If you’re looking for a place to chill on a hot summer day, Keystone’s mountaintop sledding venue might be hard to beat.
Although it’s been in the 80s, 90s and 100s on the Front Range, there’s plenty of snow at the top of Dercum Mountain, at an elevation of 11,640 feet, and resort officials say their summer sledding operation is the only one of its kind in the U.S.
It’s a pretty ingenious repurposing of resort assets. In the winter, Keystone builds a huge snow fort for kids at the top of the mountain. Now visitors are sledding on its remains.
“A large portion of the snow on our tubing hill is actually recycled from the remnants of our world’s largest mountaintop snow fort, which we tear down at the end of each ski season,” Keystone spokesman Max Winter said. “Our teams use snowcats to push and pack down the snow to help better insulate it against the summer heat, then groom each tubing lane every day to keep the sledding nice and smooth.”
Just being above 11,000 feet in the summer is a good way to cool off and take in great views. Add sledding to the experience makes it that much cooler.
And, despite summer heat waves, Winter says the resort should have enough snow to offer sledding for weeks.
“Our lanes are holding up well, and we are typically able to keep our operations going through August,” Winter said this week. “With variable weather, it’s a little too early to make exact predictions, but our stretch goal is to keep snow tubing through Labor Day.”
You don’t have to hike back up after your run because there is a “magic carpet” conveyor to get you back uphill.
Tickets covering the gondola ride up the mountain and one run on the sledding hill cost $34 for children (12 and under) and $54 for adults. Tickets good for three sledding runs cost $64 for children and $84 for adults. Hours of operation for sledding are 10 a.m. until 2 p.m., Thursday through Monday.
