Chair 26 opens at Vail, making Chair 10 the final front side lift still closed
John LaConte/Vail Daily
Most of the front side of Vail Mountain is now available to skiers and snowboarders following the opening of Chair 26 on Saturday.
Chair 26, otherwise known as Pride Express, provides an important connection for guests loading the mountain at Vail’s westernmost portal in Cascade Village and the Grand Hyatt hotel.
Guests loading the mountain from the Cascade chair (No. 20) no longer have to ski back down to Lionshead Village after riding Chair 20, as Chair 26 allows them to ride up to Eagle’s Nest, where they can reach Chair 7 in Game Creek Bowl, or Chair 2 in the mid-mountain area.
From the bottom of Chair 26, no connection is currently open back to Lionshead, however, so guests skiing or snowboarding up to that lift are forced to ride it, as no other option currently exists to get them into other terrain.
Lower Bwana, lower Simba and the Preserve remain closed in the Lionshead area of Vail Mountain.
Support Local Journalism
With Chair 26 now running, only one lift on the front side of Vail Mountain remains closed — Chair 10 on the easternmost reaches of Vail. That chair provides access to the steep faces of Blue Ox, Highline and Roger’s Run, which remained closed as of Sunday morning.
Vail Mountain is now boasting nearly 1,200 acres of skiable terrain, with the Back Bowls — which provide access to nearly 2,800 acres of terrain — still closed so far this season. This year is on pace to be one of the latest openings of the Back Bowls in recent memory; in the 2017-18 season, the Back Bowls opened on Jan. 13, 2018.
That season, Vail had consistently lower snowpack than this season, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service’s SNOTEL site on Vail Mountain. That season, on Jan. 11, the SNOTEL site was recording 4 inches of snow-water equivalent, while this year’s Jan. 11 reading came in at 4.3 inches.
A week ago, on Jan. 4 — prior to Vail recording a foot of snow this week — this season’s SNOTEL recording was 3.6 inches, while recording for Jan. 4, 2018 was 2.8 inches.
