Thank you for spending some time looking through this online gallery. Winter Park has been my family's home base in Colorado for at least 30 years. I can remember eating at the iconic Hernando's Pizza Pub after a long day of skiing when it was a smaller building on the west side of Highway 40 (that building is now the Winter Park Pub and Hernando's is located in a larger, newer building on the east side of 40). We knew when we exited the snowy slopes of Mary Jane we had to hurry to the pub. If we took too long, the wait could easily be an hour or more. In the summers I'd spend too much time hanging around Nelson's Fly and Tackle in Tabernash talking with Jason, one of the employees of the local fly-fishing guru, Jim Nelson. This store is now gone, but the memories of guiding folks on fly-fishing trips still lingers in the recesses of my mind, as do the images of wrangling large rainbows and browns from the Fraser River before it was overrun with construction and private investors. One summer, one of my best friends and I worked as maintenance men at Beaver Village Lodge, serving under the direct tutelage of a hippie-week smoking alcoholic. But he respected our work ethic and we got along fine.
Atop Corona Pass, the landscape views of the Rockies are breathtaking. King Lake is beautiful in summer when the tiny colorful wildflowers arrive. The hike up James Peak provides great views of the surrounding mountains, especially of the Winter Park ski slopes just across the valley. I've even popped a tired in my wife's Subaru 14 miles up that dirt road (also known as Rollins Pass). Amazingly enough, we made it down that treacherous 4WD path on a spare. I can remember another time - after hiking James Peak with a friend - picking up a hitchhiker. On the way down she chattered the entire time and said she'd been hiking for days. When my friend and I dropped her off in town, we found she'd taken and eaten all the food in his backpack! Crazy.
Nevertheless, Winter Park and the Fraser Valley have brought a lot of joy to my life. I'm trying to share it with my own family now, and just this past season I was able to cajole my oldest daughter to hike to the top of Berthoud Pass.
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If you have any questions about these photographs from Winter Park and surrounding area, please do not hesitate to contact me.