Work resumed this month at Araphoe Basin Ski Area to complete the remainder of Wheels Up, the ski area’s new downhill mountain biking trail.

Arapahoe Basin Ski Area Chief Operating Officer Al Henceroth said in a blog post last week that the ski area’s trail crew and a trail-building team from the International Mountain Bicycling Association resumed work on the trail this month.

The ski area wasn’t able to continue work on the trail during the COVID-19 pandemic last summer. In 2019, A-Basin completed the portion of the trail that starts about halfway down the High Noon ski run on the ski area’s front-side, lower-mountain ski terrain.

In recent weeks, the mountain biking association and A-Basin trail-building team have built the upper portion of Wheels Up across the top of the Sundance, High Noon, Ramrod and The Gulch ski runs. Henceroth said last week the teams were crossing the Exhibition trail and were on pace to get to the top of Lower Standard within a few days.

From there, Henceroth said they will work their way back east to join the already built portion of Wheels Up that starts about halfway down High Noon.

“This will give us a really fun 4ish mile loop on the Lower Mountain going up the Argentine North Fork Trail and down Wheels Up,” he wrote.

Henceroth said the subsequent step, slated for late August and September, is to build the downhill trail from the top of the Radical ski run to Black Mountain Lodge for a 5- to 6-mile loop.

“The end game is to build an incredibly fun top to bottom loop that includes a big tour out in The Beavers,” Henceroth said. “At this time, we don’t intend to do lift-served biking, but do intend to build one of the funnest 12 mile loops anywhere.”