End of the line

By Joel Stonington (Aspen Times)

April 16, 2006

The Silver Queen Gondola is getting a face-lift after 20 years, and today is the last day to ride on the old cars (unless you buy one on eBay).

By July 4, new gondola cabins will be in place.

"It's kinda sad," said Sally Kleiner, of Colorado Springs, riding up on Saturday.

That just depends on your point of view.

"Frigging gondola ruined that mountain, if you ask me," Tony Vagneur said. "All those improvements they did around '86. Skiing Aspen Mountain was more of an adventure. Now it's like being at a roller rink."

Vagneur said getting to the top changed with the new gondola.

"It could be a 45 minute ordeal," he said. "It used to be the easy way up was up Little Nell, went over and got on 5, then you had to ski down and get on 3 to get to the top. You had to wait in line three times, basically. It was a long ordeal."

When the Silver Queen went in, it was the longest single-stage gondola in North America. But there were gondolas at Vail and Steamboat, so it wasn't hugely new. Just hugely different for Aspen.

"A lot of people were skeptical," said Don Boyer, maintenance lift manager for the Aspen Skiing Co. and an employee since 1969. "Some of these guys that had skied Aspen for years and years said, 'Wow, we can ski top to bottom.'"

Boyer said workers have already started taking gondolas off the lift and are currently running at about three-quarters capacity.

"We have to make some changes in the terminals," he said. "We have to tear up the floor in the top terminal and do some other stuff so the cars can get in there. The speed will be about the same. This will be phase three of what we've been doing. This spring is the final phase."

The gondola will be wheelchair accessible, so the entrance to each cabin will be flush with the ground.

"I think it'll look really sharp for the city," Boyer said. "Fireworks will be unbelievable shining off those new cabins."