Located just 68 miles from Denver and on the good side of the inevitable Eisenhower Tunnel traffic conflagration, Arapahoe Basin has long held a reputation as being the feisty, fiery, hardest-charging independent mountain along Colorado’s Front Range.
They famously jumped off Vail’s Epic Pass during the height of its stock-centric explosion, in part due to the major overcrowding that came with being part of it, and only emerged back onto Alterra Mountain Company’s Ikon Pass in 2019 on a limited basis. That, though may well be about to change in a big, big way, as Alterra officially purchased A-Basin off of Dream Unlimited Corporation in a deal that was announced Monday afternoon.
The Legend, as A-Basin will always be called, appears set to keep most of its senior staff in place, as the presser noted that longtime COO Alan Henceroth will remain in his role.
Founded in 1946, A-Basin boasts some of the gnarliest inbounds lines in the country, with elevations above 13,000 feet that will tax you just getting to your lines. How much their partnership with behemoth Alterra – owner of resorts like Steamboat, Winter Park, Palisades Tahoe, and more – remains to be seen, but the hope is that it will retain its status as ‘ski mountain first’ despite being surrounded both physically, and within industry, by ‘resort-first’ competition.
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