The Ski Train: Denver to the Mountain in One Ride
Near Winter Park, Colorado
From the day Winter Park Ski Area opened in January of nineteen forty, a train carried skiers directly from Denver's Union Station to the base of the slopes. The original service, operated by the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad, ran through the Moffat Tunnel and deposited passengers at the West Portal station at the very foot of the mountain. No icy mountain pass required, no white-knuckle driving.
The train became a beloved Denver tradition that ran for decades, so popular on winter weekends that it became a social event in its own right, the journey as much a part of the outing as the skiing itself. After the original Ski Train stopped running, Amtrak revived the concept as the Winter Park Express, inaugurated on January seventh, two thousand seventeen. The route covers sixty-two miles, the shortest in the Amtrak system.
The train departs Denver's historic Union Station, dives into the Moffat Tunnel, and emerges at altitude at the base of the resort, arriving in time for a full day on the mountain and returning to Denver by evening. Service runs on weekends and select holidays during the ski season. In a corridor where Interstate Seventy routinely gridlocks on winter weekends and mountain driving turns deadly, a train to the ski hill remains one of the genuinely practical and enjoyable ways to spend a winter Saturday in Colorado.
