{"id":115503,"date":"2023-11-10T18:00:17","date_gmt":"2023-11-11T01:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/local-news\/loveland-ski-area-wins-the-hearts-of-many-coloradans-with-an-opening-day-full-of-options\/"},"modified":"2023-11-10T18:00:17","modified_gmt":"2023-11-11T01:00:17","slug":"loveland-ski-area-wins-the-hearts-of-many-coloradans-with-an-opening-day-full-of-options","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/news\/loveland-ski-area-wins-the-hearts-of-many-coloradans-with-an-opening-day-full-of-options\/","title":{"rendered":"Loveland Ski Area wins the hearts of many Coloradans with an opening day full of options"},"content":{"rendered":"
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There were other, bigger ski resorts opening in Colorado the same day, but Tom Miller and his friends chose to be at Loveland Ski Area\u2019s opening day because, well, they love it there.<\/p>\n

Miller and his buddies have chased the first chairs of the season at the state\u2019s various ski resorts for decades, especially those near Summit County, but Loveland has a particularly special place in Miller\u2019s heart.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has just been a tradition with my friends and I for 31 years, and really where it started for us was here,\u201d Miller said. \u201cThis was our first getting on first chair. We had some at Keystone, but this is really what started that tradition. \u2026 This was our first first-chair.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the Chet\u2019s Dream lift started running at 9 a.m., Miller and his friends were waiting at the front of the line. There was a bluebird sky, and as morning wore into afternoon, the run from the Cat Walk to Mambo to Home Run trails shifted from shadows to sunlight.<\/p>\n

On the lifts and on the slopes, smiles abounded as people young and old carved into groomed trails still soft in places after a small snowstorm earlier in the week. The lift lines, which had several dozen people in them when the lifts opened, moved fast.<\/p>\n

\u201cLoveland is a great place early season,\u201d Loveland Marketing Manager Dustin Shaefer said. \u201cWe don\u2019t get the crowds like the other mountains. So, it\u2019s kind of a secret here. It tends to be a little bit busier over those other mountains, and our snowmakers are already putting guns on other runs.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Dozens of people wait in line for the first chair of the season to start swinging at Loveland Ski Area on Friday, Nov. 10, 2023.<\/figcaption>
Ryan Spencer\/Summit Daily News<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

He added that the real secret is that it\u2019s not just the early season when the lines move quickly at Loveland \u2014 it\u2019s most of the year. Especially as more terrain opens up, it is easy to find quiet corners of the mountain to make turns without dodging through crowds of people, according to Shaefer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is a year-round thing,\u201d Shaefe said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got the free, close-in parking here at Loveland. We\u2019ll run out of parking before we run out of capacity on the mountain. You\u2019ll get up there in the middle of spring break, a holiday, Christmas break, and you get up on the hill and there\u2019s no one around you.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is one of the things that several of Loveland\u2019s opening-day skiers said they loved about the mountain. When asked how the conditions are, many others responded with some variation of \u201cbeats work.\u201d<\/p>\n

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That was the response Boulder resident Kelly Fagans gave. It was his first day of the season and his fourth season as a season passholder at Loveland. Fagans said the lack of lines and the convenient location off Interstate 70 are what keeps him coming back to the ski area.<\/p>\n

The same goes for Dean Sanderford, who lives 45 minutes away in Golden and says he\u2019s been a season pass holder at Loveland for the past several years. Sanderford said he keeps coming back because the ski area has \u201ca local kind of family-owned feel to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

What got him to come out to opening day? Well, Sanderford said, \u201cI have the day off work.\u201d<\/p>\n

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