Which chair do you load on Aspen Mountain this winter if you start on the west end of town?

You load the same one everyone else does. Lift 1A, the Shadow Mountain double at the end of South Aspen Street, spun for 55 years and ran its last season in 2025-26. Crews started taking off its chairs and haul rope at the end of July, the Aspen Daily News reported. When Aspen Mountain opens on Nov. 26, every ride up from town will start at Gondola Plaza.

Gondola Plaza now has two lifts instead of one. That makes the new Nell Bell chairlift the most important change on Ajax this winter, because it gives the town a second way up while the west side is a construction site.

The West Side Goes Quiet Until at Least 2029-30

Lift 1A is coming out to make room for a large redevelopment of the Lift One corridor. The plan includes an Aman Aspen hotel from OKO Group, on the site that was once proposed as Gorsuch Haus, and Chalet Alpina, a mix of timeshares and condos that used to be called Lift One Lodge. The centerpiece is a new lift that reaches down to Dean Street, near where the original Lift One stood. The developers, Aspen Skiing Co. and the city agreed on a construction sequence on July 31, and it puts that lift several winters away.

Here are the agreement's estimated milestones, as Aspen Journalism reported in August:

1. Fall 2028: SkiCo orders the new Lift One.
2. 2029: The lift is installed.
3. Winter 2029-30: The lift opens, assuming Aman Aspen and Chalet Alpina have made enough progress for the work to go ahead.

These dates are estimates, and the lift opening depends on the two lodging projects keeping to their schedules. Ben Anderson, the City of Aspen's community development director, described what comes before then to Aspen Journalism: "Starting very soon, the entire area will have significant disruption."

So the plaza at the bottom of the Silver Queen will be the mountain's only base from town for at least three ski seasons.

Two Chairs That Barely Ran Become the Second Front Door

The lift taking on that job comes from an unlikely place. It replaces two of the least-used chairs on the mountain. When Aspen City Council gave final approval to Nell Bell in December 2025, SkiCo told The Aspen Times that Little Nell had run only 28 days the previous season and Bell Mountain only two. Lift mechanic Michael Blakeslee wrote to the U.S. Forest Service that his crew could spend more hours on the Bell chair than on almost every other Aspen Mountain lift combined, according to the Aspen Daily News.

SkiCo first planned to replace the Bell chair with a lift that loaded farther uphill, an option in the 2018 master plan. It changed course after skiers crowded onto Hero's when that lift and its terrain opened in 2023, and after the Gent's Ridge chair came out in 2024. A Pitkin County review memo said a lift running all the way to the base was a "better alignment for the overall skier experience." Council members also had the west side in mind. Councilman John Doyle said he liked the new lift partly because another base-area lift would be offline "for a winter or two" during the Lift One redevelopment, the Aspen Daily News reported. Going by the sequencing agreement, that now looks like at least three winters.

What Eight Minutes Buys on a Busy Morning

Nell Bell runs from Gondola Plaza to the top of Bell Mountain, roughly parallel to the Silver Queen. Mak Keeling, SkiCo's vice president of mountain planning, told council it was "a cheat code" for reaching Ajax Express, Hero's and F.I.S. faster than ever, the Aspen Daily News reported. The ride takes about eight minutes, which the paper said is several minutes faster than taking the gondola to the summit and skiing down to that terrain.

SkiCo is betting on two things with one base:

• Shorter lines at the bottom. SkiCo expects a second lift out of the base to cut lines on busy days.
• A way up when the Queen stops. The chairs ride closer to the ground than gondola cabins, so SkiCo hopes Nell Bell can keep running in winds that shut down the Silver Queen. "But there will, of course, be days that are just too windy for anything," Keeling told council, per The Aspen Times.

That second point matters more now than it would have a year ago. Last winter, a wind hold on the gondola still left Lift 1A on the other side of town. This winter, the backup is a chair a few steps away at the same plaza.

One part of the design drew pushback. The lift has no mid-station. Mayor Rachael Richards said she was disappointed by that and worried that less experienced skiers might end up higher on the mountain than their ability, The Aspen Times reported. Once you load at the base, the next place you can get off is the top of Bell.

What a Single Base Gives Up

Little Nell did a few jobs no other lift does, and its removal ends some of them. Under the new alignment, night skiing on the Little Nell run is no longer possible. SkiCo has said it may look at night skiing on its other mountains in the future.

The old chair also carried people to community events like torchlight parades, the Ajax Cup races and the Gay Ski Week downhill costume contest. Aspen Mountain manager Travis Benson told council that a lift unloading higher up shouldn't be a problem for most participants, who can already ski down to Little Nell from above. He said a snowcat, snowmobile or toboggan could bring down anyone who needs help, the Aspen Daily News reported.

The first of those events comes early. The 75th Wintersköl runs Dec. 10-13, and its schedule lists the Aspen Mountain torchlight parade and fireworks for Saturday, Dec. 12. That same weekend, Aspen Highlands and Buttermilk open, and Aspen Snowmass is selling $80 lift tickets on Dec. 12 and 13 for its 80th anniversary. It will be one of the first big tests of a single base. For more on the season's dates, see our Aspen winter guide.

Skiing Out on the West Side Still Works, Narrowly

The west side closes for loading. You can still ski down to it, though. The sequencing agreement requires Aman Aspen crews to keep a ski corridor open past the construction site so skiers can come out toward South Aspen Street. Keeling told Aspen Journalism that SkiCo plans to keep Schuss Gully open as the way down "as conditions allow." Norway and Normandy, two nearby runs, will be closed.

For anyone whose day used to start and end at Lift 1A, this winter looks different. You go up from Gondola Plaza, and you may be able to come down to the west side on one run, depending on snow. On a low-snow day, assume you'll be finishing at the plaza. This also changes how ski access works for homes near that corridor, a point that comes up in buying ski-in, ski-out property in Aspen.

Where the Old Chairs Went

The lifts are gone, but plenty of their chairs stayed in the valley. In July, Aspen Snowmass auctioned chairs from both lifts, starting at $250 for Little Nell chairs and $500 for Bell Mountain chairs. The proceeds went to climate action and to voter registration and voting rights work. Two dozen chairs were donated to local groups, including the Aspen School District, the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies, Aspen Hope Center and Ski Noir. Eleven more are being turned into art with the Aspen nonprofit Buckhorn Public Arts. "These chairs have carried people up Aspen Mountain for nearly 120 combined years," SkiCo's Hannah Berman told The Aspen Times.

SkiCo CEO Geoff Buchheister acknowledged the attachment when he asked council for approval. "A lot of people love the Bell chair," he said, "but I don't think we can continue to run that any longer."

Before Opening Day

The new chair is close to finished. In an Aspen Times column published Oct. 22, Lorenzo Semple wrote that as of that Monday, the haul cable was spliced and taut and crews were hanging chairs. The Aspen Chamber Resort Association calls Nell Bell the headline of the 2026-27 season, and Aspen Mountain is scheduled to open Thursday, Nov. 26. SkiCo hasn't said whether Nell Bell will run on opening day itself. Until a new Lift One opens on the west side, the Silver Queen and Nell Bell are the two ways up Aspen Mountain from town.

If you're thinking about where to own in town while Aspen Mountain runs from one base, PJ Bory can walk you through how the Gondola Plaza and Lift One corridor changes affect ski access from different parts of Aspen.