Lift Towers for "Major Expansion" Installed at Las Vegas Ski Resort
This week, Las Vegas, Nevada’s ski resort, Lee Canyon, flew in and installed the towers for a new lift that’s part of what the ski area is calling a “major expansion.”
The lift, the West Bowl, is a Skytrac quad rising 650 vertical feet and accessing five new trails of varying difficulty. It’s a big change for the modestly-sized resort which, pre-expansion, spanned 195 acres of lift-served terrain plus 250 acres of hike-to terrain.
A new trail map is set to arrive sometime in November or December.
Once finished, West Bowl will climb to the looker’s right of the Bluebird chair, opening a new terrain pod to lift-served skiing. The area is set to debut next winter.
The latest update follows the release of footage shared by Lee Canyon of crews pouring concrete for the new lift.
The project marks a decade-or-so of steady improvements and expansions at Lee Canyon. The resort installed new lifts in 2012, 2014, and 2023. The resort also built a new lodge in 2019.
The most recent lift addition, Ponderosa, accesses a slew of beginner terrain and a terrain park on the opposite side of the resort from West Bowl. Its opening in January 2024 marked the biggest terrain expansion at Lee Canyon in decades.
Lee Canyon plans to open on November 20 for the 2026-27 season. All eyes will be on the resort and others in the southwest this winter as the impacts of an ongoing very strong—or “Super”—El Nino become clearer.
While the climate phenomenon connected to ocean temperatures doesn’t guarantee where the snow will fall, it does have a track record for shaking up winter weather patterns. And long-range forecasts are increasingly showing higher odds of above-average precipitation in Nevada and California.
Hopefully, depending on the freezing levels, that means more snow. There’s no better way to ring in a new lift like the West Bowl than an epic powder day or three.
Related: Ski Injuries Suck. Why Am I Fond of My Beat-Up Feet, Then?
Leave a Reply