Winter Park Replacing Pioneer Express for 2023-24; Will Add Critical Mid-Station
Winter Park’s Pioneer Express lift, pictured above in January 2022, is the Colorado resort’s oldest chairlift. The 2022-23 season will be its last.
Background
Winter Park’s oldest detachable chairlift is getting a makeover for the 2023-24 season, according to Liftblog. This 36-year-old high-speed quad—one of the oldest remaining detachable lifts in the country—will be replaced with a state-of-the-art, high-speed six pack next season. The new lift will run in the same alignment as the outgoing chair, but it will feature a new mid-loading station at the intersection of the Big Valley and Pioneer Express Trail runs.
The added mid-station will allow guests to avoid a long, flat runout to get to the bottom of Pioneer and simply lap the more enjoyable terrain above the intersection. Only guests coming from Winter Park Territory trails—shaded in red on the trail map below—will need to ski or ride all the way down to the bottom.
After Pioneer’s replacement, the High Lonesome Express, which was installed in 1985 and converted to a detachable in 1991, will be Winter Park’s oldest high-speed lift.
The location of the planned Pioneer Express six-pack on Winter Park’s trail map, with a red dot depicting the location of the planned mid-station.
Our Take
With Winter Park replacing a high-speed quad with a high-speed six-pack in the same alignment, it might be easy for one to write off the Pioneer replacement project as nothing more than a maintenance play. However, the new lift is probably a bigger deal for Winter Park’s overall mountain experience than it might seem on the surface.
The Pioneer six-pack’s mid-loading station looks to be a game-changer for this area of the resort. While the Pioneer lift mainly serves intermediate and advanced terrain, the flat, easy terrain towards the bottom makes it undesirable to spend extensive time in. The Pioneer lift’s bottom terminus is presumably as far down as it is in order to allow guests coming from the Winter Park Territory to get to this area of the resort, but otherwise, the flat lower-mountain terrain has little practical benefit for the resort.
Once the new six-pack is installed, guests lapping Winter Park’s Pioneer zone will no longer have to engage in flat runouts like this one to return to the lift.
Removing the flat catwalk needed to lap the area is likely to have significant crowd flow implications for Winter Park. We expect that the mid-station will make this advanced-intermediate area a lot more popular—and may also bring the added benefit of siphoning crowds from Winter Park’s other nearby lifts, such as Pioneer and Explorer. Capacity is likely to increase at least somewhat on the new lift, and while Pioneer has never been Winter Park’s worst chokepoint, the ever-busier resort has never found a capacity increase it couldn’t benefit from.
Ultimately, we’re looking forward to stopping by Winter Park in early 2024 to check out the new Pioneer lift for ourselves. We’re also stopping by in early 2023 to check out a major expert terrain expansion this season.
Considering a ski trip to Winter Park this year? Check out our full Colorado rankings, as well as our comprehensive Winter Park review. You can also check out our Winter Park review in video form below.
