Keystone Bergman Bowl Expansion: A High-Alpine Debut for the History Books

The Bergman Express six-pack is the first lift at Keystone that directly accesses high-alpine bowl terrain.

The 2023-24 season was significant for Colorado’s Keystone ski resort, which debuted what may well be the resort’s most important project in decades.

This past year, the resort installed its Bergman Bowl Express lift, providing lift service to its high-alpine bowl terrain for the first time ever. The new lift increases Keystone’s lift-served footprint by 550 skiable acres, adds 16 newly-defined trails, and extends the resort’s lift-served vertical drop by an additional 300 feet to an elevation of 12,200 feet. Importantly, the expansion provides beginner and intermediate bowl terrain on top of the already-existing advanced options.

Keystone has historically been one of the only major Colorado ski resorts without lift-served bowl terrain, so the project addresses a substantial shortcoming. While the resort didn’t technically add any new terrain, the lift installation and associated trail work have had significant impacts on Keystone’s overall mountain experience.

Keystone’s updated trail map, with the newly-lift-served terrain highlighted in green and the new Bergman Express six-pack highlighted in red.

Experience Changes

The new Bergman Bowl terrain zone brings a distinctive mix of trails for all ability levels, including some uniquely accessible runs for beginners and intermediates. The Ten Mile green run might be the most beautiful beginner trail at any Colorado destination, with wide-open panoramic views that are really hard to come by on this level of terrain. Speaking of beginner runs—now that the lower part of the Prospector trail has been rebranded as a green, you can now ski back to the Ruby area if you’re a beginner, which is a huge benefit from an accessibility standpoint and opens up another mountain area for guests of lower abilities.

The Bergman Bowl expansion brings some of the only high-alpine beginner terrain at a Colorado destination ski resort.

The Bergman Bowl expansion is designed more for families than adventure-seekers, and directly lappable advanced terrain is limited. That being said, guests can traverse over to the expansive Erikson Bowl and hit some very solid advanced-level bowls and trees there. The difficulty of lapping these areas means they hold their snow well, but annoyingly, they all filter back to the Wayback chair, which still hasn’t been upgraded to a high-speed lift. It’s also worth noting that the high-alpine bowl section of this lift only lasts for about half the run, and other mountains such as Breckenridge, Vail, and Copper still offer much bigger above-treeline terrain areas.

While it’s not directly lappable by the new lift, the Bergman Express opens up direct lift service to advanced trails in the Erikson Bowl.

The new Bergman lift has also made it a lot easier to access the Independence Bowl, which has historically been the most remote area of the resort. However, this advanced-level bowl still requires some serious hiking to take advantage of. The first hike up the Independence Bowl has been replaced by the Bergman chair, but the area still requires hiking to get out of. In order to ski or ride the south face of this bowl, skiers will still need to hike twice—the first time up from the bottom of the Independence Bowl basin to actually get to the runs in this area, and then the second time to actually get back to the lifts—but this is certainly an improvement from the grueling three hikes that used to be required here.

Unfortunately, one of the casualties of Keystone’s Bergman Bowl project has been its cat-skiing program. While the resort used to offer a range of paid snowcat trips, both per-ride and fully private, these unique opportunities are now a thing of the past, meaning that anyone who wants to access terrain that isn’t served directly by lift won’t be able to bypass the hikes with a snowcat anymore. In addition, the Bergman Bowl itself is now a lot more built up than it used to be, with the new lift, wind fences, and associated skier traffic making for less of an isolated feel than the pre-lift setup of years’ past.

While much easier to get to than in years’ past, areas such as the Independence Bowl still involve hiking.

Final Thoughts

If you’re an expert, Keystone’s Bergman Bowl expansion may not have been the most exciting project in the world. But ultimately, the Bergman Bowl expansion positively impacts Keystone’s overall experience for a very wide range of people, and there’s no doubt that it made one of the biggest splashes on the North American ski resort scene this season.

Considering a ski trip to Keystone this year? Check out our full Colorado rankings, as well as our comprehensive Keystone review. You can also check out our analysis of the major 2022-23 ski resort upgrade projects in video form below.