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‘Imaginations just start going wild’: Keystone Resort’s mountaintop snow fort is twice as big as last year and includes kid’s tubing hill

This year Keystone Resort's snow fort incorporates a tubing hill and contains 16,000 square feet of snow

Snice Carvings workers work on the Mountaintop Snow Fort at Keystone Resort.
Keystone Resort/Courtesy photo

Keystone Resort has for years captured imaginations with its dazzling snow forts. A more than decade-long tradition, the ski resort in recent years has called the massive interactive sculpture it constructs annually at the top of Dercum Mountain, the “World’s Largest Mountaintop Snow Fort.”

But this year, Keystone Resort communications manager Max Winter said the snow fort is “bigger and better than ever.”

Not only will this year’s snow fort boast over 16,000 square feet of snow and ice with towers reaching 25 feet tall, but for the first time ever, it will be combined with another popular winter activity: snow tubing.



Located right next to the Mountaintop Snow Tubing Hill, the Mountaintop Snow Fort — which is now open for the season — includes a kid-friendly snow tubing experience that runs through the heart of the snow fort. Access to the snow fort is free with an Epic Pass or lift ticket, according to Keystone Resort.

Keith Martin, the owner of Snice Snow & Ice Carvings, said he’s been working with Keystone Resort for about ten years to construct snow forts atop Dercum Mountain. The snow forts seem to grow larger every year, and this year natural early-season snow helped make the sculpture twice as big as last year, Martin said.



“You can come up and go tubing and walk around something really rad,” Martin said. “It has developed over years and years of doing this into something really interactive.”

A Snice Carvings worker chisels a block of snow on the Mountaintop Snow Fort at Keystone Resort.
Keystone Resort/Courtesy photo

Martin said that after Keystone’s mountain operations team pushed the snow into place, it only took his team about two weeks to construct this year’s snow fort. But he said that a collaborative planning process has been ongoing with the ski resort since about midsummer.

Keystone mountain operation manager Celeste Loitz said that the ski resort is proud of the design of this year’s snow fort, which is suitable for all ages and anyone who visits the ski resort, whether they ski, snowboard or stop by on foot.

“There was a lot of bouncing ideas back and forth to figure out how to incorporate all the elements we wanted,” Loitz said. “We knew when designing this year’s structure that we wanted a kid’s tubing hill and an open area for families to come hang out and look at the snow and ice artwork. We wanted it to be an immersive experience that flowed from one feature to the next.”

Keystone Resort’s snow fort glistens in the sunlight Dec. 12, 2024. The snow fort opened for the season the season this weekend.
Katie Young/Keystone Resort

This year’s design also brings back the popular ice cave, as well as tunnels and slides for children to run and play on, Martin said. Even before the snow fort opened for the season, he said that children who were skiing were stopping to ask questions.

The process of constructing the snow fort involves “a bunch of us coming out and acting like a bunch of nine-year-olds building the snow fort we wanted to build when we were young,” Martin said. So it is exciting to watch children play in the completed fort, he said.

“Their imaginations just start going wild,” Martin said. “It’s super fun to take them through the channels where the walls are 10 times as tall as they are and then there are these tunnels that they slide through. They just light up.”

Ultimately, Martin said a lot of hard work and collaboration went into creating this year’s snow fort.

“I think this year is one of our greatest achievements up there,” he said. “We all come together to build something that will just blow people away.”


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