Sunlight Mountain Resort run gets national acclaim
Sunlight Mountain Resort’s famed Ute ski trail has made the list in one ski industry writer’s top 10 “most scenic green runs” in the country.
Freelance writer Eric Wagnon, who goes by the moniker “The Skiing Examiner,” mentions the Ute trail, a long, modestly sloped beginner/intermediate run at the ski area outside Glenwood Springs, in a recent review published on the Liftopia Blog.
“Ute follows the western boundary of the ski area for 2.5 miles from summit to base,” Wagnon writes. “Advanced skiers take advantage of the trail’s rolling nature and lack of crowds to ‘shoot the Ute’ — a traditional non-stop, high-speed run to finish the day.”
Shoot the Ute was actually the name of a former Sunlight event in the 1970s and ’80s, where daring skiers would line up at the top for a mass start and bomb down the run to see who could get to the bottom first.
The race was eventually discontinued due to safety concerns. Today, it is generally frowned upon to pull into a downhiller’s tuck on the run due to its popularity with beginning skiers and snowboarders.
Ute once held the distinction as the longest ski run in Colorado, until new terrain at some of the larger resorts surpassed it, including the 5.3-mile Long Shot trail at Snowmass.
The Liftopia Blog is shared with its audience of more than 160,000 social media followers. Liftopia is the largest third-party online lift ticket outlet in the world. The Top 10 Scenic Green Runs list can be found at http://tinyurl.com/LiftopiaRuns.
