• Overall Rating 2
• Family Friendly 4
• All Mtn. Terrain 2
• Terrain Park 1
• Nightlife 2

Pros: Family Friendly, No Crowds, Decent expert terrain


Cons: Horrible lifts, poor terrain park, not enough intermediate terrain


Recommended For: Family Friendly


Date Visited: Jan 1, 2006

Full review

After hearing a couple of my ski buddies talking about this "hidden gem" I finally found the time to drive out here on one of my trips to the aspen area. While I thought the mountain had a great family friendly vibe and the crowds were no where to be found, it was hard to overlook the lifts.

The 4 lifts on Sunlight are old, and simply put there is no fast way up the mountain. So while having no lines is a plus, it doesn't make much of a difference when the ride times make up the difference. The Upper Glades and Zephyr glades were a lot of fun and I was pleasantly suprised with how the ski patrol monitor the expert terrain. But there are a lack of solid long intermediate cruisers. The long top to bottom beginner trails can be great fun but I found that you get through most of what Sunlight has to offer pretty quickly.

This is a fun little mountain if you are tired of the crowds at Aspen for a day, but I would much rather make the extra hike to a mountain like Crested Butte, which has top notch lifts and has no lift lines if I wanted to really avoid the crowds. Also, I am not sure how the terrain park rating is so high for Sunlight. My kids unanimously thought it was one of the poorer terrain parks they had experienced.