Aspen Just Spent $80 Million Because Winter Is Getting Shorter

Two new lifts, a gutted restaurant, and aggressive snowmaking upgrades -- all in one summer. Inside Aspen Snowmass's biggest single-year investment and why climate change is driving the urgency.

This is Part 5 of our 10-part Construction Season series -- a daily deep dive into the biggest resort infrastructure projects shaping the 2026-27 ski season and beyond.

Colorado just had its worst snowpack year on record. By April 1, 2026, 60 of the state's 64 snow course measurement sites had tied or set all-time lows. Eighteen had no snow at all -- and none of those had ever been snowless before at that time of year. The state climatologist called it "the worst year for Colorado snowpack in recorded history." A March heatwave that scientists said would have been "virtually impossible" without human-caused climate change melted the mountains faster than anyone thought possible.

At Aspen Snowmass, they'd already seen this coming.

Last summer, Aspen One broke ground on nearly $80 million in on-mountain infrastructure improvements -- the most ambitious single-season investment in the resort's history. Two new lifts at Snowmass, a complete tear-down and rebuild of a beloved mid-mountain restaurant, expanded dining, snowmaking upgrades across all four mountains, and 40 acres of forest health work.

The projects weren't a reaction to the drought. They were planned before anyone knew 2025-26 would be catastrophic. But in hindsight, they look like the smartest money Aspen has spent in decades.

Two Lifts, One Summer

The headline projects are the Elk Camp Six-Pack and the Cirque T-Bar -- the first time Snowmass has installed two new lifts in a single season since 2006.

Elk Camp Six-Pack: The 30-year-old Elk Camp high-speed quad, installed in 1995, has been replaced by a Leitner-Poma six-passenger detachable chair. Capacity jumps from 2,020 skiers per hour to 2,800 -- a 50% increase. The alignment shifted slightly away from the Elk Camp Restaurant. In summer, this lift is the primary haul for the Snowmass Bike Park, and the new six-pack nearly doubles bike capacity, which was a major driver behind the project.

Cirque T-Bar: Up at the top of the mountain, the 28-year-old Cirque platter lift -- a single-rider Poma that served some of the highest lift-accessed terrain in North America -- has been replaced by a Leitner/Skytrac T-Bar. Capacity goes from 450 riders per hour to 1,000. That's more than double, at an elevation where wait times felt especially punishing.

The construction was a logistical showcase. For the Elk Camp foundations, a Black Hawk helicopter nicknamed "The Lorax" hauled 125 cubic yards of concrete -- 475,000 pounds -- across the summer slopes of Snowmass in a single day, pouring nine tower foundations from the air. The remaining foundations were accessible by road and finished in August. Towers went up in September. Both lifts passed testing in November and were operational for the 25-26 season.

And here's a nice detail: the old Elk Camp quad wasn't scrapped. It was shipped to Powderhorn Resort in Mesa, Colorado, where it'll get a second life servicing terrain at a small independent mountain. That's how you handle a hand-me-down.

Ullrhof: Gutting a Legend

If you've ever eaten lunch at Snowmass, you've probably been to Ullrhof. The mid-mountain restaurant has been a fixture since it was built 56 years ago -- a sun-baked deck with burgers and beer, panoramic views of the Elk Mountains, and the kind of energy that made you forget you still had three runs of legs left.

It's gone now. Demolished. Taken down to the dirt.

In its place: a completely new, state-of-the-art building with a modern mountain design. The new Ullrhof will have 600+ seats (the original had roughly half that), an expanded upstairs bar and lounge, updated food and beverage operations, and significantly better operational flow for the kitchen and service teams.

The rebuild was approved by the Town of Snowmass Village in late 2024 after Aspen Skiing Company argued that current skier volumes had outstripped dining capacity. The new building will add 366 seats over the old layout -- 450 indoor, 275 outdoor. That's a meaningful dent in the lunchtime crunch that's plagued Snowmass on peak days.

Most notably, the new Ullrhof will be Aspen Snowmass's first all-electric on-mountain restaurant. No gas lines, no propane. Fully electric kitchen, heating, and systems. It's a flagship for Aspen One's push to build all-electric wherever possible across new construction -- part of a sustainability strategy that the company has been unusually aggressive about by ski industry standards.

Ullrhof is scheduled to reopen for winter 2026-27. During the gap year, Snowmass brought back the Spider Sabich Race and Picnic Area -- closed for years -- as a pop-up location featuring "The Hot Dogger," a quick-serve spot partnering with L.A.-based Sumo Dog. Not exactly a gourmet replacement, but it kept bellies full while the bulldozers worked.

The Snowmaking Bet

The lift and dining projects get the headlines. The snowmaking investment might matter more.

Aspen Snowmass has been expanding snowmaking infrastructure across all four mountains -- Aspen Mountain, Snowmass, Aspen Highlands, and Buttermilk. The focus: automation, energy efficiency, and extending coverage to mid-mountain and upper-mountain terrain zones to ensure skiable conditions during early and late season periods.

Here's the context that makes this urgent. Aspen One's senior VP of sustainability, Chris Miller, put it bluntly: "Aspen has lost over 30 days of winter since 1980." That's not a projection. That's already happened. And a 2026 Colorado climate report found that the number of snowmaking days per season could increase from an average of 12.4 (2015-2024) to between 15.1 and 16.4 through 2050.

