if a skier or snowboarder were below, would most likely be fatal. And we waited until January for the chair to start turning…it being the effective reason the mountain was divided in half during the best season in a long time.
Copper is in a race to the bottom with Vail, and the only folks that will be happy with the results are soulless boardroomers and shareholders…or those too oblivious to care on their one ski trip per year.
I’m a bit surprised at how positive this sounds. The lift upgrades this year at Copper have been nothing short of a disaster, leaving much of the mountain closed for nearly a third of the season, with repeated glitches, failures, and closures the rest of the season. Maybe Copper needs to slow down a bit and get the current lifts right before more “improvements”?
I think Copper’s main issue is that it’s just not an interesting mountain, a billion dollars of investment wont change that
Copper really needs to fix the power problems with the new American Flyer chair, there wasn’t one time this season that it didn’t stop multiple times each ride and during spring break they were asking riders to make 5’s instead of 6’s to keep the weight down. My first ride it stopped 8 times, once for 10 minutes