Eldora’s ski season is nearly over and an unpredictable winter winds to an end. But for those in charge on the mountain, the work is never done. Eldora management is already implementing several measures to create smoother traffic flow for next season. Their proactive approach will benefit their own operations as well as ease traffic and parking concerns in Nederland.

The Mountain-Ear spoke to Town Administrator Miranda Fisher about her conversation with Eldora management. Fisher had spoken with Eldora Operations Manager Steve Rowntree and Eldora Marketing Director Sam Bass about what plans they are instituting to alleviate the parking pains.

“One of their biggest challenges is not being able to predict the weather,” Fisher explained. “For example, normally we’d see this traffic earlier in the season, but since it hasn’t snowed we didn’t see that. So when it snowed a few times over the last couple weeks, people made their way primarily to Eldora because of all the issues with I-70, which is also when we started to see traffic issues.”

Eldora President and General Manager Brent Tregaskis also spoke with The Mountain-Ear about how operations have gone this season and on his outlook for next year. Tregaskis mentioned how Eldora had made it through all of December without a “park-out” day, until it snowed on January 4, 2022.

“One of the key things from my perspective, this year, even though it seemed kind of crazy, we ended up having 11 days the whole year where we actually parked out.” Tregaskis goes on to explain how only 11 days [of park-out] out of their 160 day season is actually the norm. “We normally have 10, to the highest 18, and that’s for an hour or two of turning people around. The number of hours per year is pretty small that we really have to turn people around or create a real backup into Ned; and this year I don’t think we really backed up into Nederland at all.”

Tregaskis definitely recognizes that parking and traffic concerns have always existed for Eldora and Nederland.

“This is not a new problem. We’ve turned people away for 10 years now. Most people that have a season pass know we’ve had parking challenges, we’ve advertised that, and they either come early or they come late. So the traffic and the turnaround is much less than normal because more people are coming in the afternoon.”

With skiers and snowboarders becoming conditioned to the current flow of business at Eldora, Tregaskis and his team must try and set new trends to change customer behavior.

“I think we had our first park-out in the afternoon happen this year, where we did not park-out in the morning and at 1:30 in the afternoon we actually filled back up and had to turn off traffic for about an hour. That’s never happened that I can recall.”

Fisher gave details to many different proactive measures that Eldora is currently working on. Eldora has hired a traffic control company that will utilize electric signs at the bottom of the canyon, as well as at their property on Highway 119 and before the High School. These will welcome drivers or redirect them when parking is full.

Eldora traffic control will also be turning people around at the High School on the weekends, and will be turning people around by the shelf road on weekdays so as not to impact the school.

“Having the high school to turn people around really works to our benefit,” Tregaskis notes. “What we had to do this year, just with some staffing challenges, is we did go to an outside professional parking company out of Denver to help us with not only parking cars at the site but, more importantly, getting warnings out.”

“They are primarily encouraging people to use RTD, though, and park at the Justice Center or near the Boulder bus station. There are Eldora staff members at those locations giving out free bus fare vouchers,” Fisher added.

Eldora and RTD share a mutually beneficial relationship as Eldora provides roughly $60,000 in funding that keeps RTD’s NB route from Boulder to Nederland and Eldora operational.

“The only bummer for RTD in the last two years is their own limitations and their staffing,” Tregaskis mentions. “Before the pandemic we would get three if not four buses full of skiers and snowboarders headed to Eldora on a Saturday morning. Their staffing challenges have kept them from doing that this year so they generally only have one bus for us at each time. We’re hoping that staffing turns around for them; they’ve been a great partner of ours.”

On top of reinforcing their parking staff and working with RTD, Eldora has also been negotiating with Boulder County about the construction of a new lot. This much-needed project was recently approved but with one possibly unpopular caveat.

“We’re really excited to finally get this parking expansion approved and started. We think it’s really going to be a great benefit for everybody – the customers, the town, and the resort,” Tregaskis said. “We’re adding almost 800 spots; we finally got it approved and we’re building the new parking on site. The only downside for the public is the County is forcing us to charge Single Occupancy Vehicles (SOV) on Saturdays and Sundays and powder days.”

The charge, instituted by Boulder County, will be anywhere between $10 and $20 and is an effort to reduce environmental impact and change customer behavior about traveling to Eldora alone.

“We’re really trying to get people driving up with friends or carpooling. We still have the High Occupancy Vehicle parking lot up front and we’re putting in 36 electric charging stations for EV vehicles,” Tregaskis continued. “The new entrance into the new lot and the existing Bear Lot will be before you ever get to the gate, so we think we can park people faster and not have a backup down the Shelf Road. It really will set us up for a better situation, where I don’t think you’ll have that intensity and need to get through Ned by 8:30 or 9 in the morning.”

Tregaskis emphasized that Eldora’s goal to reduce the environmental impact on the Peak to Peak area supersedes profits.

“Would we as a community rather have people drive just 22 miles from Boulder or go 120 miles and go to Vail? From a carbon footprint standpoint the argument is you’re better off to do what we’re doing – meaning putting this additional parking and getting people to come have fun closer and be out of their car for an extra three or four hours. To drive up and down I-70 is a much greater environmental impact.”

When asked why they aren’t implementing the reservation system again, Eldora shared with Fisher that the reservation system, enacted because of COVID, actually hurt them financially more than it helped them.

“While they did see the benefit in the system, they felt it was not a long term solution,” Fisher said.

“I do feel that Eldora is approaching this the right way and am hopeful that the addition of the traffic company will help tremendously,” Fisher added. “We will continue to keep a pulse on the traffic and parking issues and stay in touch with Eldora.”

Tregaskis hypothesized that all the proactive work being done at Eldora currently will provide a smooth transition into next season.

“I can’t imagine the number of parkout days being what they have been. I just think that barring a snow storm we should have enough parking on site,” Tregaskis said. “If everyone starts to carpool, which about 20% of our business drives up by themselves, if we can reduce that impact, get more people riding the bus, and RTD can get their staffing back up, that’s all less traffic through town.”

Eldora is routinely updating their website to give traffic information: https://www.eldora.com/the-mountain/conditions-eather/current-conditionsforecast. Sign up for text alerts by texting ELDORA to (855) 623-6005 to stay in the know.