Free Winter Park Trail Maps Eliminated this Season

A tried and true Winter Park trail map from the 2019-20 season.

Background

Vail Resorts made headlines last week with its call to widely remove paper trail maps from its resorts, and now, it looks like at least one other resort is following suit. Winter Park announced today that free printed maps will be a thing of the past. Instead, guests will be advised to use the Winter Park Resort App, which most guests will be able to access via smartphone. Guests will also be able to download a trail map directly from the Winter Park website. The resort says it will save more than 12,000 lbs (5,445 kgs) of paper with this decision.

Physical trail maps will still be available for purchase in retail locations. We reached out to the resort for more details and received the following response:

Our retail stores will be selling commemorative trail maps – not really ones you’d want to have on the slopes, but rather ones that you could then take home and frame should you desire. Pricing could vary by location – but you can connect with one of our retail shops, West Portal Outfitters at 970-726-1666 for more details.

Winter Park opened for the season today, spinning one lift, one magic carpet, and the village cabriolet for access to three trails.

Our Take

We expressed our thoughts on Vail Resorts’ decision a few days ago here, and for the most part, we feel similar about Winter Park’s decision. There’s no question that reduced paper usage will have positive environmental connotations, but given that phone batteries don’t always do well in the cold, we’re not sure they’re quite ready to replace pocket trail maps for navigational purposes. For functional purposes, paper trail maps are now all but gone at Winter Park—the ones that are now for sale at retail locations seem to be tailored for home aesthetics rather than bringing out on the mountain.

With regard to Winter Park, two unique circumstances may cushion the blow: the resort is already easy to navigate for its size, and its trail map does not provide the most topographically precise overview of the resort. But at the end of the day, it looks like the ski resort industry is moving digital, and it’s only a matter of time before we see another resort make a similar call.

Considering a trip to Winter Park? Check out our mountain review here. Additionally, see our full 2021-22 destination Colorado ski resort rankings.