And Snow It Goes

A lift ticket cost just five dollars when Keystone opened forty years ago. An adult ticket this weekend will set you back as much as $67 (order online for best discounts), but instead of the four lifts on the hill in 1970, you now get access to twenty lifts and 3,148 skiable acres, including North Peak (which opened in 1986), The Outback (1990) and Independence Bowl (2006). “If I hopped into the hot-tub time machine to 1970, I think I would see some really cool hair and some really funky ski gear,” says Keystone spokesman Ryan Whaley (born in 1978). “I might even recognize some people, because one of the neat things about Keystone is that there are a lot of folks who were skiing here in 1970 who are still skiing here, and some of the original employees are still working here.”

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• Ryan Whaley
• Independence Bowl

A time traveler heading in the opposite direction might be baffled by more modern touches, including night skiing (added in 1985), snowboarding (first allowed at Keystone in 1996), the A51 Terrain Park (1999), the eight-person River Run Gondola (2008) or the brand-new EpicMix, a social-media app that uses on-mountain scanners and passive radio frequency chips embedded in lift tickets and season passes to help visitors shout their wintry accomplishments to the world via Facebook and Twitter.

Keystone’s offering a special $40/person room rate at its resorts this weekend, and will be advertising other deals at Facebook.com/Keystone.

For the full fortieth-anniversary experience, break out your vintage gear, pick up a throwback trail map and commemorative beanie, then head for the Argentine fixed-grip, two-person lift on Dercum Mountain: It’s the last of Keystone’s original chair-lifts still in operation.
Sat., Nov. 20, 2010