Originally Posted by jamesdenver
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skies: hmm, living in colorado i ski often, and usually rely on a car. but i'm planning to take the ski train this winter sometime
http://www.skitrain.com/winter.html
on a side note the traffic from denver to ski resorts 60-80 miles away is horrific on weekend mornings and evenings, to the point where when i ski i usually just take a weekday sick day. less crowds, less traffic. we've discussed many alternatives like banning semis during peak hours (faster movement of cars up and down the hills), a monorail, which at 100 miles long would be the longest of it's kind, cost bijillions, and have to run at altitudes of over 10,000 feet in the winter. no one wants to widen the road due to environmental impact - I 70 is tiered up in some portions and goes through narrow canyons, so not much
This might work fine if you live in a major metro area and are going to a nearby "destination" type ski resort. I suppose if I were going to spend all that money to take a week vacation in Vail or Steamboat Springs, the price of a rental car would be pretty reasonable in comparison. I was talking about a different situation. Around here we don't ski at tourist traps, preferring either the back country, or one of the many smaller ski slopes around. Basically drive out of town in a northerly direction, and see where you can find some hills. Unfortunately, around here a passenger rail train that runs
anywhere is a novel concept, but to run a train into the wilderness would be preposterous.
This may bring up another issue for the car-free crowd, and in fact I ponder this question myself; Do we (as humans) have the right to drive our cars, four wheelers, motor cycles, or snow mobiles into any wilderness area and make it our own remote habitat? I sure do enjoy being in he wilderness, but I also hate seeing it destroyed by our species. Perhaps a discussion for another thread.