The U.S. Forest Service has tentatively approved Eldora Mountain Resort’s plan to expand into new terrain with new chairlifts, replace older lifts and build an on-mountain restaurant.
The 680-acre Boulder County ski area has spent years sculpting a proposal that would grow its intermediate and expert skiing terrain and realign lifts to thwart the region’s powerful wind.
Forest supervisor Glenn Casamassa largely approved those plans in a draft record of decision published Tuesday. The decision takes parts of two alternatives weighed in the 500-page final environmental impact statement.
The decision gives Eldora nearly everything the resort was asking for, including 185 acres of new terrain that expands its permitted boundary to the north and south, two new chairlifts, two chairlift replacements, new snowmaking, a renovated restaurant and a new 850-seat restaurant on top of the mountain.
Casamassa said the impacts of the expansion — which includes a construction bridge across Middle Boulder Creek — “are localized” and “nominal” when considered as part of the 2 million-acre Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests and Pawnee National Grassland he supervises.
“The upgrades and expansions included in my decision will provide additional terrain, improve the reliability and safety of operations (particularly during wind events), and generally modernize the resort’s infrastructure to provide an improved recreation experience,” Casamassa wrote in his decision. “I believe that skiers from Front Range communities will measurably benefit from these projects.”
A spokesman for Eldora said the resort ownership team was reviewing Tuesday’s draft record of decision and declined to comment on the specifics.
The decision is open to a 45-day objection period.
Opponents of the resort’s expansion plans were crying foul Tuesday and promising vigorous opposition. The Middle Boulder Creek Coalition, along with the Sierra Club Indian Peaks Group, spent years urging the Forest Service to reconsider Eldora’s proposed Placer Express chairlift, which would stretch 3,250 feet from near the banks of the creek, requiring a roughly 70-acre expansion of the resort’s boundary onto Forest Service land.
The group argued that public land was a buffer to the town of Nederland and to the trail along Middle Boulder Creek, which serves as a gateway to Indian Peaks Wilderness Area.
“This is even worse than Eldora’s proposal,” coalition coordinator Dave Hallock said of the blended alternative. “The Forest Service even expanded this thing for them. The relationship between the ski area and the Forest Service and the consultants — they are all in bed together. The Forest Service didn’t listen to anyone, only the ski area.”
