Red River Chair Lift

One day, we decided to take a ride on one of the chair lifts that take skiers up to the top of the mountain at Red River.  During the winter, several chair lifts operate.  But, during the summer, only one lift operates, taking folks to the top of the mountain where they can explore a bit.

The view from the chair during the summer is obviously quite different than it would be in the winter, but the summer scenery is just as lovely, even without the snow cover!

The ski runs look a bit bare, but I found it easy to imagine the fun it would be to make my way down the mountain down these trails!  Of course, I haven’t skied in years and years, so these would most likely be above my capability.  One can dream, though!!

All along the ride up, especially toward the bottom of the mountain, we’d see these beads, that reminded us of Mardi Gras!!

Another sight that gave us a chuckle was the “Snowflake Factory” where we believe they store all the snow making machines!!

At the top of the mountain, you are greeted with this map (center of photo), reflecting all the ski runs.  I was a bit surprised that there were other chair lifts that one could ride (in the winter) to get to runs further up top from where the main chair lift let you off!  I surrounded the map with photos I took of some of the ski run sights. I believe the green circles are the easy runs, with blue squares being the moderate runs.  Black diamonds are expert, I’m sure!!

While standing at the top of the mountain, I read over some interesting stats they have posted.  We were standing at about 10,350 feet above sea level where the chair lift left us off.  The base of the mountain is 8,750 feet above sea level.  The resort has a number of different chair lifts – a quad (the one we rode on), 3 triple chair lifts, 1 double chair lift and 2 of what they called “surface lifts”.  I’m guessing those are the types of lifts that gets one to the top of the bunny hill!!  And, if you look close at the image above, you can see one of the chair lifts that brings you back to the top from other runs you can ski!

When at the top, when I looked over away from the chair lift that brought us up here from Red River, I could see three peaks that are even higher than the mountain upon which we were standing.  Although I can’t recall their exact elevation, they are all in excess of 11,000 feet above sea level, a full 1,000 feet (minimum) higher than where we stood!

There are a lot of aspen trees at the top of the mountain and there’s an interesting tidbit of information about them! All the aspen trees at the top of this mountain are called Aspen Clones because they are all part of the same root system.  This enables the trees to better collect water and recover from disasters, such as wildfires.  Amazing!

Heading back down into town required the second half of the chair lift ride (which you cannot do in the winter).  We got to see some interesting sights on the way down, too.  A lovely bed of daisies smiled up at us as we rode up high over them.  And, making the trip up the mountain, was a special delivery!  Finally, we saw an old snow-cat from on high in the chair lift, although the photo was one I took when we were back on the ground!  It’s a Tucker Snow-Cat, mostly likely made in the late 1950s or early 1960s.  It’s just there as a reminder of the past, not that’s used today!

The last image from this post is the view we had riding the chair lift down!   We did meet some folks (and some mail) who were coming up as we headed down, but none were in this shot!

Enjoy!