The Restaurant Snowmass Skied Without All Last Season Is Finally Reopening
September 3, 2026
September 3, 2026
Ullrhof sat empty through an entire winter. Not renovated-but-still-serving-lunch empty. Gutted, fenced-off, gone-from-the-mountain empty, while Aspen Skiing Company workers pulled a 56-year-old building apart board by board. Locals who have skied to that mid-mountain spot for lunch since before Base Village existed spent the 2025-26 season either dropping all the way down to the village or standing in line at a hot dog cart set up in a picnic area that hadn't been used in years.
That's the real story of the last twelve months at Snowmass, and it has almost nothing to do with the restaurant openings everyone already knows about. The village kept adding places to eat. The mountain took one away. Now, heading into winter 2026-27, the mountain gets its lunch spot back, and the shape of a normal ski day here is about to change again.
Ullrhof wasn't a nostalgia project. It was where a meaningful share of Snowmass skiers ate lunch, day after day, for over five decades. Aspen One pulled it out of service in summer 2025 as part of an infrastructure push that totaled close to $80 million across all four mountains that year, with roughly $42 million of that going specifically into rebuilding Ullrhof from the ground up.
While the building was down, Aspen One reopened the Spider Sabich Race and Picnic Area, a space that hadn't been in regular use in years, and dropped a pop-up called The Hot Dogger there, a partnership with Los Angeles-based Sumo Dog. It was quick-serve, it was slopeside, and it was clearly a stopgap. High Alpine picked up a rotating global menu to spread out the overflow, and the Alpin Room shifted to French-inspired plates under chef Emily Oyer. All of it worked well enough. None of it was Ullrhof.
| Old Ullrhof | New Ullrhof (winter 2026-27) | |
|---|---|---|
| Age of building | 56 years | New construction |
| Seating | Roughly half of new capacity | 500 to 600-plus seats |
| Power | Standard mountain infrastructure | Aspen Snowmass's first fully electric restaurant |
| Layout | Single dining level | New upstairs bar and lounge level added |
Aspen One has confirmed across its own release materials that the rebuild doubles the old building's seating and turns it into the resort's first fully electric restaurant, part of a broader sustainability push to build all-electric wherever new construction happens on the mountain. Crews have been finishing interior work through this summer, and every update from the company points to the same target: doors open in time for the 2026-27 season.
For anyone who skis Snowmass regularly, that's the headline. Not a new taco stand. A mid-mountain anchor that was gone for a full year and is coming back roughly twice the size it used to be.
None of that mountain drama slowed down what was happening in the village itself. Slope & Hatch, already running locations in Glenwood Springs and Eagle, opened its third spot inside The Collective in December 2025, taking over the space that used to hold Mawita. It's wrapping up its first full Base Village summer season this year. Owner Gregg Lemma has said the approach is straightforward:
"We focus on simple things done exceptionally well."
A few doors down, Montevino moved into the space that used to be Slice of Italy, bringing handmade pasta and a wine list to a corner of the village that had been pizza-by-the-slice territory. And Aurum Aspen Snowmass, which took over the old State 38 and Village Tasting Room space back in 2023, keeps running its familiar seasonal rhythm: open through winter, closed for spring, back by early June with the happy hour it built its reputation on.
The pattern is worth naming directly. Base Village restaurant turnover moves independently of what's happening on the mountain above it. The village adds and swaps tenants on its own calendar. The mountain just spent a year without one of its biggest dining rooms and is only now getting it back. Anyone judging "what's new at Snowmass" by village storefronts alone would have missed the bigger change entirely.
Two smaller updates matter more than they sound like they should for anyone who lives here and skis regularly.
Elk Camp Restaurant added a 120-seat deck on its east side this past season, with a retractable umbrella and glass wall system that turns a wind-exposed patio into usable seating on a lot more days than before. If Elk Camp used to be a fair-weather stop, it isn't anymore.
WE-cycle has added e-bike stations in Base Village and at the 10-minute lot in front of One Snowmass West. That closes a loop that didn't really exist before: Mall to Base Village to trailhead, without needing a car. For residents living above the village core, that's not a lifestyle amenity in the abstract. It's the difference between driving down for dinner and riding down for it.
A short list of what that adds up to before lifts start turning this fall:
Opening day itself tends to land on or near Thanksgiving here, the way it has in recent seasons, though Aspen One hasn't published a locked date for 2026-27 as of this writing. Worth checking the resort's own site as the date firms up rather than relying on early guesses.
What won't be a guess: the mountain is handing back something it took away for a full year, and it's coming back bigger than it left. That's the change worth planning your first few ski days around, not the restaurant that opened four blocks from where you already eat.
If you're weighing what a season like this means for owning here, whether that's a ski-in condo near Base Village or a place positioned for both winter use and rental income, Karina Marx works this market year-round and can walk you through what these kinds of changes actually mean for property in the area. Let's connect — schedule a private consultation.
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