The Snowmass Master Development Plan, initiated in 2022 and accepted by the U.S. Forest Service, specifically calls for snowmaking in higher-elevation terrain zones. The MDP also proposes water storage improvements to minimize impacts on Snowmass Creek while enabling large-scale snowmaking during cold snaps -- an efficiency play that becomes more critical as windows for making snow get shorter and less predictable.

After the drought year, the strategy looks prescient rather than precautionary. When some Colorado resorts were struggling to open runs and Christmas tourists were looking at brown mountains, having invested in snowmaking meant the difference between a rough season and a ruined one.

"Protecting winter isn't optional for us; it's the business model," Miller said.

The Cost Problem

All of this costs money. A lot more money than it used to.

Aspen Skiing Company CEO Geoff Buchheister has been remarkably candid about the math: "What we're spending to build a chairlift now is exponentially more than we did 10 years ago. The costs have really escalated."

That's true across the industry -- steel, labor, permitting, and environmental compliance have all inflated significantly -- but it hits different when you're running a four-mountain operation in the Roaring Fork Valley, where construction labor competes with residential real estate development and housing costs for workers are among the highest in any ski town in America.

The $80 million spent last summer included not just the lifts and Ullrhof but also the Elk Camp deck expansion (120 new outdoor seats with retractable "umbrella" walls), forest health work across 40 acres on four mountains, and the ongoing snowmaking upgrades. That's a lot of checks to write in a single offseason.

Buchheister frames it as an existential choice: stop investing and the product declines. Keep investing and pass prices have to reflect the cost.

"If you think of it as a bicycle, as soon as you stop pedaling, eventually your bike will fall over," he told the Aspen Times.

What Passes Cost Now

Aspen Snowmass just released its 2026-27 pass lineup, and it reflects both the investment and the market reality:

Premier Pass (unlimited, all four mountains, includes Ikon Base Pass): starts at $3,099
Alpine 2-Day Pass (two days per week, all season): starts at $2,099
Weekday Pass (unlimited Mon-Fri, weekend access at season edges): starts at $2,099
Flex Pass (4-7 days, no blackouts, limited quantity): starts at $679

The Weekday Pass and Flex Pass are new for 26-27. The Flex Pass replaces the old Valley Pass with more flexibility and a lower per-day entry point. Aspen is clearly trying to segment the market -- keep the Premier product exclusive for loyalists while creating on-ramps for people who want to try Aspen without committing $3,000.

Big news on the Ikon front: for 2026-27, the Ikon Base Pass gets 5 days at Snowmass only (blackout dates apply), while the full Ikon Pass retains 7 days across all four mountains. That Snowmass-specific carve-out is a notable shift -- essentially opening one mountain to the broader Ikon audience while keeping Aspen Mountain, Highlands, and Buttermilk at the higher access tier.

After a historically bad snow year, Buchheister acknowledged the tension: "A little bit of it is a thank you for hanging in with us this year, but I'm optimistic about what's ahead of us." Renewing passholders before the April 30 deadline got a $100 credit, essentially locking them in at last year's rate.

The Master Plan Pipeline

The $80 million summer was big, but it's not the end. The Snowmass Master Development Plan lays out a multi-year vision that includes:

New teaching surface lifts at the base area
A two-mile, 10-passenger gondola (long-term proposal)
Multiple six-pack chairlift replacements across the mountain
Terrain enhancements in every pod -- Big Burn, Sam's, Campground, Alpine Springs, High Alpine, Burnt Mountain, Elk Camp
Expanded snowmaking at high elevations with new water storage
Downloading capability on lifts so early-season terrain can operate at the top even when the base isn't fully covered

Aspen Highlands also has a new master plan in the works as of early 2026, and there's been decades of discussion about whether Aspen's four mountains could ever be connected by lift. So far, the answer has been "it's complicated" -- but it's still on the table.

The theme across all of these plans is the same: better, not bigger. Snowmass isn't expanding its permit boundary. It's upgrading everything inside it, methodically, with climate resilience baked into every decision.

What This Really Is

Aspen Snowmass occupies a unique position in American skiing. Four mountains, 5,500+ acres, a town that's simultaneously a cultural hub and a real estate fever dream. It's the most expensive place to ski in North America, and it knows it.

The $80 million investment is an acknowledgment that staying at the top requires spending like you're at the top. Two new lifts. A restaurant torn down and rebuilt from scratch as all-electric. Snowmaking that's explicitly designed for a warming climate. Forest health work across 40 acres. Pass products redesigned to serve everyone from the seven-day visitor to the 100-day local.

What Buchheister is really saying when he talks about escalating costs and bicycle metaphors is something most resort executives won't say out loud: the margin for error is shrinking. Snow years like 2025-26 are going to happen more often. Construction costs aren't coming down. The window to build climate-resilient infrastructure is right now, and every year you wait, it costs more.

Aspen didn't wait. The new Elk Camp Six-Pack and Cirque T-Bar are spinning. The Ullrhof reconstruction is on track for next winter. The snowmaking upgrades are running across four mountains.

Eighty million dollars is a lot of money. But losing 30 days of winter since 1980 -- and counting -- is a lot more expensive.

Tomorrow in Construction Season: We head to the Southern Hemisphere's backyard for a look at what's brewing.

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