There are good times to be had at Winter Park when you’ve got kids in your midst. Over spring break, we set out to find family-friendly adventure on the mountain and in the village. Here’s a roundup of 13 fun things to do at Winter Park, from skiing on blue snow to getting your pal to eat a barf-flavored jelly bean.
1. Stop into Treeline Treats
My 12-year-old niece came running into the kitchen last week with tears in her eyes and her tongue hanging out of her mouth as if she’d just tasted something truly nasty. She had.
“Aaargh… Orange juice…quick! I just ate a stink-bug-flavored jelly bean!”
The kids had gotten a box of Bean Boozled, one of the top sellers at Winter Park’s Treeline Treats candy shop, located at the base of Winter Park. Clearly inspired by Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans from Harry Potter, the box of Bean Boozled comes with a spinner that determines what flavor of jelly bean you must eat.
Hope for cotton candy or toasted marshmallow but be prepared for “canned dog food,” “stinky socks,” “rotten egg,” “booger,” and yes, “barf.” Watching a kid eat a “spoiled milk” flavored jelly bean is about the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.
Treeline Treats has bulk bins of Swedish Fish, Gummi Bears, gumballs, jawbreakers, and sour rainbow stripes. At $6.50 for a half pound, you can (with a little self-restraint) get a decent-size baggie of candy for only a couple bucks. (Use your Winter Park or Ikon Pass for a discount.)
There is candy shaped like pizza and sushi, as well as sour cream & onion crickets. Treeline also has a series of colored pipes that carry sound so kids can whisper secrets and sweet nothings to a friend on the other side of the shop.
2. Ride a Pink Car in the Cabriolet
Taking a ride in the open-air standup gondola that transports skiers and riders 1,416 feet from the parking lot to the village entrance is, in and of itself, a fun thing to do. In less than two minutes, the Cabriolet crosses over the Fraser River and the tubing hill en route to the resort. Even cooler: Of the 38 cars, only three are painted pink on the inside. Try to get one.
3. Ride the New Gondie
This season, Winter Park christened a new 10-person gondola to replace the 28-year-old four-seater Zephyr Express. The new $16-million lift (aptly named “The Gondola”) stretches from the base of the resort to the mountaintop Sunspot Lodge at 10,700 feet. On a windy day, the gondola is the perfect place to snuggle up with the kids. My brother calls it the “Gondo,” but I don’t think he’s right about that.
4. Ski Blue Snow
Someone had plastered a bumper sticker inside a gondola car at Copper with this sage advice: Never Eat Yellow Snow. But what about blue snow? After seeking out jumps on Parsenn Bowl and threading the trees of Fireberry Glade (and, of course, making sure to hit the banked turns of Dilly Dally Alley), we ended a recent spring day on the front of the mountain by skiing Hughes and Norwegian.
A ski race had been held on the slope for most of the day, and the runs had just opened back up to the public. The racecourse had been marked with blue dye (to improve depth perception and visibility in flat light), so patches of the slope were covered in blue snow. We skied delightfully soft blue mashed potato snow on the steep pitch. And because racers generally scribe the same line downhill through the gates, we found untouched corduroy at the edges of the runs. Skiing soft corduroy at 3:30 p.m. is the perfect way to end a spring day. “That was awesome,” said the kids.
5. Get a Pic with a Polar Bear
Kids love to cozy up to the giant Coca-Cola Bear that stands sentinel along the Village’s main drag in Winter Park. Some families make it a yearly tradition to get a pic of their kids with the bear, which might just be more fun than measuring your kids in the garage with a yard stick every fall.
6. Pop into City Pop
Another sweet spot in the village is City Pop, where you can choose from vats of cotton candy, rows of truffles, or an assortment of flavored popcorn. You’ll find standbys like White Cheddar and Kettle Corn, but don’t leave without sampling the Dill Pickle Popcorn. It’s sort of a love-it or hate-it flavor. My daughter took a hard pass on the dill pickle popcorn and indulged instead with a giant hand-crafted peanut butter filled chocolate cup. Reece’s cannot compare.
7. Ride the Rails
Amtrak runs the Winter Park Express ski train on weekends from early January through the end of March. Kids love the fact that the train burrows through 28 tunnels on its way from Denver’s iconic Union Station to the foot of Winter Park. Even if you don’t ride the train, you can watch it emerge from the west portal of the historic 6.2-mile Moffat Tunnel, built in 1928.
The lounge car has Bloody Marys for the grownups and windows that wrap into the ceiling for taking in Rocky Mountain views. Here’s a great story on the riding the Ski Train to Winter Park by my pal Rachel Walker.
8. Play Music
Throughout Winter Park’s village, you’ll find stations for making music. Most are an artistic combo of giant wind chimes and xylophone-like instruments. My nieces somehow figured out how to play hot-cross buns. Go ahead, give your little one the mallet and tell them to bang away (but not after hours, please).
9. Fuel Up
Inside the Balcony House, the Coffee & Tea Market has sweet treats like protein-packed peanut butter bites and enormous chocolate chip cookies, but what I really like is the $2 latte special. One shot, no substitutions. I went back for seconds and still spent less than I would on a single grande latte at Starbucks.
10. Grab a Red Wagon
Getting from point A to point B with kids isn’t always a frictionless experience. Winter Park’s arsenal of little red wagons scattered throughout the village makes getting the kids and their gear from the lifts back to the bus or the car a little bit easier. If your kids are small, they can ride in the wagon along with their skis. My daughter is big, so I made her pull the wagon with my skis in it.
11. Take a Scenic Snowcat Ride
When I’m in a snowcat, I want it to deliver me to the top of a powder-filled, untracked slope. But if you’re looking to entertain kids too young for actual snowcat skiing, a snowcat scenic tour might be the next best thing. At Winter Park, the two-hour ride in the snowcat affords views of the Fraser Valley, Vasquez Peak Wilderness, and the Continental Divide. Along the way, guides offer up historical nuggets and tidbits on the local flora and fauna.
12. Go Tubing
Open through mid April, Winter Park’s Coca-Cola Tube Park has four lanes, banked curves, and a conveyor lift ride through a giant plastic tube back to the top. Sip cocoa and nibble on freshly baked cookies in the Hill House warming lodge.
13. Stop for Ice Cream (or Deep Fried Everything) in Empire
After going up and over Berthoud Pass on the way home from Winter Park, we like to stop for a treat in Empire, because, really, the bags of candy from Treeline Treats and the chocolate peanut butter cup from City Pop were not nearly enough. The Dairy King has soft serve and across the street the eclectic Lewis Sweet Shop, which has been an Empire institution for 70 years, has candy and ice cream, but also deep-fried everything. Deep-fried pickles, okra, green beans, mac ‘n’ cheese, and even deep-fried creamed corn.
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